NATASHA ADORLEE is an Emmy Award-winning choreographer, filmmaker, composer, and educator in San Francisco, CA. A first-generation Asian American woman, she is currently the Artistic Fellow with Amy Sewiert’s Imagery. Natasha began choreographing in 2014 while maintaining an award-winning dance career with Robert Moses’ Kin, ODC/Dance, Kate Weare and Co., and The San Francisco Symphony. After winning over ten international awards for her acclaimed short film “Take Your Time” in 2018, she has been a sought-after filmmaker, choreographer, and composer ever since. After attending SUNY Purchase and graduating from UC Berkeley, Natasha was invited to join ODC/Dance. As a performer, Natasha has danced a vast repertoire of works and contributed original choreography, sound design, and art direction to over 20+ ODC/Dance repertory works. In addition, Natasha has created over 20 original dance-based works- spanning stage, film, and immersive performance mediums. Most recently, she was commissioned to create for Joffrey Ballet’s Winning Works, Ceprodac (Mexico), Kawaguchi Ballet (Japan), Ballare Carmel, Ballet22, and Imagery. In addition to working for dance companies, Natasha has created original work for Pixar Animation Studios, Occulus, National Geographic, and New Yorker Magazine. Natasha founded Concept o4 to create multimedia dance-based experiences advocating for more accessibility to the arts. Awarded an NEA Grant, Dresher Fellowship, and Jacob’s Pillow Choreographic Fellowship in 2023 and a Kansas City Ballet and BalletX commission in 2024, Natasha is pursuing a prolific creation period while sharing her deep knowledge of movement and film with the greater community through Dance on Camera workshops. She is also an Artistic Advisor for Ballet22.

Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. He has held fellowships with Dance/USA, Drexel University, Jacob’s Pillow, Harvard University, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, NYU, and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. As a writer, he is the author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact and Banishing Orientalism, and has served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Australia, and the Huffington Post, and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel, the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance, and is currently on the advisory council for the Dance Data Project. He has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard University, Carleton College, and was named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center. His recent projects include directing “Madama Butterfly” for Boston Lyric Opera (garnering “Best of 2023” in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Broadway World), staging a newly reimagined “La Bayadere” for Indiana University, and producing a series of 10,000 Dreams Asian Choreography Festivals (‘Best of 2024” in Minneapolis Star Tribune, Utah Review, and Pointe Magazine). His dances are currently in the repertory at Ballet West and Oakland Ballet, where he serves as Resident Choreographer. He received the 2024 Dance Advocate Award from Dance/NYC.

Feng Ye is a “National First-Class Dancer ” in China. She was a seasoned professional, serving as Artistic Director and President of the dance company in the China National Song and Dance Troupe. As performer, choreographer, and artistic director, her works were presented in the Olympic opening & closing ceremonies three times in 2004, 2008, 2014 respectively. In the South Bay Area, Feng Ye launched the Feng Ye Dance Studio and Feng Ye Dance Troupe and successfully produced and performed a grand annual gala entitled “ENCOUNTER” at the San Jose Art Center Montgomery Theater in 2018 and “DANCE WITH NATURE” at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco in 2019. For three consecutive years, the Feng Ye Dance Troupe was selected as the only representative of Chinese dance to participate in the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Feng Ye has emerged as an important figure in the region, promoting the integration of dance cultures from multiple ethnic groups.

Elaine Kudo raised in New York City, received her early ballet training at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, later spent six years at the School of American Ballet and was a scholarship student at the American Ballet Theatre School.

Ms. Kudo was a member of American Ballet Theatre from 1975 – 1989 was promoted to soloist in 1981. She danced soloist and principal roles in a wide range of works mostly in the contemporary repertory. She has had the honor of working with choreographers Anthony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, Glen Tetley, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Eugene Loring and Sir. Kenneth MacMillan on featured roles in their ballets, and has had roles created for her by Twyla Tharp, Lynn Taylor-Corbett, Chu San Gogh, and David Gordon.

In 1982 Ms. Kudo along with other members of ABT performed at the Spoleto Festival in Italy in a group assembled to recreate the Jerome Robbins Company Ballet USA. She also toured extensively during the summer seasons as a member of Baryshnikov & Co. from 1983 – 1986, and was Mr. Baryshnikov’s partner in “Sinatra Suite” and “Push Comes to Shove” in the PBS Great Performances special “Baryshnikov by Tharp”. In 1987 – 88 she joined the Tharp Dance Co. for a national tour and tour of Australia and New Zealand. From 1990 to 2020, Ms. Kudo began staging the works of Twyla Tharp, both nationally and abroad, with eight pieces in rotation.

