cat

Cat Willis

Founder/executive Director

Cat Willis is the founder and director of the Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center located in Santa Cruz/San Francisco Bay
Area. She is originally from Rochester, N.Y., where she began her dance education with Garth Fagan Dance, with whom she studied extensively for six years. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance from SUNY Brockport. Cat serves on the Arts Council of Santa Cruz Grants Advisory Committee, the Arts Council of Santa Cruz grants panel, Friends of Santa Cruz County Parks Advisory Committee, and was the 418 Project’s 2009 Artist in Residence and the Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H grant recipient in Dance. She received the 2014 Gail Rich Award for her excellence in arts leadership in Santa Cruz County. Her cross cultural studies in dance have led her to the Caribbean and West Africa and she currently lectures at the Edna Manley School of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica.

Ms. Willis is a skilled leader with a passion for bringing together communities through the arts. Her leadership has grown the Tannery World Dance Center from a fledgling start-up to a half million dollar budget over eight years through steadily building partnerships, providing a cultural hub for the community, and developing strategic policies alongside the board that were sustainable and relevant to the needs of the community. Her dedication to equity and access to resources and expanded platforms for artists continuous to lead her through her life’s work.

Micha Scott

Artistic director

Micha Scott has performed on stages around the world as a 13-year senior member of the renowned Garth Fagan Dance. Ms. Scott was a  teacher at the Garth Fagan Dance School in Rochester, NY, and has taught master classes and workshops for the company worldwide. While in the company she performed leading roles in many of Mr. Fagan’s works, including ‘From Before’, ‘Collage For Romie’, ‘Transition/Translation’ and the seminal collaboration with trumpeter / composer Wynton Marsalis, ‘Griot New York’. She has been featured in Essence, Time Magazine, and Dance Magazine, and as a soloist in the PBS televised series Dance In America.

Ms. Scott currently lives in Santa Cruz, CA and is deeply involved in the dance community there. She is Artistic Director at Tannery World Dance & Cultural Center (since 2011), resident choreographer at Mountain School (since 2008), she ia a lead teacher in Tandy Beal’s in-school residency dance program ArtSmart (since 2016). and a dance instructor at Dancenter (since 2008). Over the past 11 years she has also taught at Motion Pacific, Steps, No Limits, International Academy of Dance, Kirby School, Mount Madonna School, Monterey High School, Seaside High School, Cabrillo College, and has held the position of lecturer in dance at Santa Clara University (2009, 2011, 2013, 2015), the University of California at Santa Cruz (2012), and at the State University of New York at Brockport (2000). She has showcased her choreography in a family show titled ‘MICHA SCOTT DANCES’ and is Artistic Director of Empire Dance Company.

Angela2

Angela Chambers

Assistant Director, development director

Angela Chambers, an Oakland native, raised in Berkeley, spent most of her young life exploring Musical Theater. Introduced to formal training in Modern, Contemporary, Jazz and Ballet upon moving to Santa Cruz to attend UCSC, Angela has had the privilege of developing and expanding her knowledge of and relationship with dance as an art form and a platform for social change. At UCSC Angela performed, directed and choreographed various student and faculty-led productions. After graduating in 2014 with a BA in Intensive Psychology and Dance, Angela began teaching at Motion Pacific, Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center, and Magic Apple. Alongside teaching, Angela continues to pursue her passion by collaborating and performing within the Santa Cruz dance community with many local choreographers and companies, and is a founding member of ShifTheGrid, a locally based dance collective that received the Incubator Project Grant in 2015. When she is not dancing, Angela pursues her love for working with and supporting young dancers and the community by spending her time as a Health and Wellness teacher and as the Director and Fundraising Coordinator at TWDCC. Photo Credit: Steve DiBartolomeo

IMG_2777

Lisa Brenner

Programs/ Operations Manager

Lisa is thrilled to be a part of the TWDCC administrative team. Her interest in arts facilitation weaves through stage management to administrative internships at the Wooster Group and Dixon Place in New York, and a string of Civic Liberal Arts and Humanities Fellowships aimed to bolster arts education in prisons and to foster nontraditional modes of collaboration between artistic collectives. Alongside her work at TWDCC, she keeps the dream alive for so many kids with Tandy Beal & Company as an intern and admin assistant, and can be seen in local performances and dance classes.