Without

l:Begin Ag@in:l 2008

Choreography by: Carla Menchinella

Ascential Dance Theatre Colorado

 Jennifer Fagan Archer 

(Founder/Curator)

                                                                               Click here for Jen's biography

Tobi Johnson Compton

(Executive Director)

          Click here for Tobi's biography 

Jessica Garcia (Administrative Assistant & Costume Designer)

                                                              Jessica Garcia began her dance training at age three in southern New Mexico. She continued her dance training in Modern, Ballet, and Flamenco at New Mexico State University where she earned her B.A. in Dance in 2005. She has danced with Debra Knapp, Lucilene de Geus, Paco Antonio, Bill Evans and Friends, Sol y Arena and Evolving Doors Dance Project. In addition to dance, Jessica enjoys teaching and is currently working on her certification of massage therapy at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy. Jesse joined Denver's Hannah Kahn Dance Company in July 2007 and Ascential Dance Theatre Colorado in June 2008.

Bailey Harrison (Guest Artist)

photo & bio coming soon...

Barbara Javors

Photo coming soon...

Barbara Javors began her dance training in San Antonio, Texas at the Vladmir Marek Ballet Academy.  She danced with the San Antonio Youth Ballet at the age of 14. After a summer dance intensive at the North Carolina School of the Arts, she returned to Texas to attend Houston ISD's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She attended summer intensives at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York and the Boston Ballet School in Boston, MA.  She went back to North Carolina School of the Arts and graduated with a concentration in dance. While attending NCSA she trained in Ballet with Melissa Hayden of the New York City Ballet, Frank Smith and Franchon Cordell of the American Ballet Theater, and Gula Pandy of the Hungarian National Ballet. She received her Modern Dance training with Brenda Daniels of the Cunningham Dance Company, Trish Casey, and Dianne Markham of Hanya Holm and Murray Louis.

Barbara attended the University of Texas and received her BFA in Dance. While attending the University she danced with the Dance Repertory Theater Company. While with the company she had the opportunity to work with the following: Holly Williams of Laura Dean and Dancers, Yokov Sharir of the Cunningham Company and Sharir Bustamante Dance, Lynn Wiltshire of Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Harlem Ballet, Andy Scott of David Dwarfman Dance, Delfos Contemporary Dance out of Mexico, and David Justin of San Francisco Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Shortly after graduation her choreographic multimedia work “graveshift” was displayed at the Stanford School of Music.

Barbara developed a four year pre-professional dance program at the McCallum Fine Arts Academy in Austin Texas before moving to Colorado. She is developing a new dance program at the Manhattan Middle School for Arts and Academics in Boulder, CO.  A company member since March 2010, she is happy to be creating new work and dancing with Ascential Dance Theatre Colorado.

Leslie Merrill 

Leslie Merrill is a choreographer, performer, teacher, and video artist. She has been happily dancing for over 25 years and teaching for 12. She received her MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado in 2007. At CU, she taught modern and jazz technique and directed the Contemporary Danceworks Touring Company. She has also taught at Dynamic Expressions, Traci Stone’s Dance Connection, Mosaic Movement Arts, and Jefferson High School, and is currently on the faculty of Ballet Noveau Colorado. Leslie recently completed a guest artist residency at her alma mater, the University of Kentucky, where she pursued her BA in Art History and directed the University Dance Ensemble. She has enjoyed performing with Haan Dances, Move On Dance Company, and Louder than Words Dancetheatre, and dancing and choreographing for Interweave Dance Theatre. In 2000, she co-founded and directed the Kentucky-based company, RADAR: Dance in Reverse, for whom she taught, choreographed, and performed before relocating to Colorado.

In Colorado, she has presented work as part of the Bliss Festival, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Denver Independent Choreographer’s Project, the Boulder International Fringe Festival, the Installation Innovation exhibit at the UMC Art Gallery, and with Haan Dances as part of Beyond the Comfort Zone and Blessed and Broken. Leslie’s work has also been shown in North Carolina, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Nevada, and California as part of the American Dance Festival’s Dancing for the Camera Series, the TARLA Dance for Camera Festival, the Holland Project, and the Intangible Bodies Conference. Internationally, her work has been presented in British Columbia as part of the Collision Symposium on Interarts Practices and on tour with the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema in Mexico and Germany. Leslie has enjoyed sharing her scholarly research in conference presentations and publications, including the National Dance Associations’ quarterly Spotlight on Dance. She is currently working collaboratively on the project, Sole Stranger Blues, which will premiere as part of Femme Fatale Four at Denver’s Bluebird Theatre.

Leslie has been fortunate to study with a variety of teachers, including Rayma Beal, Connie Baynum, Cara Glesson, Jennifer McCain, Mary Haan, Katie Elliot, Lyra Mayfield, Tanya Goodwin, Katie Atkins, and Chris Harris. At CU, she was blessed to study with faculty David Capps, Nada Diachenko, Onye Ozuzu, Michelle Ellsworth, Robin Haig, Neri Torres, Nancy Cranbourne, and Toby Hankin, as well as Guest Artists Susan Marshall, Gabriel Masson, Patricia Renzetti, Kevin Wynn, and Rennie Harris. Workshop, Festival, and Residency teachers have included Wade Madsen, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Savion Glover, Alan Lomasson, Anastasia McGlothlin Ronald K. Brown, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, David Dorfman, Bill Evans, Robin Wilson, Tammy Cheney of ODC, Nina Watt and Rafael Boumailla of the Limon Dance Company, Gaspard Louis of Pilobolus, and April Berry of Alvin Ailey. A member since July 2009, this will be Leslie’s second season with Ascential Dance.   She wishes to thank Jen Archer for her love and support, and the entire company for welcoming her into their family!                                      

Diana Tobias

     Diana Tobias is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to Denver in 1991.  For several years she danced and trained on scholarship at Ballet Denver Academy under Rieke Love.  Diana is a former member of the Hannah Kahn Dance Company and has taught dance for several outreach programs including The Colorado Ballet.   She received abundant praise for her thoughtful role as Sacagawea in the company's original work, Sacagawea, the woman who guided US west in the Spring of 2009.  Diana joined the company in August 2008.

Apprentice: 

Kelsey Keirnan

(Administrative, education & performance apprentice)

Kelsey Kiernan is an optimistic and passionate student striving to be a well-educated and versatile dancer in the performing arts industry.  Kelsey has syudied at various studios since she was three years old.  In 2009, she graduated from Murphy Repertory Dance Company where she "grew up." After graduating from high school in May of 2009, Kelsey went on to pursue her performing arts dreams by traveling for 6 months around the world with a well known performing arts and leadership program called Up with People.  She ventured out that July with huge butterflies in her stomach and found herself in places like Mexico, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Denmark, and Finland. On the semester long trip, Kelsey met hundreds of people from around the world and performed in over fifty shows and twenty four cities each week adapting to a new and completely different venue and audience. Being only 19 and starting late as a dancer, Kelsey knows that despite her traveling with Up with People and her various other dance experiences, that she has so much more to learn in order to create a name for herself in the dance world.  She is ecstatic to have met Jen Archer since returning home in January 2010 and could not be happier to be an apprentice of and spend her next chapter of dance education learning from Ascential Dance Theatre Colorado!

  

Artistiya

l:Begin Ag@in:l 2008

Choreography by: Jen Archer