People Archive

Maël Amatoul is native to the French Riviera. He embarked on a journey at the PNSD Rosella Hightower in Cannes, where he trained in ballet and contemporary. Amatoul has worked on pieces by choreographers including Jean Christophe Maillot, Christophe Garcia, Hervé Koubi, and Francesco Curci. In 2022, he was awarded a Scholarship of Excellence in Art and Culture from the Côte d’Azur University. After seven years in Cannes, Amatoul decided to open his dance experience to new techniques and joined The Ailey School. There, he had the opportunity to learn and perform works by Alvin Ailey and renowned choreographers such as Ray Mercer, Branndi Lewis, Renee Robinson, and Clifton Brown. After attending the LINES’ Summer Intensive in June 2023, Amatoul joined Alonzo King LINES Ballet as a company dancer.

Photography: Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dancer: Maël Amatoul | © RJ Muna

Caroline Rocher Barnes trained at the Conservatoire de Montpellier in France with Madame Claparède and later graduated from the Rudra Béjart Art School in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 1998, she moved to America to study at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York. In 1999, Mrs. Rocher Barnes joined The Dance Theatre of Harlem under the mentorship of Arthur Mitchell, was promoted to the rank of soloist in 2000 and then Principal Dancer the following year. Her professional career extends internationally as she danced with the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich, Germany, the Lyon Opera Ballet in France, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet in San Francisco.

In 2001 Mrs. Rocher Barnes was named “25 to watch” in Dance Magazine. She also collaborated with international ballet star Vladimir Malakhov at the Career Transition For Dancers Gala in New York and was invited to perform at “Le Gala des Etoiles du 21ème siècle” in Paris in 2004.

Mrs. Rocher Barnes has performed works by acclaimed choreographers such as Marius Petipa, John Cranko, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Hans Van Manen, John Neumeier, Maurice Béjart, Maguy Marin, Jacopo Godani, Robert Dekkers, Dwight Rhoden, William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Arthur Mitchell, Michael Smuin, Glen Tetley and Alonzo King.

Alongside her dance career, Mrs. Rocher Barnes has been a great advocate for passing on her craft to the next generation of dancers. For the past 15 years, she has been teaching worldwide and in 2015, she traveled to Cape Town as part of The LEAP-SOUTH AFRICA Project. There, she taught young dancers at the CAPA Art School, and in the public schools located in the townships of Khayelitsha, and Guguletu. She currently teaches at The School of The Washington Ballet and at The Citydance Conservatory. She is also Adjunct faculty at George Mason University and at Prince George’s Community College, and she’s part of the LINES Ballet Summer Program faculty.

Mrs. Rocher Barnes graduated Summa Cum Laude from Saint Mary’s College of California and holds a BA in Performing Arts.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Discovery Project, Summer Program

Photography | © RJ Muna

Jon Bond began his dance training at Center Stage Dance Academy in Long Beach, CA at the age of 10. He then studied at the Orange County H.S. of the Arts in Santa Ana, CA under the direction of Jim Kolb & Cindy Dolan Peca. After moving to New York City in 2005, Jon studied and performed with the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s DTB Ensemble. As a member of the ensemble he’s had the prestigious honor of performing with LeAnn Rimes at the White House, New York’s City Hall, The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. as part of, “Protégés of Ballet” and with Aretha Franklin at the historical Apollo Theater. Jon was a member of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet from 2007-2015. There he worked with and toured the works of Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, Johan Inger, Jacapo Godani, Stijn Celis, Jo Strømgren, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Benoit Swan-Pouffer, Richard Seigal, Jiří Kylián, Alexander Ekman, Luca Veggetti, Didy Veldman, Regina Van Berkel, Emanuel Gat, Andonis Foniadakis and Hofesh Shechter.

Jon was a featured “Top Ten Performances of 2013″ in the Dec’13/Jan’14 issue of Pointe Magazine as well as on the cover of Pointe Magazine‘s Oct/Nov 2010 issue. His work as a performer also includes 2011’s season 8 of SYTYCD, the WNBA Sparks’ Sparkids, Fiona Apple’s “Paperbag” video, Featured Soloist at Los Angeles’ Kodak Theater and Guest Artist for the Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo. He can also be seen dancing alongside Emily Blunt in the Major Motion Picture, ‘The Adjustment Bureau’. In 2004 Jon spent eight weeks as a Winner Circle Finalist on Star Search on CBS. That same year, he served as an ambassador of dance representing the United States at the annual Australian Dance Championship, where he won International First Place Soloist in the Battle of the Stars. As a choreographer, he was invited to perform his work at the Seventh Annual Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival in Palm Desert, CA where he won the Jean Ann Hirchl First Place Solo Award. Jon was a 2013 Capezio Ace Awards finalist. His work can also be seen across the U.S. on many schools, competitive studios and youth companies such as the Pennsylvania Regional Ballet, Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA/OCHSA), Colabo Youth Dance Collective, Cedar Lake’s 360 summer intensive, Cedar Lake’s CEDAR LAB and recently at NDT’s “SWITCH 2016” . Jon currently dances with The Nederlands Dans Theater.

