ruminations. [re] visited.
Creative Team Bios:
laura e. ellis (artistic director) has directed numerous projects in the Bay Area including her first large-scale project: Pieces of Me (2002) which was commissioned by ODC Theater and was awarded the Creative Work Fund. Other notable dance projects include Shadows, Whispers, and Sighs (2003) and When Strength is My Weakness (2005) which was commissioned by Robert Henry Johnson and was nominated for an Izzie Award. In 2017, ellis choreographed Of Flesh & Bone and artistically directed her project concept Soul to Soul: An Artistic Response to Baldwin & Coates. This project was awarded the Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s New Program Funding. She curated this project as a double-bill with Joanna Haigood’s Between Me and the Other World, presented at ODC’s Walking Distance Dance Festival. In 2005, laura with arts partner Kendra Kimbrough Barnes co-founded and co-presented the first Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now (BCF). Currently, laura curates programming for BCF at SF’s Dance Mission Theater. BCF has be awarded Best of the Bay (2009); Bay Area Spirit Award (2012); Izzies for Sustained Achievement (2020); Commendations by California State Senate and Alameda County Arts Commission for 15 years of preserving African American Art & Culture (2019). Laura is an arts educator, with 28 years of service, designing and directing dance and performance programs for the Athenian School and Cal State University, East Bay (Hayward). She is currently a performer with Dimensions Dance Theater and FlyAway Productions, and serves as a board member for CounterPulse Theater, Robert Moses’ Kin, and Oaktown Jazz.
Tiersa Nureyev (costumes) has a body of work that resides in the intersection between art, design, and craft. Her entry point into these disciplines is typically textile based, materials driven, hands on, and coupled with an emphasis on artistic inquiry and collaboration. Tiersa has costumed for film, musical theatre, dance and performance art. She is the co-founder of a collaborative design studio, Stella Fluorescent, that creates fashion accessory collections emerging from partnerships with Bay Area designers and artists.Tiersa has been a teaching artist with SF Arts Education Project since 2006. She believes strongly that art and making is an integral part of the human experience. This conviction touches all aspects of her work; as a teaching artist with students within the SF School District, to summer programs with youth that probe deeply into the nature of fashion as identity, to collaborating with artists currently residing in San Quentin Prison.
Claudio Andres Silva Restrepo (lighting design) is a Theater Artist from Santiago Chile. He studied at Loyola University Maryland. While at Loyola, Claudio won numerous honors for Acting, Design, and Direction. He also wrote and staged a reading of an original play on euthanasia and the beginning/ end of life. He spent three years teaching and working at StarStruck Theatre & Academy in Stuart, FL before moving to San Francisco. Moving to the Bay Area in 2017 Claudio has become Technical Director/ Production Manager for SFBATCO (San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company), As an Independent Design Artist and Technician he works with many professional companies like Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Those Women Productions, 42nd Street Moon, Brava For Women in the Arts, with specific care to create works that represent the diverse community of the Bay Area and addressing social issues relevant to his community. He also works as a designer and educator with children companies like SF Arts Education Project, Throckmorton Theatre, Young People’s Teen Musical Theatre Company, and other Educational Programs. During the Summer of 2020 Claudio had the opportunity to Join the JCHS community as their new Theatre Technical Director. Selected Credits: I, Too, Sing America (Set/ Lights), How To Be A White Man (SM, Lights), La Posarela (SM, Lights), Shining (TD/ Lighting)
About Dimensions Dance Theater:
Under the artistic leadership of co-founder Deborah Vaughan DDT has become widely recognized for its presentation of both traditional dances and contemporary choreography drawn from African, Jazz, and Modern dance idioms. The diversity and inclusiveness of DDT’s repertoire is unique to the company, and has contributed greatly to its reputation for innovative dynamism. DDT has garnered national and international acclaim for its performances. The company has traveled to Nigeria, Jordan, Germany, Zimbabwe, and Cuba, and has danced throughout the United States. DDT has advanced African American dance as an art form through a series of interdisciplinary collaborations with composers, musicians and singers working in a wide variety of African and African American traditions: Hugh Masekela, the Edwin Hawkins Singers (gospel), Street Sounds (a capella spirituals and blues), Cab Calloway (jazz), Chanticleer (a capella spirituals), Omar Sosa (Cuban jazz pianist), and Anthony Brown and Fifth Stream Music.
For more information about the exhibition ruminations. [re] visited, visit
