To inquire about classes at LINES Dance Center with ArVejon Jones, send him an email.
ArVejon Jones is from Compton, CA. He attended San Francisco State University where he majored in Dance and minored in Japanese. ArVejon has studied rigorously in many dance forms including Tap, Hip Hop, West African, Ballet, Jazz, Haitian Folklore, some AfroCuban Folklore, AfroBrazilian Folklore, and various Contemporary dance techniques (Horton, Limon, Release, and Graham). He has danced all over the US and Canada, and he studied in Brazil. In the Bay Area, he has been a student apprentice with ODC Dance SF and has worked professionally as a freelance artist with Copious Dance Theater, PUSH Dance, SOULSKIN Dance, and Sean Dorsey Dance, among others. He has been a featured Dancer in the San Francisco Dance Film Festival (2014) and recently was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Performance—Ensemble” for his work in 2017. In Boston, he performed throughout the Northeast with Prometheus Dance and Jean Appolon Expressions in addition to being contracted for 2 years as a Lead Teaching Artist for the Boston Ballet’s “Education and Outreach Initiative.” Currently, he is finishing a 20-city tour with Sean Dorsey Dance.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance Center
Anna Joy was born and raised in Rochester, NY, where she began her training at Draper Center for Dance Education. She traveled to Trujillo, Peru, to perform in the Festival Internacional De Ballet Trujillo and attended competitions throughout the U.S. She spent summers at American Ballet Theatre, Houston Ballet, The Royal Ballet School, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Complexions Contemporary Ballet.
In 2019, Anna competed in Dance Prix De New York where she was offered a full scholarship by Cynthia Harvey to the Upper School at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. She moved to New York, NY, to attend the school where she also participated in projects, including performing in New York Fashion Week. She graduated in 2023 and joined the Washington Ballet School as a Trainee from 2023–2024. Anna joined LINES Ballet in 2025.
Photography: Anna Joy
Ben Juodvalkis composes original music for a variety of industries. He has created over 50 scores for dance companies across the United States. In addition to composing for film, museum installations, and theater, Ben works from his studio in San Francisco as well as on location with his mobile custom built electronic instruments.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance for PD® at LINES
Maurya Kerr is a choreographer, educator, performer, and the artistic director of tinypistol, where her choreographic work has been honored by numerous awards, grants, and commissions. She was an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and completed her MFA through Hollins University in 2016, writing her thesis on people of color and their access to, or prohibition from, wonderment. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years and teaches extensively in their educational programs. She most recently performed in The Foundry’s ‘Deep South’ and BodyCartography Project’s ‘felt room’ at SFMOMA and the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Museum. In 2017 Maurya Kerr co-founded the tiny little get down, a quarterly dance party intended to defiantly and subversively fortify otherness through embodied joy and the power of the collective.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet | BFA Program, Discovery Project, LINES Day, Summer Program, Training Program
Photography | © Andrew Weeks
Alonzo King has been called a visionary choreographer who is altering the way we look at ballet. King calls his works “thought structures” created by the manipulation of energies that exist in matter through laws, which govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists. Named as a choreographer with “astonishing originality” by The New York Times, Alonzo King has guided LINES Ballet with his unique artistic vision since 1982.
King has works in the repertoires of the world’s leading ballet and modern companies and has collaborated with distinguished visual artists, musicians, and composers across the globe. His work has been recognized for its impact on the cultural fabric of the company’s home in San Francisco, as well as internationally by the dance world’s most prestigious institutions.
Named a Master of Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, King is the recipient of the NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship, the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award, the US Artist Award in Dance, the NY Bessie Award, the SF Arts Medallion Award, and the National Dance Project’s Residency and Touring Awards. In 2015, he received the Doris Duke Artist Award in recognition of his ongoing contributions to the advancement of contemporary dance. King was also named one of America’s “Irreplaceable Dance Treasures” by the Dance Heritage Coalition, joining historic icons in the field. In 2020, he was honored with a Dance Magazine Award, and his choreography appears in the 2023 short film Flower, produced by and starring Misty Copeland. King was also inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2022 and received the Minyon Harlin Award from UCSF in 2024 for his service to women and girls with HIV. Additionally, Alonzo King’s celebrated ballet Deep River is featured on NEXT at The Kennedy Center—a series on PBS that showcases artists who are at the forefront of their disciplines and serve as culture bearers of the 21st Century.
