marin dance festival
AUGUST 9TH, 2025 7:00pm
DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY’s ANGELICO CONCERT HALL
Join us for the inaugural Marin Dance Festival featuring kathak, contemporary dance, ballet, circus, bellydance, jazz, ballroom, folklórico, urban styles and more! Great for the whole family to enjoy.
children under 18, STUDENTS & SENIORS
$18
GENERAL ADMISSION
$40
Premiere seating
$50
ARTIST LINEUP
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Alex Ketley is a choreographer, filmmaker, and the director of The Foundry. Formerly a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, Ketley left the company in 1998 to explore his interests in alternative methods of devising performance. In addition to his work with The Foundry, he has been commissioned extensively and has received acknowledgment from the Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition, the Choo-San Goh Award, the Princess Grace Award for Choreography, four MANCC Residencies, the Eben Demarest Award, the National Choreographic Initiative Residency, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation New and Experimental Works Grant, and the Artistry Award from the Superfest Disability Film Festival. His pieces have also been awarded Isadora Duncan Awards for outstanding achievement in the categories of Choreography, Company, and Ensemble. In 2020, he became a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of the most prestigious honors in the United States, recognizing individuals "who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability in the arts.” In 2025, he was awarded a National Dance Project Grant for An Approximation of Resilience. He is an Advanced Lecturer at Stanford University's Theater and Performance Studies Department as well as a Board Member of Death Penalty Focus, an organization striving to abolish the Death Penalty.
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Charlotte Moraga began dancing at a very young age in Miami, Florida. But, it wasn’t until she began her serendipitous study of kathak with Pandit Chitresh Das at SFSU in 1992 that she found her calling. She joined the Chitresh Das Dance Company (CDDC) in 1996 and has been a featured principal dancer in his critically acclaimed works: Pancha Jati , East as Center, Darbar, Subali Sugriwa, Sampurnam, India Jazz Suites, Sita Haran, Yatra, and Shiva. Her 2014 performance in Yatra was described by Dance Critic Rita Felciano in DanceViewTimes as, “…elevated to classical form by Charlotte Moraga's sense of perfection in the details and her extraordinary speed and precision in those pirouettes.” In March, 2016, dance critic Allan Ulrich wrote of Charlotte’s performance as Shiva: “Her Shiva, seen only in silhouette behind a screen that suggested the Earth seen from an interstellar location, still mesmerized with its twisting grandeur. Here, the appeal was universal.”
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A child prodigy, Doree Susanne Clark, partnered with her brother Jonathan, became a ballroom champion at age 16 when the couple won the prestigious Harvest Moon Ball. This led to a guest appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and quickly after that, Doree had her own television dance series entitled "Watch Your Step."
Doree and her brother toured the Northeast, opening for blues great Billy Daniel, and starring in Philly's Fever, a salute to Pete Rose. At the same time, Doree developed her choreographic and dance skills, training with teachers such as Luigi, Chuck Kelly, Phil Black and Anahid Sofian.
In 1987, Doree moved to the west coast. She began by offering a few classes in jazz and ballroom, attracted some wildly dedicated students whose talent ranged from strictly beginner to the professional dancer, and from this motley crew fashioned a dance company, The Don't Quit Your Day Job Dancers.
Now entering its 30th season, The Don't Quit Your Day Job Dancers are a Bay Area phenomenon. The characteristics of a Doree Clark show are high energy, fun, sexy, provocative, emotional, beautiful, and entertaining. Doree's ability to choreograph for dancers at every level while simultaneously entertaining and stimulating her audience is a unique and wonderful gift.
Doree is continually evolving as a choreographer, and her most recent shows have introduced theatricality into dance. Each act tells a story through a number of different dances, and some acts include speaking parts as well. Musical dance theatre may well be evolving and revitalizing itself through Doree's enormous creative vision.
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Festival Founder & Choreographer
Casey Lee Thorne (she/her) is a dance artist, educator,and scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thorne received her early training at American Repertory Ballet’s Princeton Ballet School, and graduated from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet/Dominican University of CA BFA Program in 2010 as part of the inaugural class. In 2018, she received her MFA in Dance Studies from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and founded Inside Out Contemporary Ballet in 2012. Thorne was awarded a 2014-2015 Fulbright Fellowship to Israel, and served as Assistant Professor of Dance at Southern Utah University (2019-2020) and Associate Professor of Dance at Cabrillo College (2021-2023). Thorne was appointed Development Director at Stapleton School of the Performing Arts in San Anselmo from 2022-2023 and Individual Giving Manager at East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond 2023-2024. Currently, Thorne is Adjunct Professor of Dance at College of Marin and Dominican University of CA/Alonzo King LINES Ballet BFA Program. She serves on the Alumni Board of Directors for Dominican University of CA, runs her own after school dance program in San Rafael, and continues to produce work for IOCB.
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Carem Love honed her bellydance skills and artistry through a Bachelor’s degree in Dance from UDLAP (Universidad de las Américas Puebla) and 3 years of intensive training at the Professional School of Bellydance in Puebla. With over 5 years of experience, Carem has been sharing her love for dance with students of all ages. Her teaching style is characterized by creativity, patience, and a deep commitment to nurturing her students’ passion for dance.
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Jasmine Kaiulani is a dancer/choreographer, artist and performer from O’ahu. Raised in the Bay Area, Jasmine recently graduated from Sonoma State University (SSU) with a B.A. in Theatre Arts and Dance, and was awarded the department’s Student of the Year. At the young age of three, Jasmine trained in Ballet, Tap, Hula and Tahitian with the Westlake School for the Performing Arts and Spark of Creation Studios; and quickly flourished as a dancer and competitor, performing in productions and placing in competitions. By nine, Jasmine self-taught herself Hip-Hop and once again furthered her dance resume with Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban in her teens.
Jasmine has taught, created, choreographed and directed several works for the community during her young adulthood. She was titled Top 10 in the 2020 national Hip-Hop competition, KĀOS Takeover: solo division. The following year, Jasmine was granted the honor of representing SSU at the American College Dance Association Screen Dance Film Festival and earned Special Recognition for Nhan Ho Project’s Images of Dance 2021. She has since joined Groove Against the Machine; her training continues at the renowned In the Groove Studios in Oakland. With a thriving passion for dance, Jasmine continues to hold focus in Hip-Hop and Modern dance; and her purpose to share knowledge and inspire.
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Marisa Gregory is a multi-talented performer who owns PoisnIvy Circus and Aerial Dance Marin. Combining silly, sultry aerial acrobatics and fire dance, her multi-media circus performances are a force to reckon with!
ABOUT US
Founded in 2025 with a mission to provide opportunities for Marin based dance artists to showcase their work, MDF is committed to amplifying and unifying the diverse perspectives of our local dance community.