Ms. Kudo assumed the position of ballet master for the New Jersey Ballet 1994-97 & American Repertory Ballet 1997-2003. Most recently the Washington Ballet from 2011 – 2020.

She with partner Buddy Balough founded and directed Theatre Arts Dance America – located in Verona NJ.  from 1997 through 20I0. In addition to teaching at TADA, Ms. Kudo has served on the faculty of the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive program from 1998 – 2003, Ballet Tech, Jacob’s Pillow – Contemporary Traditions in July 2007 as well as guest teacher at Princeton Ballet School and Steps on Broadway in 2011.

Ms. Kudo was given her first opportunity to choreograph at the New Jersey Ballet in 1997. That piece was later staged at the Carolina Ballet for its inaugural season in 1999. She choreographed four ballets for the American Repertory Ballet during her tenure as ballet master. One for director Septime Webre, three as part of director Graham Lustigs’, Dancing Through the Ceiling project designed to promote women choreographers. In addition to these works for professional companies she has choreographed a number of solos for her students receiving a choreography award from the Youth America Grand Prix. She has also contributed three ballets for the ABT summer intensive program and five pieces for TWB summer intensive as well as numerous pieces and a Pas de Duex for Theatre Arts Dance America.

Ashley Thopiah (they/she/he) is a multidisciplinary dance artist with a BFA in Dance Performance from Butler University. At Butler, they performed a wide range of repertory, dancing corps, soloist, and principal roles in productions including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Giselle, La Bayadère, Cinderella, and George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments. As a choreographer, Ashley developed original works for the Butler Ballet, most notably Jyoti and Ekta, which blend modern dance with Bharatanatyam to explore themes of duality and identity. In 2018, Ektawas performed at the National Opera House in Warsaw, Poland, and toured Prague, Kraków, Poznań, and Bratislava. Since joining Oakland Ballet in 2019, Ashley has performed in works by Graham Lustig, Caili Quan, Alyah Baker, and Seyong Kim, among others. They originated the role of Coffee in Lustig’s The Nutcracker and have contributed choreography to the company’s Angel Island Project—a production centered on the immigrant experience, which premiered in 2025. The project features collaboration with artists Natasha Adorée, Ye Feng, Elaine Kudo, Phil Chan, and Wei Wang.

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multimedia, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, LA Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Royal Danish Opera, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and James Conlon. His opera An American Soldier (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) has recently received its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2018, and was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times. His installation opera Paradise Interrupted was premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2015 and was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016. Another opera, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2014. His recent new opera M. Butterfly (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) received its world premiere with the Santa Fe Opera in 2022. His future opera commissions will be for the Met Opera and the San Francisco Opera. He served as the first composer-in-residence for Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and was the visiting composer for the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil. Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 – the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. His father, who is also a composer, began teaching him composition and piano when he was six years old. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was opening its gate to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China in the 80s and 90s, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences equally. After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, he moved to the United States to further his education. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School. Huang Ruo is a composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music in NY, and is the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE. He was selected as a Young Leader Fellow by the National Committee on United States–China Relations in 2006. Huang Ruo’s music is administered exclusively by European American Music Distributors Company (ASCAP). For more information about the composer and his music, please visit: (www.huangruo.com)

San Francisco’s Del Sol Quartet believes that music can, and should, happen anywhere – screaming out Aeryn Santillan’s Makeshift Memorials from a Mission District sidewalk or a rural high school, bouncing Ben Johnston’s microtonal Americana off the canyon walls of the Yampa River or the hallowed walls of Library of Congress, bringing Huang Ruo’s Angel Island Oratorio home to the island detention barracks or across the Pacific to the Singapore International Arts Festival. Del Sol’s performances provide the possibility for unexpected discovery, sparking dialogue and bringing people together.

Del Sol has commissioned or premiered hundreds of works by composers including Terry Riley, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania León, Huang Ruo, Frederic Rzewski, Vijay Iyer, Mason Bates, Pamela Z, Chinary Ung, Chen Yi, Andy Akiho, Erberk Eryilmaz, Theresa Wong, and Reza Vali. Many of these works are included on Del Sol’s critically-acclaimed albums. Recent recordings include The Resonance Between, a collaboration with North Indian musicians Alam Khan, sarode & Arjun Verma, sitar and SPELLLING and The Mystery School with Oakland magical-futurist pop phenomenon SPELLLING. Huang Ruo – A Dust in Time, Del Sol’s eleventh album, released by Bright Shiny Things, was described in the New York Times as “excavations of beauty from the elemental.” 

