Meet Your Guides
The RISE Collective Team
Zoe Levine
Founder of the RISE Collective
Zoe has been a dancer most of her life and movement educator for over 2 decades. She has been greatly influenced by a lifetime of dancing and play with many movement and dance forms including many Modern and Contemporary styles, 5 Rhythms, Gaga, improv, Qoya, breathwork, Authentic Movement, and Somatic Experiencing ideas. Her practice is informed by her work as a professional dancer, mama, Advanced MELT Method instructor, and Restorative Exercise Specialist through Katy Bowman and Nutritious Movement(TM). She has been leading daily dance sessions for the growing RISE community since January of 2020 and is the creator of several guided online programs including an Alignment & Movement Makeover and Strong As A Mother.
RISE rose out of the ashes when her own experience of dancing everyday helped heal mind, body, and spirit, after a Stage 4 Cancer diagnosis and a year of intense cancer treatment.
You can find more about her work at www.thethrivingbody.com
Hilary Brown-Istrefi
HILARY BROWN-ISTREFI is a Canadian-American choreographer, performer, instructor, curator, and arts administrator, based in Rockaway Beach, NYC. She is the (Co-)Founder and Creative Director of the award-winning performance collective, Same As Sister (S.A.S.) with Briana Brown-Tipley, as well as the choreographic platform, HB² PROJECTS. Both collaboratives employ interdisciplinary storytelling to challenge, deconstruct, and reimagine representations of identity towards understanding. Hilary is passionate about building community and support for the arts, not only through her performance projects, but also through her work in nonprofit development. She is the Development Manager for Movement Research, one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms, and a Development Consultant and Curator for Pioneers Go East Collective, empowering the voices of LGBTQ and Feminist Artists for social change.
Claudia-Lynn Rightmire
CLAUDIA-LYNN RIGHTMIRE, a Florida native, holds an Honors summa cum laude BA degree from Roger Williams University. She has taught, created, and collaborated professionally in Florida, London, Australia, and NYC. Currently, Claudia-Lynn is a dancer and company manager with Kinesis Project Dance Theatre, and a performer with INSPIRIT Dance Company, New York City Children’s Theater, and Third Rail Projects. She is also a personal and group fitness trainer through National Academy of Sports Medicine, and a teaching artist for The Sarasota Ballet’s Margaret Barbieri Conservatory.
Claudia-Lynn spends her days writing stories, drawing faces, and creating dances. She is ecstatic to be joining the RISE community, and to wake up each morning and choose to groove.
Shanna Tabatcher
Shanna is a Certified Mind Body Practitioner, Embodied Movement teacher and Yoga Nidra teacher. After over a decade of practicing yoga asana, Shanna was guided back to dance movement after a cancer diagnosis and wanted a way to connect with and trust her body again. She became a certified Qoya movement teacher and Yoga Nidra teacher in 2018. Over the years and after a second cancer diagnosis, Shanna began developing and teaching her own style of embodiment practice. Shanna's mission is to use embodied movement, the felt sense, yoga nidra and somatic practices to provide a safe container for individuals to reconnect to their wholeness.
Meet Our Amazing Partners
Angela Marquez
ANGELA, in life, is a mother, a friend, and some would describe her as a love bubble. Professionally she is a dance instructor and show director. After becoming a mother, she began to find the beauty in leading people how to use dance therapeutically. She created Move Your Mood, movement for mental clarity. This has been taking place virtually for the past 2 years and has recently been bringing it into live spaces and communities. She is a big fan of helping women of all ages establish healthy, yet simplified rituals to boost mood and build confidence. Classes are filled with movement, mudras, magic, & more!
Move Your Mood
Movement for mental clarity.
Engaging prompts, good company, and a bomb playlist is all it takes sometimes to elevate your mood into a place of bliss, understanding, and release.
Dance is more than a show or a choreographed routine, it is a human tool that we all possess to express emotion and release happy chemicals in our bodies such as serotonin and dopamine.
During Move Your Mood, we use movement as a tool to express emotions (good, bad, or indifferent), become aware of our physical space (mind, body, and heart), and connect with others. This will be a safe place for play, growth, and self-expression.
Let’s move on in a good way!
Preferred Pronouns: she/her
Website: www.moveyourmood.co
Email: [email protected]
IG: @moveyourmoodmama
April Axé Charmaine
April Axé Charmaine is a visionary educator and innovator, they co-create spaces for authentic expression, body reclamation, body remembrance, and healthy sensuality. Leading customizable immersive experiences across the world using dance, movement, theatre, expressive arts, performance art and embodiment practices to help people people ground, release and get free. They are the channel and founder of SOL VIDA, a light energy and movement methodology that fuses the form and freedom of Afro, Modern, Hip Hop + Conscious Dance.
The Embodied Revolution
The Embodied Revolution is a global dance and wellness movement for social change. We will ignite joy, connection, personal power and nourishment as we dream a new world into being using movement, performance art and embodiment tools to fill the well and regulate the nervous system. In these sessions, we will use inspirations from SOL VIDA, 5 Rhythms, SomaSource, and Symbology of the Orixas, to transmute pain, stress, and anxiety into personal, collective liberation and creative celebration.