King has received honorary doctorates from The Juilliard School, Dominican University of California, and California Institute of the Arts in recognition of his significant contribution to the field of dance. Renowned for his skill as a teacher, King was also honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Corps de Ballet International Teacher Conference in 2012. An internationally acclaimed guest ballet master, his training philosophy undergirds the educational programming at the Alonzo King LINES Dance Center of San Francisco, which includes the pre-professional Training Program, Summer Program, and the BFA Program at Dominican University of California. Furthermore, King is a former San Francisco commissioner and a writer and lecturer on humanity and art.
Native San Franciscan, Nicholas Korkos has performed with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Les Ballet Jazz de Montreal, Aszure Barton & Artists, Hubbard Street 2, Loni Landon Dance Project, Zhukov Dance Theatre, Robert Moses’ KIN, project agora, tinypistol, Opera Omaha, San Francisco Opera and three times with the San Francisco Symphony, including a restaged version of On the Town with the original Broadway revival cast. In addition to performing, Korkos has choreographed on San Francisco Danceworks, LINES Ballet BFA at Dominican, LINES Ballet Summer Program, at SAFEhouse Arts, and in the RAW Concept Series. As a photographer Korkos has photographed for Opera Philadelphia, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Opera Parallèle, and various dance companies, and his work has been seen in numerous publications including The New York Times. Finally, Korkos is the founder of Red Brick Company, a contemporary dance theatre company, a band of missing puzzle pieces coming together to tell the stories of the people, of the simple yet profound, and of those that celebrate the inclusive and collaborative necessity.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet | BFA at Dominican, Summer Program
Photography | © Maximillian Tortoriello
Marlayna Locklear hails from Milwaukee, WI. She began her training at the age of 12 at City Ballet Theatre and went on to graduate from Milwaukee High School of the Arts and University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA with a BFA in Ballet and Jazz. Marlayna was one of the founding members of The Milwaukee Dance Connection and has gone on to dance with Eleone Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theatre II, Owen Cox Dance group, NuWorld Contemporary Danse Theatre, Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre, and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company where she served as the company Jazz and Contemporary instructor as well as Resident Choreographer for DCDC II.
Marlayna is a freelance artist and teaches and choreographs at Universities around the nation.
Originally from New York, NY, Marusya Madubuko began her pre-professional training at age 15 with Premiere Division Ballet under the tutelage of Nadege Hottier. In 2019, Madubuko competed at the Royal Grand Prix in Italy, winning second place for her contemporary and classical solo. She has trained with the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, the Royal Ballet School, and at San Francisco Ballet School where she had the opportunity to dance repertoire including Helgi Tomasson’s Nutcracker and Cinderella, as well as George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 2021, she participated in BalletUnleashed’s first creative project “Switchback”, working with choreographer Cathy Marston to create a solo. Madubuko joined LINES Ballet in 2021.
Photography: Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dancer: Marusya Madubuko | © RJ Muna
To register for classes at LINES Dance Center with Kathy Mata, visit kathymataballet.org.
Kathy Mata trained with Ms. Tatiana Svetlanova of the School of Russian Ballet, Mr. Alan Howard of the Academy of Ballet, The Royal Academy of Dancing, and others. She was a member of the California Imperial Ballet, Pacific Ballet, and the San Francisco Ballet. Ms. Mata has taught adult dancers since 1985, and she has taught at LINES Dance Center in San Francisco since 1995, specializing in adult ballet. Kathy Mata Ballet was created in 1988 and has been showcasing original works synthesizing contemporary and classical dance forms since. Her company often incorporates multi-cultural dances and music, including gospel, Afro-Cuban, Japanese, Brazilian, Chinese, and modern dance, with classical ballet.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet | Dance Center
Catalina O’Connor is a dancer and teaching artist based in the Bay Area. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2019 where she studied Dance, Hispanic Literature, and Art History. Catalina was an assistant teaching artist for Jia Wu’s AAIACE (American Alliance of International Arts, Culture, and Education) inaugural Summer camp in Suzhou, China in Summer 2019. She is currently an instructor at Ace Dance Academy and subbing classes for the Shawl Anderson Youth Program. She is a member of Davalos Dance Company and has performed their work in Panicale, Italy and around the Bay Area. Catalina has also collaborated with Kaveri Seth, Hailey Yaffee and Andrew Merrell & Randee Paufve. She is excited to join the HeART with LINES program as an assistant teaching artist and hopes to continue learning from her colleagues and students.