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Katy Barnhill

Katy Barnhill created World Dance Fusion as a result of her upbringing in the rich multi-cultural dance community of the San Francisco Bay Area in 1996. After premiering several works with The Movement Company in Los Angeles, Katy moved on to create "Wave" at Kaufman Hall at UCLA in 2000. Since then she has presented work at The Canvas in San Francisco, Peak Center for Performing Arts in New Jersey, Asociación Cultural Antigua de Sevilla, The National Gallery of Modern Art in Bombay India, and the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York. Katy has taught World Dance Fusion master classes in San Francisco; Los Angeles; New York; Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Sevilla, Spain; Calcutta; and Bombay, India. World Dance Fusion has received funds from Peak Center for the Performing Arts, NJ, and The Tata Tea Corporation of India.

Katy Barnhill started dancing ballet at age three, then started samba at age five. Over the last two decades of Katy's dance career she has studied over 20 forms of cultural dance in addition to ballet, modern, tap, jazz, and hip-hop. At 7 she was awarded a scholarship to the San Francisco Ballet School and continued to study latin dance in her community. She attended high schools of the arts in San Francisco and Los Angeles and expanded her study of cultural dance with Chitresh Das (Kathak of India), Michelle Martin (Afro-Haitian), Vladimir Riasantsev (Russian Character), El Farruquito (Flamenco), and Juana Amaya (Flamenco). Katy received a Dance scholarship to UCLA's World Arts and Cultures program. Katy left UCLA for a year to attended S.F. State's Ethnodansology department to be exposed to different forms of cultural dance. She has danced with Deli Ritmo Flamenco Company, Mora Reyna, Ballet Afsaneh, Nai-Ni Chen, Axe Brazilian Dance Company, Mara Reggae, Neva Russian Dance Ensemble, the Movement Company, and Mirwa Sacre, the first Haitian Vodou tour in the US. Katy now integrates her training into her World Dance Fusion choreography. Katy now travels the globe enriching her practice of cultural dance and teaching World Dance Fusion choreography that integrates her years of study.

Class Description

Open WORLD DANCE FUSION: The class begins with a full body warm up that includes techniques from many different genres of classical and folk dance. Emphasis is based on isolation giving dancers a better awareness of their bodies and different ways of moving body parts. The energetic warm –up may also include techniques from Pilates and Gyrotonic™ based movement. Gyrotonic™ is a system of circular movement that Katy rehabbed with after her knee surgery five years ago. With this knowledge the class approach is always with the safety of the dancer’s body in mind. The next element of the class is to warm up the brain. We use our voice, hands and feet to combine rhythms from different cultural dance forms. The complex rhythmic structure of music from India may be difficult to entirely grasp in the first class, but when one element is removed i.e. the basic footwork pattern (Tatkar) of Kathak (northern Indian dance) is a simple step of RLRL LRLR it is easy enough for the dancer to digest. Then on top of this the dancers clap a Son Clave (Cuban) pattern. Once the hands and feet are in place they add the element of voice by reciting the previously learned bols (abstract syllables that correspond with the tabla drum traditionally played for Indian dance) that go with Tatkar. The music’s most frequently used are from Cuba, India, and Spain (Flamenco). This exercise gives the dancers the ability to interpret music in several different ways.

Check out Katy's website at www.WorldDanceFusion.com