Teachers

Adrienne became obsessed with dance at a young age and has been seeking to improve quality involvement in the dance community for over 10 years. She has been blues dancing for 9 of those years and loving every moment of it. She has studied with a variety of instructors from around the world and looks forward to passing on what she feels is one of the greatest modes of expression and connection on this earth.

Amanda started dancing Lindy hop and Blues in 2004, becoming so wildly in love with both dances she took as many workshops and went to as many exchanges as she possibly could growing proficient in the dances quickly. All while juggling being a full time music student, working full time, coaching a high school colorguard, and taking solo classes in Jazz and Hip hop. In 2007 Amanda moved to Vancouver BC to attend the Vancouver Film School for Makeup Design. There she started teaching Blues regularly with her partner Dean Reimer and started learning West coast swing from the Canadian West Coast Champions Myles Munroe and Tessa Cunningham. Amanda has an eclectic style of Blues dancing fusing it with Hip hop, Funk and West Coast Swing as well she is a master of Micro Blues and beautiful subtle movements. She loves sharing her knowledge of dance and is honored that she has the ability to be apart of the Seattle Blues community.

Anna loves the Blues, Jazz, and other music that stems from early American traditions. Whenever she hears this music she can not help but move and express herself. Her greatest passion is dancing and inspiring others to learn, experience, and gather together to celebrate this art form! She is a teacher, promoter, performer and organizer. Anna’s dance addiction began in 2000 and has not stopped. She has taught dance since 2003, starting in Bellingham, and she now lives in Seattle. In Seattle, she works as an instructor for Hep Cat Productions and is the Event Coordinator of Savoy Swing Club, organizing such events as the Killer Diller Weekend, SSC Intensive series, and the Savoy Swing Jam. She has also worked as the Marketing Coordinator for the Emerald City Blues Festival and was the Co-founder of the Western Washington Jazz Dance Festival. As a teacher Anna brings with her an excitement and energy that is contagious to her students. She is known for her expressive style, attention to detail within technique and kinesthetic awareness that leaves her students with a well rounded comprehension and desire to get out on the floor and dance!

Ari has been partnering, teaching, and performing dance in the Greater Seattle area, nationally, and internationally for over 25 years. His breadth of styles include Salsa, Tango, Latin, Lindy Hop, Swing, Balboa, Blues, and Ballroom. He is the co-creator of two innovative new dance styles called “Fusion Waltz” & “Fusion Swing” which he has been busy introducing in workshops throughout the country. Ari is well known for his world-class instruction with a focus on solid lead/follow connection technique, and for his high energy and fun teaching style.

Brenda is fulfilling her childhood dream as a professional dancer and instructor. She studies African American street dances from the turn of the century to the present. Brenda travels around the world teaching and training with various coaches and historians. Her strength is breaking down the dances in a way that is accessible for anyone, even if they don’t have a dance background. She strives to help her students find the dancer with-in themselves, taking inspiration from dancers of the past. Brenda is working with the Blues dance community during this time of growth to develop curriculum and events that raise the community’s level of dancing. Her hope is to provide structure for duplicable material, while keeping the inherent character and nature of the dance.

Born in the year of the monkey, Calico is innovative and playful on the dance floor. She has been accused of being ‘creative’ and ‘fly’. The improvisational qualities of lindy hop and blues dancing suit her monkey nature down to the ground. In spite of her intractable bias towards these dances, she loves all dances, with an especial fondness for balboa.

Her teaching style includes words, counting, making
rhythmic noises, constructing evocative metaphors, analyzing movement, recognizing body intelligence and and putting tape on the floor in different geometrical patterns.

Calico Goodrich has been lindy hopping since 2003 and blues dancing since 2006.

Chris Chapman brings extensive training in a variety of social dances, movement analysis, the history of swing dancing, and his training from some of the legends of the dance! His passion, expertise, and strong teaching ability ensure fun and exciting classes for all levels of dancers! Chris is an American Lindy Hop Champion, a Pacific Northwest Lindy Hop Champion, and has won or placed in many contests and divisions. He is recognized as a top instructor and performer having toured all over North America.