Learn more at www.jonbond.me

Alonzo King LINES Ballet | LifeLINES Online Winter Intensive faculty

To inquire about classes at LINES Dance Center with Lynn Brilhante, send her an email.

Lynn Brilhante is described as having a dynamic, fluid, and gutsy style of dance and choreography. She brings a fresh and innovative approach to the world of Contemporary Jazz and shows a unique ability to merge and update various elements, while in the process, creating her own trademark style. These talents have earned her a nomination for the L. A. Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Choreography, finalist honors in the Choreography Festival Under the Stars, the Dance Masters of America Choreography Award, and the Robbi Award for Choreography.

Lynn has been guest Artist/Choreographer at Die Werkstatt in Düsseldorf, Germany, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (S.O.T.A.), and a guest instructor at San Francisco Ballet School. Her success in transferring her love of dance through teaching is evidenced by a flock of loyal students both in the San Francisco Bay Area and in numerous workshops and master classes throughout the world. Lynn boasts a long and impressive resume of choreographic and performance achievements, spanning the diverse media of stage, film, television, and video. She is currently at teachers at LINES Dance Center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance Center

Photography: Lynn Brilhante | © Jamie Lyons

Marika Brussel has been teaching dance to people of all ages since 2002. She teaches movement to seniors and people with disabilities all over the San Francisco Bay area, including classes at The Institute on Aging, On Lok, Richmond Senior Center, and The Contemporary Jewish Museum. She trained to teach dance for people with Parkinson’s disease through Mark Morris Dance and has been teaching Dance for PD® since 2010.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance for PD® at LINES

Christian Burns has been choreographing, teaching and performing in the Bay Area for 21 years. His pursuit for finding meaning and purpose through dance has yielded a dynamic range of interdisciplinary dance works for stage, video and visual art.

From teaching statement: “By approaching a work from two opposite ends of the spectrum—ballet and improvisation—I allow the mirroring to reveal truths about each that might not be at first apparent. The tension of contrast between the traditional and contemporary approaches has deepened my understanding and appreciation of each of its core principles, and led to a personal philosophy that highly developed training in both will yield more authentic results of pure expression that we strive for in Dance. For me, embracing this duality has been informative not only in dance but a helpful way to approach learning in all areas of life, and something I would like to imbue through my various teachings.”

In the San Francisco Bay Area his work has been presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ODC Theater, Counter Pulse, The Garage, Headlands Center for the Arts, Z Space Theater, Dancers Group Studio Theater, Shotwell Studio Theater, Howard Street Studio Theater. Beyond, his work has also been presented at The Walker Art Center, Canal Danse in Paris, Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan, Nightingale Theater in Brighton UK, WINLAB Independent Festival in London, Escapade Festival at MovingArtsBase in London, The Dada House in Zurich Switzerland, OT301 in Amsterdam NL, The Southern Theater in MN, as well as performances in numerous independent studio locations in Brussels, Oslo, Copenhagen, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Southern France, New York and Western Massachusetts. His dance-video work has been shown at Pacific Film Archive Berkeley Art Museum, Impakt Festival (NL), Dutch National Television (NL), Moving Pictures Festival for Dance on Film and Video in Canada, Roberta Beck Cinema (NY), Santa Fe Art Institute and Stuttgart FilmWinter Festival in Germany.

His commissions include Hope Mohr Dance, The Cambrians, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, James Sewell Ballet, Stanford University, USF, Mt. Holyoke College, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, The Laban Center London, Interlochen Center for the Arts, LINES Ballet BFA at Dominican University and LINES Ballet Training Program. He created over 70 dance pieces for the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance during its fourteen year history between 2004-2018.

Christian has been awarded a 2010 Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME) grant – given by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, a 2008 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship for Choreography, the 2004 National Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography, the 2001 Paula Citron Award for Choreography for Camera (from the Moving Pictures Festival in Toronto), 1997 McKnight Artist Fellowship and was an artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center (NY). Christian is a contributing author for When Men Dance, Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders, Edited by Jennifer Fisher and Anthony Shay, Oxford University Press 2009 and has self published a book chronicling his choreographic process titled Motion and Process: knowing not knowing, ideas on dance 2006-08.

Christian has been a guest artist with The Forsythe Company and was a company member of Alonzo Kings LINES Ballet and James Sewell Ballet. He has been researching and practicing improvisational methods since 1994 and has performed internationally with Improvisers; Kirstie Simson, Katie Duck, Michael Schumacher, Ave Karczag, and Chris Aiken among many others. Christian completed three years of training at The School of American Ballet, working with renowned ballet teacher Stanley Williams.

