Nadia Adame, AXIS Dance Company, Artistic Director and Choreographer, Welcome
Nadia Adame (she/her) is a Spanish multidisciplinary award-winning artist with a spinal cord injury. She studied Ballet and Flamenco at the Royal Dance Conservatory of Madrid and has a BA in Theatre from the University of Colorado. She was a company member with AXIS Dance Company (2000–2003) and Candoco Dance Company (2007–2008). In 2004, she co-founded and served as the Co-Artistic Director of Compañía Y, a multimedia and performance collective in Spain, with Mark Swetz,. Nadia’s credits include dance, theater, commercial, and independent film projects in the UK, Spain, US, and Canada. As a performer, she has been featured in works by Stephen Petronio, Bill T. Jones, Arthur Pita, Rafael Bonachela, Davis Robertson, Sonya Delwaide, Marc Brew, Chevi Muraday and Asun Noales, among others.

Natasha Adorlee, Choreographer, Exquisite Corps
Natasha Adorlee (she/her) is an Emmy Award-winning choreographer, filmmaker, composer, and creative leader based in San Francisco. Natasha began choreographing in 2016 while maintaining an award-winning performance career with ODC Dance, Kate Weare and Company, Robert Moses’ Kin, and the San Francisco Symphony. She attended SUNY Purchase and graduated from UC Berkeley. Natasha has been commissioned by Joffrey Ballet’s Winning Works, Kansas City Ballet, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Richmond Ballet, BalletX, Oklahoma City Ballet, Ceprodac in Mexico City, Kawaguchi Ballet in Japan, Ballare Carmel, Ballet22, Jacob’s Pillow, and Tulsa Ballet. Beyond the concert stage, she has created original work for Pixar Animation Studios, Oculus, National Geographic, The New Yorker, YouTube, and Cricket Wireless, bringing choreographic and movement-based thinking into cinematic, commercial, and technological environments. Her work has been recognized with an NEA Grant, a Dresher Fellowship, a Jacob’s Pillow Choreographic Fellowship, the 2024 Grand Prize at the Palm Desert Choreography Festival and Natasha received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Performance.

Branden Wallace, Costume Designer, Electric Fish
Branden Wallace holds a BFA, MFA and a BS in Biochemistry. Branden has utilized their neurodivergence disabilities as a guide to different perspectives. Their practice is creating congruous work from the discord and discomfort of new information. A haptic harmony of cognitive dissonance. Branden is the recipient of the Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship in 2020 and 2023.

Joel Brown, Rehearsal Director, AXIS Dance Company
Joel Brown (he/him) is a paraplegic dancer and choreographer based between London and Salt Lake City, UT. He danced with AXIS Dance Company in Oakland, CA from 2012–2014 and Candoco Dance Company in London from 2015–2023. He co-created an award winning duet, One Hundred and Eleven, with Estonian dancer, Eve Mutso in 2019, which has toured across the UK, Tbilisi, Georgia, and India to great critical acclaim. He is currently studying for his MA in Choreography at the Central School of Ballet. He was commissioned to choreograph two works for third year students at Laban Conservatoire in 2022 and 2023, for which he also composed original music.

David Calhoun, Costume Designer, Exquisite Corps; Sewing, Electric Fish
David Calhoun (any/all pronouns) is a freelance dancer, teacher and costumer based in the Bay Area. In 2023, David picked up sewing as a hobby which quickly turned into a passion. They subsequently created their brand vipère, which explores contemporary activewear. Commissions include work for AXIS Dance Company, POST:Ballet, EIGHT/MOVES, dawsondancesf, LINES BFA, Fermata Ballet Collective, BODYSONNET, Ja'Moon Jones and Deb Slater Dance Theater.

Alfonso "Poncho" Castro, Composer, Electric Fish
Alfonso Castro is a Costa Rican multidisciplinary artist, composer, dancer, and choreographer whose work bridges music, movement, and performance. With over a decade of professional experience, his projects and collaborations have been presented throughout the United States and Latin America. Castro approaches his creative practice through an anthropological and ethnographic lens, exploring the body as a vessel of memory, identity, and cultural narrative, with particular attention to indigeneity and mestizaje. Working across disciplines, he creates collaborative and socially engaged artistic experiences. Castro is also an educator, curator, and arts administrator committed to fostering diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the arts.