Chris was coerced into trying Swing Dance in
1998 and has been hooked ever since. He started teaching Lindy and Blues in 2001. His teaching style truly bends the rules and incorporates as many flavors of dance as he can fit. After establishing a solid foundation of connection, he teaches you how to be creative and expressive through musicality and motion. From coast to coast, his dance instruction has opened the minds of blues dancers to all forms of music and movements.

Daniel Newsome has been a professional dancer, dj and historian for the last 10 years. In addition to teaching tens of thousands of students at Denver’s Mercury Cafe Daniel has also travelled to learn, teach, compete and has won at major national competitions such as the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown, Midwest Lindy Fest, Reno Dance Sensation, National Jitterbug Championships and the Rhythmic Arts Festival. He also co-founded, choreographed and coached 23 Skidoo, Denver’s nationally recognized swing team, which placed 1st at every competition they went to in 2006 and 2007. Daniel’s lifelong pursuit is touching as many lives as possible with the beauty and artisty of Lindy Hop, Shag, Balboa, Solo Jazz Dance and Tap. His goal is to bring music and dance to people in a way that inspires them and develops talent in anyone, regardless of background, age or ability.

Dean started dancing while in college in 2000. His sister started a swing club in his hometown of Abbotsford, BC and insisted he try it out. It didn’t take long before he was going every sunday. After a few years, he started to teach east coast, lindy hop, musicality and spins/tricks workshops.

About 4 or 5 years into dancing he went to his first Blues house party in Vancouver. Shortly after, there was another in Seattle… and then another. Before he knew it, blues was one of his favorite dances.

Dean apprenticed under Myles and Tessa (Canadian West Coast Champions) for a year and a half. In this time he developing his dancing and teaching.
Dean on social dancing:
“I have always been a fan of the social dance floor. Of the competing I’ve done, I still don’t think it compares to being in the moment of spontaneity on the floor. The best moments in my dancing career are when it is just my partner and I. The music and everything else just disappears. It’s the energy that you find in that place that I want everyone to experience.”

Gin has been lindyhopping since 1998. You may remember her from her 7 years with Emerald City Swing or SWING! The Musical as produced by the Civic Light Opera. You can now find her as the Gold Show Director and troupe member at large at Little Red Studio. Gin is well known for her cuddly and playful style of blues dancing. She is full of surprises!

Heather has been dancing her entire life, in one form or another, and has been teaching dance for nearly a decade. She began teaching blues when people noticed her choreography for her Hoodoo Ladies solo troupe, and has taught solo blues, partnered blues, and blues history. In her teaching, Heather gives her students the tools they need to become comfortable with their own body movement and shows them how to fit that within the tradition of blues music and dance. She seeks to teach them not just moves, but how to dance, and how to hear the music. Most of all, she wants them to have as much fun as she does when she dances.

Born with dance flowing in her blood, Jenny Eish has never been able to sit still long. Her dream of performing and teaching took her from a small farm in Ohio to explore the world. Along her travels she has acquired a vast vocabulary of movement as well as develop her gift of describing it in many comprehensive ways.

While in high-school she became certified to teach Tap, Jazz, and Ballet through Dance Masters of America. Dance performance was one of her majors in college, focusing on modern, ballet, improvisation, and composition. Her first professional audition lead to her first plane ride and landed her in Tokyo Disneyland for a year contract. After Japan she returned to college where she sailed with Semester at Sea and took on various roles while acting in numerous countries. Her next move was to New York City where she discovered Lindy hop and Argentine Tango. The connection and play between partners sparked a new ember in her soul. She then began working with American Ballroom Theater’s Dancing classroom program in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Jenny decided to check out the west coast and moved to LA for a few months where she taught several wedding couples to dance as well as other private lessons. As soon as she moved to Seattle she began teaching salsa group classes with a local dancer, as well as Blues and Balboa Swing classes with her partner Byron.
Byron and Jenny first meant at a dance camp in Sweden. Their paths crossed again in NYC where they taught a blues class. The following year in Herrang, Sweden, they were asked to teach a few Ballroom classes as well as Blues. Their connection on and off the floor as well as their love of music, dance, and collaboration, gives their classes an energetic flow. With an eye for catching technical issues such as connection and weight, paired with their encouragement of making the dance your own, they successfully help dancers learn how to communicate and expand their vocabulary while keeping true to what they already had to offer.