Huang Ruo’s ANGEL ISLAND – Oratorio was commissioned by the Del Sol Quartet to shine a light on local history with global implications. Performances of ANGEL ISLAND in the current season include a New York City premiere directed by Matthew Ozawa and presented by Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival and Beth Morrison’s Prototype Festival in January 2024. Supported by a Hewlett Foundation 50 Commission, the work came to life in 2021 through numerous community programs, culminating in performances on Angel Island inside the immigration station detention barracks. This project has grown into new musical collaborations that allow Del Sol to amplify the voices of the Asian-American community including neighborhood pop-ups with Angel Island descendents “The Last Hoisan Poets,” an ongoing concert series at the Angel Island Immigration Station, and a podcast. The podcast “Sounds Current” was an official selection at the Tribeca Festival 2024 and won a gold award at the Signal Awards.  

The Quartet has performed at prestigious venues and festivals worldwide, including the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Esplanade Singapore, National Museum of Asian Art, National Gallery of Art, Symphony Space, Miller Theater, Other Minds Festival, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Clefworks Festival, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, Santa Fe Opera, and Chautauqua Institution. Every spring, Del Sol and Holiday Expeditions lead five-day musical whitewater adventures along the Yampa River. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Del Sol initiated The Joy Project, an ongoing series of outdoor pop-up concerts featuring short commissioned works inspired by the theme of joy. These pieces reached thousands in public spaces around the Bay Area— parks, sidewalks, open-spaces — where people could enjoy the music in the open air.

Deeply committed to education, Del Sol enjoys working with young composers. Over the years, talented students they first met through workshops, coaching and residencies have often grown into valued colleagues. Recent residencies include Universities of California at Berkeley, Dartmouth, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz. They especially value their ongoing relationship with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, California.

delsolquartet.com

@delsolquartet

Benjamin Kreith & Hyeyung Sol Yoon, violins

Charlton Lee, viola

Kathryn Bates, cello

Volti’s professional singers, under the direction of founder and Artistic Director Robert Geary, are dedicated to the discovery, creation, and performance of new vocal music. The ensemble’s mission is to foster and showcase contemporary American music and composers, and to introduce contemporary vocal music from around the world to local audiences. The group has commissioned more than 120 new works, by emerging as well as established composers.

Hailed by San Francisco Classical Voice as “undoubtedly the finest collection of new music singers we have,” Volti boasts a 45-year track record of some of the most sophisticated vocal performances in the nation. Composers seek opportunities to partner with these stellar musicians, who are known for their sheer technical brilliance as well as their vibrant, passionate sound. Nationally recognized as a pioneer in new vocal music, Volti has won the prestigious ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music seven times – the only vocal ensemble to ever be honored with this award so many times – a testament to the fresh perspective and new voices the group brings to life — and is the 2023 recipient of Chorus America’s highest award, the Margaret Hillis Award for Excellence. 

Art is redefined in every generation by the best and the brightest, artists who are paying attention to the world around them.  Volti seeks composers who explore timely issues of the modern human experience.  At a Volti concert you might hear music addressing such topics as social justice, political and class strife, and different conceptions of God/spirit.  Volti explores the nexus between poetry and sound, the translation of inspiration to creation, the evocative power of an artist compelled to express this thing, at this time, in this way. At its best, it’s the aural equivalent of a sunspot — an explosion of energy, a flash of brilliance, a glimpse of some eternal truth seen in a new and breathtaking way.

Attending a Volti concert is like visiting a modern art gallery, stimulating the mind, the imagination and the heart.

www.voltisf.org/

Alysia is excited to be back at OBC in a different vicinity, designing for Oakland Ballet’s Angel Island Project. She holds a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase and recently completed her MFA in Fashion Design from Academy of Art University. She has danced with Sacramento Ballet, Metropolitan Opera, SF Opera, Dawson Dance, Smuin Ballet, SFDanceworks, Radiocity and Oakland Ballet. With a passion for design instilled in her from a young age, she most recently was a Presidential Scholar at AAU, choreographing and creating the designs for her MFA thesis collection “V”. Alysia is winner of the CCSF Fashion Sphere Competition, has created costumes Ziru Dance and for Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, designing costumes for Natasha Adorlee Johnson’s Izzie Awarded “Blooming Flowers and the Full Moon” and winner of the Palm Springs Choreographic Festival. Alysia currently works as a designer in the Bay Area.