Sonya Delwade, Choreographer, Welcome
Sonya Delwaide (she/her) is a choreographer, teacher and performer whose reputation has flourished within the United States and Canada for nearly four decades. A native of Quebec and a graduate of York University in Toronto, she currently resides in the Bay Area where the critics have favorably noticed her work. She has been profiled in San Francisco Magazine, received a Bay Area Goldie Award (from the San Francisco Bay Guardian), was named in the San Francisco Chronicle’s 2001 Top 10 list was one of Dance Magazine’s Top 25 people to watch in 2002 and received two Isadora Duncan Awards for best ensemble performance and best revival. Ms. Delwaide has created more than 80 pieces for companies such as ODC Dance, Ottawa Ballet, Diblo Ballet, L'Ecole Supérieure des Grands Ballets Canadiens, Hubbard Street 2 (after winning their 2000 National Choreographic Competition), AXIS Dance Company, Berkeley Ballet Theater, Compagnie de Danse L'Astragale (for whom she was the artistic director from 1992 to 1999) and Ballet Austin after being a winner in the New American Talent competition. To describe her work, the San Francisco Express wrote: "she seems to epitomize a postmodern fusion of the Balanchine/Cunningham aesthetic with the punk expressiveness of the '80s-geometric clarity and a ruminating, personal, sexually prickly style.”. Ms. Delwaide has received awards from the Canada Council, Quebec and Ontario Arts’ Councils, Zellerbach Family Fund, Gerbode and Irvine Foundations. She was the recipient of the Zarlo award for excellence in teaching from Mills College, where she was Head of the Dance & Theater Studies department for five consecutive years. She has taught at the school of the National Ballet of Canada, Lles Grands Ballets Canadiens, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Mills and Hayward Colleges, CEGEP de Drummondville and has led master classes in Venezuela, China, Switzerland and Australia.

Kayla Hamilton, Choreographer, Right Here, Right Now
Kayla Hamilton (she/her) is a Texas-born, Bronx-based dancer, performance maker, educator, consultant and artistic director of Circle O—a cultural organization uplifting Black Disabled and other multiple marginalized creatives. Kayla was part of the Bessie award-winning ensemble Skeleton Architecture and has also danced with MBDance/Maria Bauman, Gesel Mason, and Sydnie L. Mosley/SLMDances. At its core, Kayla Hamilton’s choreography consistently challenges the way we come together. It’s conceptual in nature, striving to create a container for multiple body minds—from performers to audience members—to exist in space. Working from a disability aesthetic, Kayla invites performers to generate their own movement vocabulary rather than teaching them to move the way she would, opening up questions about hierarchy and to whom the the work belongs.

Walter Holden, Lighting Designer, Patterns
Walter Holden started working for AXIS Dance Company in 2000. After a few years working on other projects, he was thrilled to return in 2018. Walter graduated from CalArts with a MFA in Theatre (emphasis in lighting design) in 1994. His love of theater was born at Southeastern Oklahoma State University while earning his BA in theater. His passion for dance was discovered at CalArts. He has worked in all areas of lighting design including touring with Earth, Wind & Fire, Pantera, Kenny G, John Tesh and others, as well as designing theater at Hope Summer Repertory Theatre, and countless corporate events. These days he focuses on lighting dance and theater locally and has been fortunate enough to work with choreographers Christy Funsch, Randee Paufve, Nina Haft, Catherine Davalos, Dana Lawton, and Kate Mitchell. Walter also toured as Production Manager and Lighting Director for Capacitor and AXIS Dance Company. Walter runs his own company, Lumenography, and teaches Lighting for Dance at St. Mary’s College. Walter is blessed with the support of his wife, Alisa Rasera, and their amazing daughters, Iris and Viola.

Christopher "Unpezverde" Núñez, Choreographer, Electric Fish
As a visually impaired, Costa Rican-American choreographer of Miskito and Garifuna heritage, Christopher "Unpezverde" Núñez (he/him) creates evocative work on themes of disability, immigration, and indigeneity. His career includes a Bessie Award nomination and a spot on Art in America’s "New Talent" list. His work has been recognized and supported by numerous fellowships, grants and residencies, and presented by major institutions such as The Kitchen, Jacob's Pillow, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, Princeton University, and The Joyce Theater.

Josue Villeda, Costume Designer, Exquisite Corps
Josue Villeda is a self-taught choreographer and costume designer born and raised in Guatemala and currently based in San Francisco, California. With a strong passion for design and construction, his work bridges movement and visual storytelling, creating costumes that support and deepen the emotional and physical language of performance. His recent costume design collaborations include work with Savannah Dunn for the dance film Silence (2025) and with Tracey Chan for Hypnagogs in the ODC Pilot Program (2025). Alongside these collaborations, he continues developing independent projects that explore the relationship between choreography, material, and embodiment, expanding his creative practice at the intersection of dance and design.

Michael Wall, Composer, Welcome; Right Here, Right Now, Exquisite Corps
Sound for Movement began as a platform nearly twenty years ago when founder Michael Wall noticed dance teachers spending their evenings searching through piles of CDs to find the right track for their classes, something with the right meter, tempo, feel, and without awkward lyrics. The vision was clear: create a website offering a wide range of music in various meters, tempos, and styles, all made specifically for dance teachers and creators. When mp3s became popular and could be linked to PayPal, Sound for Movement evolved through many versions to become the platform it is today.