Preferred Pronouns: they/she
Website: www.solvidaworldwide.com
Email: [email protected]
IG: @solvidaworldwide
Cassidy Wagner
Cassidy believes Dance is for Everyone and tends to advocate for what dance feels like from the inside, rather than how it looks. She teaches weekly open adult dance classes in Denver that focus on connecting movement to sensation, to pleasure, to joy, while passionately exploring the quality of one’s movement. Her classes are for any age, any body, any or no movement background, any limitation or injury, and are called Gaga. Cassidy graduated from NYU with a degree in Dance and has been honored to professionally perform, while furthering her education through international workshops and company immersions across Europe. In 2019 Cassidy was invited by Ohad Naharin, Artistic Director of the Batsheva Dance Company, to participate in the Gaga teacher training program in Tel Aviv, Israel. After an extensive 10 day audition, Cassidy was selected as one of a small group of dance artists for this specialized training. She considers the Gaga Movement Language to be her primary movement practice, and is committed to exploring this research daily. To learn more from Cassidy, visit : https://linktr.ee/cassidymoves
Adult Dance Class, Inspired by the Gaga Movement
We will move together, continuously for the whole session without pauses based on overlapping instructions. Injuries or limitations are welcome, as long as you listen to your body before telling it what to do. The only pain we want is the burning sensation in our muscles. We will sweat, dance, connect effort to pleasure, and get in touch with our silliness. The most important Gaga tool for me personally is the awareness of moving towards pleasure and joy with lightness, and intentionally away from pain and heaviness.
Preferred Pronouns: she/her
Website: https://linktr.ee/cassidymoves
Email: [email protected]
IG: @cassidymoves
Katy Alaniz Barnhill
After a three decade career, traveling the world teaching, and performing thirty plus styles of cultural dance, Katy now focuses her movement expertise on helping women in their prime understand their bodies. Her multicultural experience in cuisine, religion and socialization give her unparalleled expertise in understanding human interaction. By helping women understand their vessel and the messages/ stories it keeps, Katy helps women navigate their bodies own expertise to have prosperous relationships with themselves, other women and men- during our sexual prime ( typically over 36 years of age).
Feminine Empress Movement
Let's play with movement as sensual. Get ready to liberate your spine, your voice, and your pelvis.
We'll focus on three sections of the spine for facilitating undulation using techniques from many styles of cultural dance.
Week 1 Face, Head, neck , eyes, shoulder and upper back
Week 2: diaphragm, sternum, vocal breathing and singing, lateral rib isolations
Week 3; Sacrum, hips, lower back, pelvis and bootie and putting all three sections together
Preferred Pronouns: she/ella
Email: [email protected]
IG: @feminineempressmovement
Keva Victoria
Keva Victoria is a Yoga Instructor, Dancer, Movement Artist and Global Peace Warrior. She is the founder of Nomadik By Nature and the host of RIZE, a conscious dance experience held at dawn on rooftops, using the Sun as a source of inspiration and healing. Keva holds a BA in Hospitality & Tourism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a background in Events Production and Performance Art. Keva uses movement as a form of healing by creating safe spaces and experiences for people to be present in their bodies. Addressing issues of mental health, anxiety and depression, Keva leans into practices of Mindfulness, Meditation, Yoga, Chanting, Dance, Art and Travel as tools to open the way for deep healing. A way to drop into one's own authentic movement, and begin to truly trust our lives.
Free Your Body, Free Your Mind
You can expect yummy music, and intuitive flow based on the energy of the week/day.
Preferred Pronouns: she/her
Website: www.nomadikbynature.com
Email: [email protected]
IG: @nomadikbynature
Melissa Riker
Melissa Riker is Artistic Director / Choreographer of Kinesis Project dance theatre. She is a dancer and choreographer who emerged as a strong creative voice in the NYC performance world. Riker is the Executive Producer of the EstroGenius Festival, Founder and Co-Director of Women in Motion and Founder and Collective Member of Dance Rising. Riker’s dances and aesthetic layer her training in ballet, modern dance, martial arts, theatre and circus. She invents large-scale out-door performances and spontaneous moments of dance for public spaces. "Melissa Riker explores ideas about how vulnerability exists both in people and in
structures; it comes to life within an immersive environment of movement and whispers.” -NYTimes.
In 2022 Riker was the Artist in Residence for the Progressive Failure of Brittle Rocks Conference (PRF22) an international conference of Geologists, Geomorphologists and Mechanical Engineers, convened by Dr. Missy Eppes and her colleagues. In 2023, Riker’s work as a dance advocate is through Dance Rising and Dance/NYC as a community organizer and master facilitator of the Dance Industry Census Roundtables.
Kinesis Project dance theatre is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating large-scale, site-specific, and unexpectedly intimate dance performances.
Kinesis Project: Create from Crackling
Enjoy a bite sized dive into the creative process through movement prompts and play.
Preferred Pronouns: She/her
Website: www.kinesisproject.com
IG: @kinesisproject
