Board of Directors

Shelley Trott, President

Shelley Trott earned a BA in dance from Wesleyan University and an MFA in performance and choreography from California Institute of the Arts. Her passion for the arts has led to her curious exploration of various artistic pursuits. Ms. Trott is not only a performer and choreographer, but is a stage manager, producer, arts administrator, teacher, and filmmaker. Ms. Trott founded Rapt Productions with Austin Forbord in 1997 as a multifaceted organization joining a performance group and a film company, whose primary focus is the creation and documentation of dance. Rapt's choreography has been presented in numerous festivals and has been nominated for two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards. While serving as director and principal dancer for Rapt, Ms. Trott also performed with other esteemed professional dance companies including Knee Jerk Dance Project, Scott Wells & Dancers, Kunst-Stoff, and Sara Shelton Mann/Contraband. Over a period of 26 years, Ms. Trott has studied gymnastics, ballet, jazz, West African dance, yoga, circus arts, and modern dance. Her documentary filmmaking credits include "Artists in Exile: a story of modern dance in San Francisco;" "Normal People," a history of the present in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; and "Beyond Isadora: Bay Area Dance the Early Years." Her dance film credits include Anna Halprin's "Intensive Care" and Deborah Hull's "Undone."

Steven Raspa, Vice-President

$teven Ra$pa is a writer, producer, artist, performer, and art personality, living in San Francisco. He is Arts Advocate & Special Events Producer for Burning Man and The Black Rock Arts Foundation. In those roles he lobbies public officials on behalf of artists and advises Burning Man regional events and community organizers around the world. As an independent event producer, artist and creative director, his clients include: The Headlands Center For The Arts, San Francisco Symphony, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, Art Angels, Cell Space, and businesses ranging from supperclub SF--where he serves as a Creative Director--to Grey Advertising, Google and Warner Brothers.

His wearable art, installations and culture-jamming escapades have been widely featured on television and in art and general interest magazines internationally. He is perhaps equally recognized for his distinct beard sculpture and dedicated facial companion, Prepostero. His work in performance, costuming, and "states of being" permeates every level of daily life as he mines aspects of his identity through assumed personas and fanciful alter-egos--among them Mein HARE!, the organizer of numerous Billion Bunny Marches to protest humanity.

While living in New York in the 1980s he assisted in programming and performed his work at the St. Mark's Poetry Project, working alongside legendary writers and performers, including Judith Melina, Richard Hell, and Allen Ginsberg. There, he also worked as a full time artist, curator and artist representative.

He has a Bachelors in creative writing from the State University of New York at Albany and a Masters in Marketing and International Business from NYU. He studied metalwork and jewelry making at Parsons School of Art & Design, but is otherwise self-taught and self-directed in the language of art. In recent years he has directed his energies toward supporting and mentoring new artists in the Bay Area and beyond. He counts among his family of friends: fire and machine artists, dancers, marching bands, opera divas, circus performers, drag kings...and bunnies*.

"We are what we imagine." - $teven Ra$pa

Dr. Alexi Exuzides, Treasurer

Alexi, a native of Greece, was born in Germany where he spent most of his childhood and developed a deep appreciation for Flemish art during numerous visits to the Netherlands. He completed his undergraduate studies in Mathematics and History of Art at the University of Patras, Greece and his post graduate work in Epidemiology and Probability Theory at the University of California.

He is currently a Director with ICON Clinical Research, a global provider of development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. Prior to that, he was the director of clinical Outcomes for a Disease Management organization and a Senior Scientist for Health Services consulting firm.

Alexi is a resident of San Francisco and an active participant in the local arts scene.

Christine Lee, Secretary

Christine Lee has worked as an educator/artist and administrator in Europe and the US since 1991.  Ms Lee completed her undergraduate studies in Photography and Education in Ireland and her post graduate work in Photography in Greece.   From 1994- 2002 Ms Lee taught Photography and English in France while pursuing her work as an artist.  She managed the international exhibitions for a non-profit contemporary art gallery in Lyon and served as Visual Arts Mayoral Advisor for the city of Toulouse's public art commissions. As Community Engagement Associate at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Ms Lee oversaw the education and public programs at the Center from 2003-2005.  She is currently the Associate Director of the City Studio Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Yannis Adoniou, Artistic Director and Choreographer

Yannis Adoniou is the artistic director of KUNST-STOFF and a native of Athens, Greece. He has lived in San Francisco for nearly 15 years and has become a vital part of the Bay Area dance community, as an Izzie award winning dancer, a choreographer and as member of the faculty at San Francisco Dance Center, LINES Ballet School Pre-Professional Program and the LINES/Dominican University BFA program.

Adoniou began his passion for dance at an early age at family gatherings and discos. The freedom and expression that he found through movement swiftly transformed into a calling that led him to more intensive study at The State School of Dance in Athens and then John Neumeier's Hamburg Ballet School in Germany. There he immersed himself in ballet and technique, but soon found that what he was seeking lay beyond the classical codified movement forms. In contemporary dance he found a place where experimentation and discovery were encouraged and his own voice could take root and grow.

Following this calling even farther from home, Yannis moved to San Francisco to join LINES Ballet where he was a member of the company from 1993-1998. Throughout his career in Europe and the US, Adoniou continually created works of his own, collaborating with other artists, often alternating between the roles of choreographer and filmmaker.

These creative endeavors found a permanent home in 1998, when Adoniou left LINES Ballet to co-found his own company KUNST-STOFF. Since then, he has premiered over 20 new works in the Bay Area, frequently in collaboration with nationally known visual and media artists and composers. His work embodies the curiosity of a true seeker. It challenges the viewer to reconsider the established knowledge and social behavior they have been taught and find their own personal truth. It encourages dancers and audiences alike to open their senses and be present in the moment.

Adoniou's work has been commissioned and presented by the Bonn Ballet, Summerfest/Dance, Burning Man, the Herbst Dance Festival in Heidelberg, Germany, Dance Forum Monaco, the Dimitria International Dance Festival in Thessalonica, Greece, the Athens International Festival and Ballet Frankfurt among others. He has received support and acknowledgement for his work as a Dancer/Director and Choreographer from the Isadora Duncan Awards, the Irvine Foundation and Dance/USA, the 2005 Goldie Awards, and the San Francisco Arts Commission.