Jenny’s most recent travels has taken her to Egypt for belly dancing, and she is now being mentored by Saqra, an internationally known artist. While glass beads and swords are shaking up her performance world, she will continue teaching the blues as long as that sassy soulful music keeps playing, swing as long as those classy beats make her skirts spin, Argentine tango as long as that warmth glows in the chests of men and women, and ballroom as long as that childish giggle comes out when one feels as though they are floating over the floor.

We also love performing and teaching at special events so come and talk to us at Waid’s ;)

Yay dance (don’t forget to breathe)!!!

Dance is life for Jeremy.

It is in dance that Jeremy becomes truly present and truly alive. His dance is passion, intensity and vulnerability. He constantly searches for that four-minute moment of creation that can only come by completely merging with another and the music. This search means he’s always up for a blues party, and usually the last to leave. When it comes to dance, Jeremy is also a true polyglot: equally at home on a blues, contact improv, swing or tango floor.

Jeremy teaches dance nationally and locally at workshops, venues, and retreats such as Blues Rising, the Portland Fusion Exchange, and Burn Blue. His classes usually focus on things like pause, intensity, momentum, balance and dynamicism. A professional consultant and facilitator, Jeremy often explores these ideas with fresh and unconventional techniques, like improv games or cooperative groups.

Jerry and Kathy have been laughing, dancing and teaching together for the better part of a decade. Sometimes a bit wacky, sometimes a bit serious, always loads of fun. They will drill you with technique, blues movement and moves, make you sweat, make you think, and teach you ways to stretch yourself as a dancer. Blues Dancers all over the USA are begging for more.

Who are they? Jerry and Kathy are a big part of the Dallas Blues Swing dance scenes. Hmmm, National Blues events? Let’s just toss out a few places they have taught and judged contests… Blues Shout, Down Home Blues, Mezzjelly Blues, Denver Blues Summit, Enter the Blues, Emerald City Blues, Dirt Cheap Blues, Austin Blues Party, Blues Boot Camp, Houston Fusion, Lone Star Championships, Frankie ‘95 and various regional events throughout the USA and their own Red White and Blues.

To contact for private instruction and bookings call (214) 537-2776 or email jerry@ichooseblues.com.

Karen has loved dancing Lindy, Swing, and Blues for over six years, refining her technique, connection, and teaching skillZ, and is pleased to bring that enthusiasm to Burn Blue. She has recently moved to the Seattle area from Austin, TX, where she taught as a full-time instructor at Go Dance Studios, developing programs for Lindy, Swing, and Blues, as well as teaching West Coast Swing, Salsa, & Ballroom.
Karen’s teaching style is a step-by-step process that helps her students achieve intellectual understanding, develop their intuitive awareness of their body, and integrate the two to use naturally.
She appreciates the inherent beauty of the interaction of a couple in partnered dance, and enjoys the idea that because our job as a leader or a follower is so entwined with other people, it’s an activity and a culture that promotes cooperative interaction.
You can see her dance at http://youtube.com/watch?v=6PGlbbyGPe0. Ask her about private lessons, for feedback, or to dance!

Karissa is known around the country for her energy and creativity in blues dancing. She has been dancing for 6 crazy years, during which, she’s traveled and danced extensively around the world.

She brings vitality, drive, and pure joy to her students.

