WENDY REIN Co-Artistic Director
A native New Yorker, Wendy has been dancing and breaking furniture since age 3. With a B.A. from Brown University, she brings over 20 years of professional experience in the field to her work as a performer, choreographer, producer, curator, and teacher. Wendy worked with Misnomer Dance Theater in both Providence and NYC before moving to San Francisco, where had the privilege of performing with artists such as Amy Seiwert, Deborah Slater, Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Nancy Karp, Mary Carbonara, and Todd Eckert, among others. She also worked for seven years both in front of the camera and behind the scenes on a series of dance film projects with noted photographer RJ Muna. Wendy co-founded RAWdance in 2004. She moved to NY’s Hudson Valley as the company expanded to two locations in 2019.
RYAN T. SMITH Co-Artistic Director
Originally from outside of Boston MA, Ryan received his B.A. in Theatre Arts and French Literature from Brown University before moving to San Francisco. A co-founder of RCJ Dance in Providence, he has always been supportive of the beauty of collaborative projects. In the Bay Area, Ryan had the opportunity to work with artists such as Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Stephen Pelton, and Amy Seiwert, and was a member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company from 2005-2016, touring nationally and internationally, and participating in several large scale international collaborations with artists and organizations in Kochin, Kolkata, Guangzhou, and Jerusalem. He has served as Co-Artistic Director of RAWdance since 2004, shifting from the Bay Area to New York’s Hudson Valley in 2019.
KATERINA WONG Co-Artistic Director
Katerina (Katie) Wong is a dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, and the Co-Artistic Director of RAWdance. Since graduating from Princeton University and moving west, she’s performed with over 15 Bay Area dance companies including Printz Dance Project, PUSH Dance Company, LEVYdance, Concept o4, and the San Francisco Symphony. Katie’s choreography has been commissioned by PUSH Dance Company, FACT/SF, Cutting Ball Theater, California Academy of Sciences, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and ACLU of Northern California. In 2017 she was the first dance artist to tour nationally with Pop-Up Magazine, which culminated in a performance at Lincoln Center. She was a 2019 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training mentee, and a member of APAP’s Emerging Leadership Institute Class of 2020.
Staff
AIYANA D’ARCANGELO Program Manager
Before moving to back to the U.S. in 2019, Aiyana was living in the U.K. and working for Scottish Dance Theatre, Scotland’s national contemporary dance company, under the direction of Fleur Darkin. As Senior Producer, she led the company’s touring activity to venues around the world, including India, China, Brazil, Mexico, many European countries, and across the U.K. Additionally, she supported the creation of new works by Botis Seva, Sharon Eyal, Colette Sadler, Emanuel Gat, and Fleur Darkin. Previous production work in the U.S. includes: New York University (Tisch School of the Arts, New York and Villa La Pietra, Florence, Italy), Robert Wilson (Watermill Center for the Arts/Byrd Hoffman Foundation), Lincoln Center Festival, Cynthia Hopkins (Must Don’t Whip ‘Um – National U.S. Tour), and St. Ann’s Warehouse. Aiyana studied Theatre at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (B.A., 2004) and Managing in the Creative Industries at the University of St Andrews (M.A., 2012).
MEGAN KURASHIGE CONCEPT series Coordinator & Co-Curator
Megan is a San Francisco based dancer and choreographer. She works with her sister, Shannon Kurashige, on wild collaborative projects as the co-directors and co-choreographers of Sharp & Fine. She also performs with Liss Fain Dance, where she has been a company member since 2010. She previously worked with choreographers Christian Burns (burnsWORK), Alex Ketley (The Foundry), and Amy Seiwert, and performed with Ballet Pacifica and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. She studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance under the direction of Summer Lee Rhatigan and the Academy of Ballet under the direction of Richard Gibson. She is also a writer. Her fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies and she is a graduate of the 2008 Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UCSD.
Photo by Hillary Goidell