photo by Melissa Lukenbaugh
Alicia Chesser, Curator, is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and writer. A Tulsa native, she studied with Moscelyne Larkin and Roman Jasinski and performed as an apprentice with Tulsa Ballet while still in high school. After earning dual degrees in English and philosophy at the University of Tulsa, she embarked on a career as an editor and writer in New York City, where she worked as a dance reviewer at the Village Voice. Alicia has been a collaborating artist with The Bell House since 2011 and from 2012-2016 was co-director of Tulsa Modern Movement, with which she created many original dance works in conjunction with local visual and musical artists, including "Brief Kingdom" and "Liquid Geography." She founded the blog Tulsa Dances, devoted to in-depth coverage of process and performance among local dancemakers. In 2018 and 2019 she received "Best Feature" awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for stories in the Tulsa Voice. A longtime advocate for the Tulsa creative community, Alicia teaches ballet at Jasinski Academy and covers the arts for The Tulsa Voice, Tulsa People, and Root.
Rachel Bruce Johnson, Executive & Artistic Director, has worked as a dance performance soloist, contributing choreographer and videodance artist for various companies across the U.S. and abroad. Mrs. Johnson is an adjunct professor in the Department of Dance at Oral Roberts University from 2007 to present and as a dance committee member for the Living Arts Council of Tulsa since 2009-2017. She has danced and served as a contributing choreographer with Out On a Limb Dance Company in Waco, TX from 2006-2019 and with Living Water Dance Company in Tulsa, OK since 2007-2013. She is particularly interested in performance process and in creating dance work for the stage.
photo by Jeanne S. Mam-Luft
​Tyne Shillingford currently leads as the head of the dance department at Holland Hall School in Tulsa, OK. Ms. Shillingford graduated with departmental honors from Webster University in St. Louis, MO with a BFA in Dance. Upon graduation, she moved to Chicago, IL where she performed with several companies and as a freelance artist for seven years. Tyne was the Co-Founder, Assistant Artistic Director, Choreographer, and Company Member of Chicago Verge Dance Theatre. Her professional choreography has been featured at Chicago Freelance Dance and EXCHANGE Festival in Tulsa, OK where her piece Mind of Darkness received an Honorable Mention as one of the “Best of the Festival.” As an educator, Ms. Shillingford has over ten years of teaching experience, training dancers and creating award-winning choreography in several different dance disciplines. 
photo by Rachel Bruce Johnson
Born in Belgium and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Christina Schneider holds an MFA in Performing Arts—Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with the assistance of a fellowship by the Advanced Opportunities Program, and a BA in Dance Performance from Oral Roberts University.  She is the Director of Dance/Assistant Professor at Oral Roberts University of Tulsa, OK, teaching Modern Technique, Improvisation, Ensemble, and Choreography.  She has served at Holland Hall Preparatory School, teaching Modern Technique, Choreography, and Laban Movement Studies. As a member of Living Water Dance Community, she as performed and choreographed for over six years.  Schneider has had the privilege to work with artists such as Rachel Bruce Johnson, Loretta Livingston, Amy McIntosh, Kathy Thibodeaux, Bill Wade Jr., and Melody Ruffin-Ward.  Her choreography has been showcased at the Oklahoma Contemporary Dance Festival, Oklahoma Dance Film Festival, Exchange Dance Festival, eMerge Dance Festival, and at Tulsa Ballet’s Studio K Creations. Her work seeks to explore how the human connection to movement can cultivate people's body, mind, and spirit.  She believes dance in its lived experience, as both practice and performance, has life giving potential.  Her work largely utilizes collaboration and improvisational methods to create authentic movement experiences.  She sees dance as a form of art and research that edifies, challenges, and nurtures the whole person.
Jessica Vokoun is an Assistant Professor of Dance, and Director of the Dance program at the University of Tulsa.  Upon graduating with a BA degree in Dance, Spanish and International Studies from UW-Stevens Point, she spent two summers at Jacob’s Pillow and the American Dance Festival, where she studied with David Dorfman, Lisa Race, Nicholas Leichter, Chris Aiken, Steve Paxton, Chuck Davis and others.  She performed for the ADF International Choreographers Commissioning Program, in “Call of the Wild” by Chinese choreographers Li Han Zhong and Ma Bo.  Ms. Vokoun then moved to Tulsa, OK, to work with the experimental dance-theatre company NC5, as a creative collaborator and performer. Their work has been performed internationally at events in Spain, England, and the US. She has performed coast-to-coast as a featured dancer with Li Chiao Ping Dance, Kanopy Dance Company, and the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company. In Oklahoma, she has performed with Living Water Dance, Rachel Bruce Johnson, as well as her own choreography.  In 2008, Ms.Vokoun completed her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from the Peck School of the Arts, at UW-Milwaukee. She has directed and choreographed three touring shows for the Harwelden Institute for Arts in Education, of Tulsa, OK. As a video artist, she has worked with Alexandra Beller (NY), Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (MD), Tulsa Ballet (OK), and Ko-Thi Dance Company (WI).  Ms. Vokoun founded the Oklahoma Dance Film Festival (Tulsa, OK) and has curated film programs for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR) and the Wisconsin Film Festival (Madison, WI).  She has served on the Living Arts Dance Committee, the Board of Directors Bell House Arts and Choregus Productions Board of Directors.
Tiffany R. Nirider is a native of Lafayette, LA, where she received a B.A. in Mass Communication from the University of Southwestern Louisiana (summa cum laude). In 2004 she obtained the M.F.A. in dance from Sam Houston State University. During her time at SHSU, she won numerous awards and performed extensively with the SHSU Dance Company working with distinguished artists such as Bill Evans, Shapiro and Smith and Joy Kellman.  She served as a Lecturer in Dance there for five years. Other adjunct faculty appointments include Lone Star College (LSC)-Montgomery, LSC-Kingwood where she was the co-founder of the LSC-Kingwood Dance Ensemble, and most recently, LSC-North Harris, where she currently teaches online.  Nirider has over 25 years of experience in teaching dance and has taught modern, ballet, jazz, tap, choreography, dance appreciation, dance performance, ballroom, acrobatics and aerobics in a variety of settings.  Among her performance credits are Kista Tucker Insights, Inc. (John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts- Washington, D.C., Merce Cunningham Studio – NY, California, Texas), Chrysalis Dance Company (Houston, TX), the Raven Dance Project (Huntsville, TX), and Dancesation Entertainment (south Florida and southern California). As a choreographer, Nirider has set works in numerous settings including the university dance stage and in musical theatre. Nirider’s passion remains in accessing and nurturing the authentic self through movement that is rooted in Laban theory and principle.  She currently lives in Owasso, OK with her husband and three sons.    
  