A(laj)a Badalich, Company Dancer, AXIS Dance Company
Native to Eugene, Oregon, A(laj)a Badalich (they/she) is a black/queer neurodivergent dance artist, choreographer, and co-founder of Fermata Ballet Collective. She trained at the Alonzo King Lines Ballet Training Program, across the United States and internationally. Laj has served as a guest choreographer and faculty member for Shawl Anderson Dance Center, LINES training program, and various competitive dance studios, demonstrating their commitment to nurturing and paving the way for the next generation of dancers. Laj has worked closely with choreographers Alex Ketley, Alice Klock, Maurya Kerr, and Christian Burns. Since joining AXIS Dance Company in 2022, they have performed at Jacob's Pillow and in Latin America. Laj believes movement is a universal language and a form of ancestral storytelling, aiming to share and celebrate what it means to be the “other”.

Anna Gichan, Company Dancer, AXIS Dance Company
Anna Gichan (she/her) is a Deaf contemporary dancer from NJ with a background in gymnastics, yoga and circus. She received her BFA in Dance from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts.

Julie Hasushi, Company Dancer, AXIS Dance Company
Julie Hasushi (she/her) is a dancer, actress, presenter, and publicist from São Paulo, Brazil. As an artist, Julie has worked in several areas such as theater, music concerts, TV shows, corporate events, and advertising. In addition, she worked for the department of Culture in São Paulo curating a 24-hour festival featuring live concerts, films, plays and other cultural performances across one hundred venues. She was also active in the brazilian disability rights movement and performed accessibility evaluations of the Paulista Avenue, a São Paulo landmark. She started dancing at the age of nine, performing in major events including the 2016 Paralympic Torch Relay (Rio de Janeiro) and the 2017 Sibu International Dance Festival (Malaysia). Julie happily joined Axis Dance Company in 2023.

JanpiStar, Company Dancer, AXIS Dance Company
JanpiStar (they/them/Janpi) was born and raised in Puerto Rico. JanpiStar graduated with a Degree in Drama from the University of Puerto Rico had the opportunity of working with important actresses and choreographers on the island. JanpiStar worked with the theater group "Jóvenes del 98" (2016 -2018) in Puerto Rico until they moved to Oakland California to join AXIS Dance Company. JanpiStar worked with choreographers Petra Bravo in instalaciones Coreograficas, las casitas de Santurce at The Fine Arts Center of Puerto Rico, Arthur Pita in Alice in Californiland, Jennifer Archibald in Petrichord, and Asun Noales in Desiderata at the Jacob's Pillow in 2023. JanpiStar has also been commissioned to choreograph in the Bay area.

Isaiah Newby, Company Dancer, AXIS Dance Company
Isaiah Newby is a bi-coastal, formerly New York City-based, performing artist whose work spans ballet, contemporary dance, opera, acting, and modeling companies. They’ve performed with Stephen Petronio, The Met Opera, Lucinda Childs, and recording artists SERPENTWITHFEET and Allison Clancy. Trained at NYU Tisch and UNCSA, Isaiah has danced works by Susan Jaffe, Stephen Petronio, Aszure Barton, Ronald K. Brown, Dwight Rhoden and more. They’ve choreographed for DanceLab NYC and 14 Street Y Theater’s 2024 Dance Residency, along with other small companies. Isaiah believes dance is a medium for change—bringing beauty, meaning, and hope. Offstage, they enjoy cooking, yoga, reading, and exploring new restaurants with friends.

Hannah Westbrook, Company Dancer, AXIS Dance Company
Hannah Westbrook (she/her) is a queer, white, dance artist and educator, raised on the land of the Cahuilla people (Hemet, California). Her interests lie in the ever shifting web of dance, theater, improvisational practice, and site-specific dance. Hannah is a graduate of UC Berkeley, earning the Departmental Citation for excellence in dance. As a choreographer, her work for stage and film has been supported by FACT/SF, Art Farm, SAFEhouse Arts, and showcased in film festivals across the US and abroad. Dancing with AXIS Dance Company has been a lifelong dream since she was first exposed to the company while studying dance as a teen at Mt. San Jacinto College, and she is honored and thrilled to take on this role as company dancer. Hannah has previously had the pleasure of working with many incredible artists including Lizz Roman + Dancers, Ciarra D’Onofrio + Dancers, Epiphany Dance Theater, Tim Rubel Human Shakes, animi motus, Tara Pilbrow Dance, and an ensemble role in Anna Halprin’s Parades and Changes.