In 2008 Christian co-founded the interdisciplinary art center Parsons Hall Project Space Holyoke, MA. In 1998 he co-founded The Foundry, an interdisciplinary dance company based in San Francisco. The Foundry received critical and popular acclaim as well as the support of numerous private Foundations, Contemporary Art Centers and Residency programs. In 2002/03 The Foundry were exhibited in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts biannual Bay Area Now3, named by Dance Magazine one of the ‘25 to Watch‘ and the San Francisco Chronicle said, “The Foundry is at the vanguard of American dance.“

Alonzo King LINES Ballet | BFA at Dominican, Summer Program, Training Program

Erin Carper has dedicated her life to the study of the body in motion. In the Bay Area, she had the pleasure of dancing in the works of Tomi Paasonen (Kunst-Stoff), Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Kara Davis (project agora), and Antoine Hunter (Urban Jazz).

In 2014, Erin Carper studied with Dance for PD® program founder David Leventhal at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York. She also is mentored in Dance for PD® by Susan Weber at Berkeley Ballet Theater. Erin holds a Bachelor’s Degree with Honors in Liberal Arts from the Saint Mary’s College of California LEAP Program. Her teaching is informed by her work as an instructor of GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS®, as a student of Body Mind Centering® with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and her offerings as a somatic ecotherapy and wilderness rites of passage guide.

Erin believes that dance is everyone’s birthright. She brings her extensive background in dance, improvisation, theater, and somatics, as well as her deep love of music and nature, to each class.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance for PD® at LINES

Sandra Chinn is a ballet teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sandra has faculty and company positions with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, ODC/Dance, Shawl Anderson Dance Center, and Berkeley Ballet Theater, where she has been artistic advisor since 2018. She has been a visiting guest artist for Hollins University MFA Dance program, and is adjunct teacher at New York University Tisch Department of Dance Summer Festival since 2016. She has guest taught for Company Wayne McGregor, Jessica Lang Dance, the dancers of Paul Taylor Dance Company, Abraham.In.Motion, Lucinda Childs Dance, Smuin Ballet, Aszure Barton and Artists, Amy Seiwart’s Imagery, Post:Ballet, SF DanceWorks, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and BODYTRAFFIC. She is beloved for her somatically informed pedagogy that draws on Body-Mind Centering, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Franklin Method, Alexander Technique, Iyengar Yoga, GYROTONIC®, and GYROKINESIS®. She received an Isadora Duncan Special Achievement Award for “her commitment to and excellence in the training, teaching, inspiring, and motivating dancers throughout the dance community” for the 2018-19 season.

During her performing career in New York City, she was a company member of Dennis Wayne’s Dancers, Finis Jhung’s Chamber Ballet USA and Bob Bowyer’s American Ballet Comedy. She was featured in the off-Broadway dance show “Funny Feet,” for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination as “Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical.” She is a graduate of the National Academy of Arts (Champaign, Ill.), and she continued her studies at the Joffrey Ballet School (NY), and intensively with Maggie Black. She is grateful for a performing and teaching career in the concert dance field and she looks forward to continuing her work and studies for many years to come.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance Center, Summer Program, Training Program

Adji Cissoko was born and grew up in Munich, Germany where she trained at the Ballet Academy Munich and graduated with a diploma in dance. Cissoko attended the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in New York City on full scholarship, before joining the National Ballet of Canada in 2010. In 2012 she was awarded the Patron Award of Merit by the Patrons’ Council Committee of The National Ballet of Canada. Cissoko joined LINES Ballet in 2014. Since then she’s originated many central roles and guested for galas worldwide. Cissoko has given multiple masterclasses and taught classes around the world as part of the company’s outreach program. In 2020, she became certified in health/life coaching and ABT’s National Training Curriculum. Cissoko choreographed her first piece “AZIZ “ for Ballet X in 2021. She also is a 2022 recipient of the Toulmin fellowship.

Learn more about Adji on our blog, LINESConnected:
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Babatunji was born in Portland, Oregon but raised on the Big Island of Hawaii. He received his formal dance training from Center Stage Dance Studio and the University of Hawaii in Hilo before moving to San Francisco to train at the LINES Ballet Training Program on full scholarship. Babatunji has performed works by diverse choreographers such as Sidra Bell, Amanda Miller, Gregory Dawson, and Maurya Kerr. He has performed overseas in Japan and China and danced with Philein/ZiRu productions, Maurya Kerr’s tinypistol, and Dawson|Wallace Dance Project. Babatunji joined LINES Ballet in 2013 and danced with the company for six years. Currently, he is a dancer with Post:Ballet and SFDanceworks in San Francisco. He rejoined LINES Ballet in 2021.

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