Kelly is a decade-long student of American vernacular dance who is passionate about bringing the rich social history of these dances to her students. As a performer, she has graced stages across North America to acclaim. As a teacher she is known as much for her sense of humor as for her ability to articulate difficult concepts and nuances. Her classes stress the joy of improvisation, dancing with guts (metaphorically speaking), and the humanity of a long and soulful dance tradition. She has a special affinity for historical dance crazes and spends a lot of her spare time hoarding black and white dance clips, collecting lo-fi recordings and mastering obscure dances like the ‘snake hips’ and the burlesque fan dances of Sally Rand. Kelly is also an avid collector of early jazz and blues, and is generally recognized as one of the US’s exceptional lindy hop DJ’s, playing for the most demanding dance audiences throughout North America including those at Showdown, The Rhythmic Arts Festival and on radio. During daylight hours Kelly is a graduate student of museology and works in the anthropology division of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle. She also plays a pretty killing spoons and kazoo solo.

Known for his unique Charleston technique, and eclectic style, Kevin has been teaching and dancing for 12 years. He has taught swing dancing all over the world, in places such as Switzerland and Sweden. Currently he is teaching in Western WA with his partner Lizzy Boyer. He is also staying very busy DJing and playing his saxophone at venues all over the South Sound. You will learn things you didn’t know were possible in his classes. Kevin placed 1st in the 2005 Camp Jitterbug Charleston Competition, 3rd in the 2004 Fast Feet Competition at Herräng Dance Camp, and 4th in the 2005 Fast Feet Competition in Herräng.

Lizzy teaches in Western WA with her partner Kevin Buster. A passionate instructor and tremendous dancer, she is also an accomplished vocalist and musician. She has been blues dancing and lindy hopping for since 2005. She also has 15 years experience in musical theater and a conglomeration of authentic middle eastern dances. When teaching, dancing or DJing, she says it is her goal for everyone to have the time of their lives. Lizzy has won and placed in numerous international and non-international competitions around the South Sound.

Ryan was born and raised in Marin county, CA, where he studied theater
and dance throughout high school. Since discovering swing dance during
his role of Baby John in the Mountain Play’s 1999 production of “West
Side Story”, he has practiced and taught dance to countless
individuals. He transplanted to Seattle in 2002 and attended the
University of Washington for a year, at which point he decided to be
done with school. Subsequently, he attended the Actors Theater of
Louisville apprentice program appearing on stage in “Amadeus,” “Balm
in Gilead,” and an original work for the 2004 Humana Festival, “Fast
and Loose”. His travels then took him through western Europe, New York
city and the east coast, and finally back to Washington to finish his
BA degree in Drama and Dance. Since 2005 in Seattle, Ryan has
produced, written, directed, choreographed and performed in full
length and short films, works of theater and dance, fundraising
events, public performance art and circus. He has been invited to
dance with the Oregon Country Fair, NW Folklife, Dream Science Circus,
The Moisture Festival, ACT Theater and Lucia Neare’s Theatrical
Wonders. He is a proud co-founder of the Harlequin Source School in
Greenwood, Seattle. Ryan doesn’t know what he believes, but he has a
pretty good idea that dance is absolutely a fundamental necessity for
maintaining one’s sanity, and should be indulged in whenever possible.

Solomon is well respected worldwide as a teacher of Lindy Hop, Balboa, Charleston, and Vernacular Jazz, and has a reputation as a Blues Dancing specialist; he has taught Blues workshops in Australia, Singapore, Korea, Canada as well as many of the 50 states.

As a teacher, Ted Maddry has helped thousands of students change their dancing and sometimes even their lives. In his classes, he will challenge you to develop dance technique, experiment & take risks in your dancing all the while maintaining a comfortable & entertaining classroom environment. You will get new perspectives, unique material, & tried-and-true technique. Book Ted for a dance workshop or teacher training today by emailing ted@beyondblues.com.

-topher’s passion for dancing is contagious. He believes that freedom of expression in dance comes from balancing technique with spirit. His passion for freedom and movement inspires him to study a variety of dances, and in 2000 he started a blues and swing club at his college and has been teaching ever since. -topher’s unrivaled enthusiasm for learning enlivens all his classes. He lives in Seattle where he makes his living teaching and writing poetry.