Instructors
In 1996 Emily Webb began her love affair with partner dance. Through the years Emily has studied Tango, Swing, Salsa, Blues, and Fusion dance with some of the top instructors in the world. Today Tango and Fusion remain Emily's greatest dance loves.
Thousands of students across the US and Canada have benefited from Emily's dynamic and interactive teaching style. Through her years of teaching experience Emily has learned to make even the most complex movements simple and build them from the ground up. This means you will not only look good while you dance, but feel great to your partners too!
Emily Webb - she/her/hers
Teaching internationally for over a decade, Andrew still wears the same pair of dance shoes he bought after falling in love with social dance at the end of high school. He draws upon his experience in many dances to inspire and challenge his students in classes around the world. He brings a balanced focus to technique, body mechanics, spirit, and creativity and strives to create a positive, safe learning environment. In his spare time, Andrew is a software engineer for Transparent Classroom (a record-keeping system for Montessori teachers) and nerds out about environmental sustainability. He loves tea, dark chocolate, and bicycles. Visit https://buff.ly/2MSVIKT for more info.
andrew smith - he/him/his
Together Heriberto (Heri for short) and Nika have a combined dance experience of over 27 years in both lead and follow roles. They share a love for dance and teaching that allows them to interact with students in a unique way. Their understanding of the differences between the styles makes them very adept at solving problems students might encounter across different platforms of dance. They dance over 30 different styles proficiently (both social and competitive) and because of they diverse dance background they are sought after everywhere they go.
Heri and Nika have been a part of Viva Dance Studio in Cleveland Ohio for the past three years. They are constantly seeking to share their knowledge of dance with students for all walks of dance and life.
They enjoy traveling and quite possibly run on nothing but coffee most of the time, because they don't want to miss a moment of dancing.
Heriberto (HERI) Taino Perez - HE/HIM/HIS
Nika Obrosova - SHE/HER/HERS
Communication, Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Policy consultant currently based in Seattle. She has worked in the areas of consent, communication, empathy, and social justice all over the world, from grassroots LGBTQ+ initiatives for rural youth to policy writing and training for major corporations. She is an avid, life-long dancer and can be found running the safety team on the board of Savoy Swing Club.
Ariana Coveney - They/Them/theirs/she/her/hers/he/him/his
![[Philosophy] Dance is a conversation between the music, the space, my partner, and me. It’s important to me that I am listening just as much as I am initiating any movements from within. As a dancer I love exploring quality movements and ideas withi…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ca526079b8fe86e2687aadb/1566491626818-RZM6X7DJHY04P3K5RVUQ/Emiliano+Headshot+3_4+face.jpg)
[Philosophy]
Dance is a conversation between the music, the space, my partner, and me. It’s important to me that I am listening just as much as I am initiating any movements from within. As a dancer I love exploring quality movements and ideas within the music and partnership.
As a teacher, I encourage my students to have high quality movements through the understanding of their body and how it relates to their partner. I strive for students to find the joy in the music by learning different ways to listen and play.
[Background]
I started to dance in 2000 with East Coast swing then moved to Lindy Hop shortly after that. A few years later I stumbled on Blues while at PittStop Lindy Hop, which allowed me to discover a whole new world of movements and music. Around the same time Fusion was taking off in Philadelphia at an event called JetLag which played world music. My imagination was set on fire with exposure to so many different genres of music and trying to figure out how to dance to all of them. I felt encouraged to fuse together familiar dance movements with my partner’s ideas and the specific cultural sound of the music. It was a way to create something new and different for every single song.
I went to the first Fusion Exchange in 2007 which both validated the dance journey I had taken so far and also introduced me to new ideas on how to approach Fusion. I continue to add to my dance repertoire and explore the ways that different cultures and communities move to their music then discover ways to fuse those movements and ideas within my dance.
[Teaching Highlights]
• Fusion Exchange
• Seattle Fusion Festival
• DJ Experiment
• European Blues Invasion
• Mission Fusion Extravaganza
• Blues Recess
• Motley Hue
• Many others!
