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Guillermo Leyva Barley

Guillermo Leyva Barley

Guillermo Leyva Barley

Guillermo Leyva trained at the Professional School of Arts in Camaguey, Cuba. After graduating, he began dancing professionally at the Ballet de Camaguey under Fernando Alonso's direction. He was with the Ballet de Camaguey company for 11 years as a principal dancer where he danced several classic roles. Later he danced for three years with the Ballet de Monterrey in Mexico, under the direction of Ann Marie D’ Angelo, Fernando Alonso, and Fernando Bujones. He also danced as a principal dancer with Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Lexington Ballet, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Illinois Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Ballet de Santiago, Chile and Ballet Royal de Wallonie in Belgium. Guillermo has worked with renowned choreographers, Alberto Alonso, Frederick Franklin and danced under the direction of Alonso King and Randy Duncan. He is co-artistic director of Alma Dance Theater, NFP.

Guillermo has coached students for The Youth America Grand Prix Regionals and Finals resulting in his students placing and winning in both the junior and senior divisions. He was awarded Outstanding Teacher in 2014 at the Youth America Grand Prix Indianapolis Regional and in 2019 at the Chicago Semi-Finals.

Guillermo’s dream as a child was to direct his own classical ballet company and to be a successful choreographer. He also dreamed of having his own Art Ballet School to help children from low-income areas to get out of the streets and become professional dancers. One of his goals is to keep passing on to his students all of his knowledge and experience, which he has always done with deep love.

Jessica Kondrath 

Jessica Kondrath 

Jessica Kondrath

Jessica Kondrath, a Chicago native, holds degrees in dance from UC Santa Barbara (BFA) and California State University, Long Beach (MFA). Her choreography through her company GRAYSCALE has been presented nationally and internationally; and she's had works commissioned by Moorpark College, Mt. San Antonio College, Cyprus College, El Camino College, Rio Hondo College, CSU Long Beach, Santa Monica College, CSU Fullerton, College of DuPage, Stevenson and Beverly Hills High Schools, and Momenta Performing Arts Company for their 35th and 40th anniversary concerts.

She has taught guest classes and lectures at Loyola Marymount University, Colorado State University-Fort Collins, University of Wyoming-Laramie, CSU Fullerton, the University of Colorado-Boulder, Columbia College Chicago, Joffrey Ballet Academy, and Novia University in Finland.

As a dancer, Jessica recently performed the works of Carol McDowell, Liz Hoefner Adamis/Immediate Action Dance, Sarita Smith-Childs and in her own work as part of the Hi, Solo series and at Beyond Baroque’s Poetry Series You Can Get There from Here curated by Liz Hoefner Adamis.

Jessica has been part of an ongoing collaboration with visual artists Yumi Janairo Roth as part of her installation Spin (After Sol LeWitt) presented by Grand Central Arts, and Diana Baumbach showing their collaborative works nationally and internationally. She was a recipient of the Professional Artist Fellowship Grant from the Arts Council of Long Beach for her work as the Artistic Director of GRAYSCALE.

Over the past twenty years, Jessica has also worked as a lighting designer for dance, a Pilates Instructor certified at the Kane School of Core Integration under the direction of Kelly Kane and she is currently on faculty in the Dance Departments of College of DuPage and Loyola University Chicago. Her most recent projects include an artist residency and premier of the evening length work Invisible Landscapes at The Visionary in Mt. Vision, NY, the One Hour Project with Project Bound in Chicago, and for the choreography of the dance film Hemlighet in Vassa, Finland.

Kristina Saldarelli

Kristina Saldarelli

Kristina Saldarelli

Kristina Saldarelli is a dance educator and choreographer living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago with her three children and husband. She believes dance is for everyone and strives to create an environment of fun and connection in every class.

Kristina holds her M.F.A. in Dance from University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee where she received The Chancellor’s Graduate Student Award and Peck School of the Arts Dance Department Scholarship. Her thesis examines historical and contextual gaps upheld within tap and jazz educational and creative practices through an autoethnographic lens. In addition, she holds her M.A. in Communication, Media, and Theatre from Northeastern Illinois University and her B.A. in Theatre Arts: Dance from University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point.

Kristina is currently on the dance faculty at College of DuPage as well as Movement and Sound Dance in Buffalo Grove, IL. She is an active member of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), Dance and Child International (daCi USA), and a frequent participant and teacher at American College Dance Festival (ACDF).

For the past 20+ years, she has provided dance education to students in a myriad of settings including universities and colleges, studios, private and public schools, and community organizations throughout the Midwest and beyond. Kristina served as an Adjunct Professor of Dance at Carthage College for 8 years. During that time, she taught dance courses, directed Away from the Mirror (2016, 2018, 2020, 2021), created several original works, and choreographed musicals. Her choreographic work has been adjudicated at ACDF, produced in professional concert venues, and ranked highly in youth dance competitions

From 2005-2018, she danced with JUMP RHYTHM® Jazz Project, a national and international touring, Emmy-Award winning professional rhythm company. She was also a Guest Adjunct Lecturer of Jump Rhythm® Technique at Northwestern University.

kt williams

kt williams

kt williams

kt williams is a contemporary dance artist, educator, and dance-maker based in Chicago, IL. She earned her MFA in Dance/Choreography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received the Donald Carducci Memorial Scholarship Award for overall excellence in dance performance. She has performed professionally in works by Renay Aumiller, Sara Hook, and B.J. Sullivan, along with various Chicago-based groups including Peckish Rhodes Performing Arts Society and Simantikos Dance Chicago. As an artist, kt is curious about the intersections between history, space, and emotion and their somatic influence on the body. Her work dynamically blends concert dance, experimentation, and interdisciplinary performance, and she is fascinated by socially-engaged practices and its ability to create immersive dance spaces that cultivate collective transformation. More recently, she has co-founded DanSeries Collective with creative colleague Caitlyn Schrader, and together they make duet work that explores and pushes common traditions of dance performance through social provocation and immersive community platforms. kt’s pedagogical, artistic, and scholarly practice is collaborative in nature, as she genuinely believes working in community fosters the wellbeing and sustainability of the artist-citizen.

kt is a practitioner and pedagogue of Safety Release Technique and her embodied practice is informed by somatic perspectives, including Bartenieff Fundamentals, the Feldenkrais Method, and Pilates. Her contemporary classes offer a foundational approach to integrating contemporary dance with somatic practices. Class typically begins on the floor and progresses into standing, traveling, and physically rigorous movement patterns.