KEITH HENNESSY, Choreographer/performer    CV (word doc)
Keith Hennessy tours internationally as a performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. He directs CIRCO ZERO in intimate spectacles for stage and street. His interdisciplinary research engages improvisation, public actions and alchemy/shamanism as tools for choreographic investigations of political realities. Keith was a member of the collaborative performance companies: Contraband (85-94), CORE (95-98), and Cahin-caha, cirque bâtard (98-02). His work is featured in several books and documentaries, including How To Make Dances in an Epidemic (David Gere, Univ of Wisconsin: 2004), Gay Ideas (Richard Mohr, Beacon: 1992), and Dancers in Exile (RAPT Productions, 2000). He is a co-founder of 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE a thriving performance/culture space in San Francisco. Recent awards include Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship in Dance (2005) and SF Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay for Circo Zero. Recent commissions include Les Subsistances, Lyon (Homeless USA, 2005), Les Laboratoires, Paris (American Tweaker, 2006), FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance) and Centre Chorégraphique National, Belfort (Sol niger, 2007), and Lower Left Performance Co, San Diego (Gather, 2005). Keith’s 2005-07 teaching includes JFK University, UC Davis, USF, Impustanz (Vienna), improvisation festivals in Budapest, Seattle, Stolzenhagen (Germany), Moab, the Aerial Dance Festival (Boulder), plus grass-roots workshops in Arcata, Chicago, Toronto, Victoria and Earthdance (Northampton MA).

EMILY LEAP, Dancer and Aerialist
Emily Leap is an aerialist and dancer. She trained with Elena Panova and Helene Turcotte on trapeze at the San Francisco Circus Center. Emily studied modern dance at UC Berkeley and received a certificate of dance from the Alvin Ailey School. She has been performing solo trapeze work since 2003, including the 2005 Women on the Way Festival and the American Circus Festival in 2005 and 2006. She was awarded Best Aerial Act at the 2005 American Circus Festival. Emily has performed with Alma Esperanza Cunningham Movement, Eat Cake Productions, and The Spinning Yarns Dance Collective. She is currently a member of Lizz Roman and Dancers and Circo Zero.

SEAN FEIT, Dancer and Musician
Sean Feit is a classically trained composer and multi-instrumentalist (piano, violin, voice, all strings) working in performance art and movement-based theater. He studied music composition at California Institute of the Arts (BFA, 1993) and Cornell University (Graduate Fellowship, 1995-6). He co-directed RUJEKO Performance Collaboration from 1997-2005 and produced six full-length pieces integrating dance, live music, spoken word and site-specific performance. RUJEKO worked toward a visceral theater language deeply informed by meditative practice and the radical presence of Authentic Movement. In addition to solo and directing work, Sean has danced or made music with Scott Wells, Angus Balbernie, Bodycartography Project, Leslie Seiters and Keith Hennessy. He has performed locally at 848 Community Space, CounterPULSE, ODC Theater, Temescal Art Center, Dance Mission Theater and in the streets and woods of the Bay Area. He has practiced Buddhist meditation and Yoga since 1993 and in 2002 took monastic ordination in Burma. He continues to be informed by the disciplines of meditation, improvisation and Authentic Movement, as well as the Bhakti (devotional) and Hatha paths of Yoga.

SETH EISEN, Performance and Installation Artist
Seth Eisen is a visual and performing artist. He has been coaching artists, teaching visual and performing arts and operating thriving art studios with people of all ages for fourteen years. His work is a hybrid of contemporary forms (performance, installation, and found object) and the prehistoric (ritual, community and fetish object). Seth has been exhibiting, curating and collaborating with various artists in the Bay Area since 1994 and prior to that in Philadelphia and Boulder, Colorado. His performative installations have been featured at The Oakland Museum of California, Theater Artaud, Zeum, Yerba Buena Gardens, SOMARTS, Theater of Yugen, Bing Gallery and 848 Community Space. Seth has also performed with Nina Hagan, Harupin–Ha, URO, Ink Boat, Flesh and Blood Mystery Theater, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Keith Hennessy and Circo Zero. Seth has a four-year certificate in painting from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, a B.A. in Contemplative Interdisciplinary Arts from Naropa University and an M.A. in Transformative Art from John F. Kennedy University.

BRETT WOMACK, Aerialist and Dancer
Brett Womack born and raised in San Francisco has spent over half his life in the circus world. While focused on the aerial arts of rope and tissu, he also has extensive training in tumbling, acrobatics, jump rope, character and dance. Brett premiered as a soloist with Make-a-Circus in 2003. In addition to performing with Circo Zero, he has worked for the prestigious New Pickle Circus, City Circus and the raucous Vau de Vire Society. He currently teaches at Acrosports and loves performing en situ.

MAX, Lighting Designer & Object Performer
Max is a lighting and set designer, maker of masks, performer and puppeteer. Her work has been presented in Japan, Eastern Europe, France, and several cities in the US. Max is a member of Theatre of Yugen, a Noh-inspired performance company. She created the masks and performed in the recent Cycle Plays, a suite of five plays that ran throughout a single day. Max is frequently seen designing lights for dance at CounterPULSE, Dance Mission, and various sites around San Francisco.

BJ BANDY, Costume Designer
BJ Bandy is a creative artist with more than a decade of experience in theatre costuming, makeup, and crafts, including work as a costume designer, cutter/draper, stitcher, wardrobe supervisor, tailor, and milliner for the Solano Repertory Company, Sacramento Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, ODC, California Shakespeare Festival, Oakland Ballet, La Jolla Playhouse, and San Francisco Opera, among others. Bandy holds a BA Theatre Arts/Costuming from the University of California, San Diego, and continued her theatre studies at UC Berkeley. She is the winner of two ARTY awards and has been nominated several times for the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Association's Elly award.