Emiliano Estevez - He/Him/His
With over 20 years of expertise in solo and partner dancing, Shantala has traveled all over the world sharing versatile concepts, bridging communities of West Coast Swing, Blues/Fusion, Consent Culture, Self-Love, Empowerment & Dance Wellness. Shantala encourages refined techniques, tools and practices of embodied language, connection and communication for self-expression & partnership.
She is a master of her crafts who brings the sauce, but within a liberatory lens-giving space for one’s full humanness. In her dance, she has an infectious way of elevating her compadres into joy, ease and groundedness.
Shantala is here to inspire, empower, connect and transform with the magic and medicine that is dance!!
shantala davis - she/her/hers
Vanessa Yxcea Corpuz (ick-see-yuh core-puzz) has danced fusion for 10 years, mostly in California and Texas. She's also organized Dallas, Texas' first fusion weekends: Dallas Fusion Reaction (DFRX) and Texas Fusion Experience (TexFX), both in their second year in 2019.
Vanessa started partner dancing in 2009 in the San Francisco Bay Area vintage ballroom scene, but shortly fell in love with fusion! She moved to Dallas in 2013, started hosting a fusion social in 2017, and teaching a weekly fusion class in 2018. As a newer face on the national fusion circuit, she’s taught or DJed in about a dozen cities and half a dozen states in the past two years. High-Fidelity will be her first time coming to Seattle as an instructor!
Although her true-dance-love is fusion, she also enjoys dancing (in no particular order) west coast swing, urban kiz, tarraxa, zouk, blues, east coast swing, lindy, argentine tango, progressive country, contact improv, salsa, bachata, ecstatic dance, waltz and other vintage ballroom dances.
Vanessa describes her lead style as "elemental femme," her follow style as "tiger ninja serendipity," and her switch style as "benevolent anarchist." Some of her distinctive attributes as a social dancer are surprising yet smooth switches & hijacks, creative points of contact (especially utilizing the legs and feet), and total body musicality. She loves to lead, follow, and switch, please ask her to dance anytime!
Vanessa Yxcea Corpuz - She/Her/Hers
Mark has been dancing for much of his life. His social dancing career started with lindy & blues in 2005 he began teaching shortly thereafter. He co-founded a still-running weekly venue, helped organize dozens of events, and runs a few of his own. In recent years he has dedicated his study to the emerging forms and conventions of “fusion” dance and is eager to explore and advance that movement via quality teaching throughout the world. He has taught at multiple events spanning four continents and in two languages. His constant goal is to make the impossible easy and the easy look impossible.
Mark Carpenter - He/Him/His
Lara-Ashley Monroe is an advocate for healthy living through physical, mental and emotional awareness and promotes strong relationships through respect and consent. After finishing her M.A. in England, she has spent several years working as a management consultant helping teams to recognize areas of lowered efficiency, improve processes and encourage personal and team growth. It is her enthusiasm for working in complex situations that has led her to teaching consent and exploring innovative ways to approach this topic. Lara-Ashley feels consent is the basis of every interaction we have; from conversations about food at the kitchen table to discussions of corporate targets in the boardroom, consent is the conversation we collectively need to have, with all of its intricacies and complexities, to become better neighbors, parents, bosses and partners.
Working with the dance community is a particular enjoyment for Lara-Ashley as she is active herself in the blues and fusion dance communities after competing for several years at the regional level in tap and jazz. The nuances of consent contained within dance have always been of considerable interest for Lara-Ashley and she relishes the opportunity to discuss these facets in classes and discussion groups. This is Lara-Ashley's third year with the Consent Academy where she has led a wide range of classes for diverse audiences, spoken at Seattle Pacific University and is one of the authors of a forth-coming book on consent, The Consent Primer.
Lara-Ashley Monroe - she/her/hers
The Consent Academy is an educational collective based out of Seattle, WA. Our mission is to teach consent in all of its complexity, aspects, and potential. With over 50 years of education experience collectively, our approach incorporates disciplines of psychology, sociology, public health, psychotherapy, and personal coaching to create a systemic view of how consent impacts everyone from the bedroom to the boardroom. We believe consent is part of everyday life and its practice builds stronger, safer, and more connected communities.