Katherine Feiock McCall holds a bachelor’s degree in Arts Management from the University of Tulsa with training from Texas Christian University’s Dance Program. She is certified to teach dance K-12thgrade in the state of Oklahoma. Teaching has been a way of life for Katherine since the age of 15. She has close to 20 years of experience teaching dance within private studios, foster home facilities, artists in the schools programs, and public and private schools. In addition, she has danced professionally and choreographed for companies such as Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre, and Ballet East in Austin, along with local companies such as Tulsa Contemporary Dance Theatre, Monica Huggins Dance Theatre, Portico Dans Theatre, and The Harwelden Institute.

Katherine directs and teaches courses for the Broken Arrow Public Schools High School Dance Program. This past winter she choreographed Light, a contemporary dance interpretation of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, The Little Match Girl, for the Broken Arrow Dance Program. She is now creating and setting a work that reflects upon the stages of Dementia. Katherine helps to support the Broken Arrow High School Athletic Program through her founding and implementation of “Movement Training”, an innovative collaborative program between the arts and athletics that focuses on using select dance exercises and techniques as a way for student athletes to cross train or rehabilitate from injury. 

During 2010-2014, Katherine was the Director of Dance at Tulsa Central Fine and Performing Arts High School. She trained dancers in various concert style dance forms while choreographing full length ballets such as Race Riot Suite, a musical work and synopsis from Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey outlining the Tulsa Race Riots, and short works such as Mandela, a work that integrated vocal recordings from Nelson Mandela.
Katherine founded and artistically directed Monica Huggins Dance Theatre, a program of Oklahoma Performing Arts, from 2003-2006. Her highlighted choreographic works include Reclamation, a work on finding peace within a toil of love limbo, SOUL-D Time, a work chosen for presentation at the Oklahoma Mozart International Music Festival with movement motivation from American Sign Language, and Eve’s Eden, a theatrical interpretation of the Garden of Eden coming from Eve’s point of view.  Her choreographic experience also includes many high school musical productions such as The Pajama Game, Mikado, Aida, and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. 
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Katherine enjoys cooking, eating, community theatre, yoga, exercise, animal welfare activism, and being active at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church. Katherine’s dance filled life would not be possible without the love and support from her husband Derek, and their beautiful daughters, Samara Jo and Lyla Marie.
photo by Andrew Fassbender
Aleks Kitchens graduated in 2012 from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a Concentration in Women’s Studies. After graduating, she spent a year in Minneapolis dancing professionally with two dance companies, nannying, and working for two theaters – Children’s Theatre Company and Guthrie Theater. She also completed her 230-hour yoga teacher training. 
 
Upon returning to her home state of Oklahoma, Aleks continued her professional dance career and worked for Tulsa’s children’s museum. At the museum, she became Senior Educator and Early Childhood Education Specialist. She developed all of the health and wellness curriculum for the museum’s education department and taught the curriculum in schools and community organizations throughout the region as well as led camps, classes, and visitor workshops at the museum. Additionally, she wrote the early childhood STEM-based curriculum. 
 
Aleks currently serves as the School & Community Programs Manager at ahha Tulsa. She is in charge of developing new school and community programs as well as expanding and managing the current programs. She works with teachers, principals, community leaders, and a cohort of teaching artists to bring high-quality arts programming to children and adults throughout Tulsa.