Guest Artists & Faculty

Artur Gaspar was born in Yerevan, Armenia.

Artur unintentionally found himself on a dancer’s path and how his journey started is quite endearing. It all began at the age of 6, when he accompanied his sister to an audition for a dance academy. In a strange twist of fate he was accepted. He had been spotted for his rough talent and suitable physique for ballet.

From early on, he realised that every step in the ballet world to greatness is a challenge. That ballet is not just about grace and form and fame, but also pain, sweat and tears. Regardless, his inexhaustible desire for perfection, love for his work and inner sense of beauty helped to overcome those difficulties. Ultimately being rewarded with recognition from the audience that induces further growth in his technique and became a catalyst for the further development as an artist.

Artur studied at the Yerevan Choreographic Special School, Yerevan, Armenia and the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, St Petersburg, Russia.

From 2003 to 2008 Artur danced at the State Moscow Classical Ballet N. Kasatkina and V. Vasilyov

From 2008 to 2010 he was the soloist at the Taras Shevchenko National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre of Ukraine,

In 2010 he was awarded the Order of St. Mesrop Mashtots, awarded by The President of Armenia, for significant achievements in Armenian culture and cultural cooperation with foreign countries.

Gaspar then went on to become one of the creators, key leaders and face of synth pop boy-band Kazaky. Kazaky, or as The New York Times coined them ‘Boys in Heels’, grew to be a phenomenal worldwide success due to the lithe movements that defy gravity in high heels and for confronting gender norms. Their fashionable signature stiletto performances and unique aesthetic quickly went viral on YouTube, being highlighted by numerous magazines around the world.

Artur lives in the Czech Republic, and he is a choreographer, visual artist, and sound producer & engineer.

Actress, dancer, cultural producer, singer-songwriter (under the name Altrove), choreographer, acting and movement for actors coach and theatre-dance teacher. Eclectic figure, who has filled his lack of roots within the theater place, understood as a multidisciplinary container, where identity can be created.

Italian-South-Sudanese, born in Genova and resident in Rome. She graduated with honors in Theater Studies at the University of Bologna. Masters in Intercultural Education at the University of Roma Tre with the experimental thesis “Empatheatre: traveling in the shoes of the Other. The discovery of the Self and the Other through the performing arts”. She is certified to teach Mindfulness Yoga© at the A. T. Beck Institute of Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy. Csen certified as a holistic operator. A.S.C diploma recognized by Coni as a teacher of contemporary dance. Csen National Diploma in teaching ethnic, popular and choreographic dance with specialization in African dances.

She participated in numerous theater and film productions as well as popular and contemporary dance companies as actress, dancer and choreographer.

She founded Danzemeticce/Worldance, a cultural association created for the use and transmission of the performing arts as cultural, intercultural vehicles of personal and collective transformation and of physical and spiritual union and created Empatheatre© a series of workshops to practice empathy as an ability to learn through the medium of performing arts. Learn more about Ashai’s work here: www.erafrica.eu

Caroline Boersma was born in Amsterdam and studied cello at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and has lived and worked in Italy since 1981. She has played in various chamber ensembles and orchestras and has an extensive discography, in particular with Tripla Concordia, an ensemble dedicated to  baroque music, that  she co-founded in 1989. She has toured with these ensembles in both Europe and Japan. As a musician and performer she has collaborated with Giovanni Pampiglioni, Pietro Bartolini, Lilo Bauer and recently Kevin Crawford. She has acted as musical  director, arranger and performer for Bartholomew Fair (Muhlenberg College) and Montee (performances in the US, France and Italy) directed by Kevin Crawford. She performed in Charlotte in Berkeley, California and, currently is collaborating as cellist on Zauber a new vision of Mozart’s Magic Flute with performances in Lasalle and at the Roy Hart Centre, France. Caroline teaches regularly for Furman University Study Abroad program (AdA, Arezzo), BECI (California)  and at Teatro Nunc in Castiglion Fiorentino (Italy). Her personal research has led her to investigate the intimate connection between the Cello as a stringed instrument and the human voice.

Photo: Saša Huzjak / SHtudio.eu

Echo Sunyata Sibley is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at West Texas A & M University and a certified teacher of the Miller Voice Method mVm. As an Actor, Singer, New Works Artist, Director and Educator she has presented or performed at various festivals and venues including the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival, Crisis Art Festival, Lilith Culturale Festival, Festival Internazionale di Valle Christi, SETC, Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Jazz & Wine Festival in Cavi Borgo, Italy. She is a founding member of the international, feminist, clown-noir troupe, Women From Mars, whose show Silent Reflections toured Italy and the US. She taught Acting Techniques for Musical Theatre, Voice & Speech and Acting at Centro Formazione Artistica di Luca Bizzarri in Genova, Italy. As well, she was a Recording Artist, Voice & Acting Coach and the Translator for Orange Home Records in Leivi, Italy for over a decade. She was the Co-Assistant Director for the Voice & Speech Trainers Association VASTA Converging Pathways Conference in 2022. Currently Echo teaches Acting, Voice & Movement, Musical Theatre Repertoire, and Improvisation at WT. Her areas of interest and teaching expertise also include Devising, Creating One-Person Shows, Moment Work, Clown, Archetypal Movement and Physical Theatre. Her most recent creative projects include Co-Directing Alice By Heart and Co-authoring an article with her theatre troupe, Women from Mars, called “Silent Reflections – A Clown-Noir Cabaret: Transformation of object and the feminist clown” which has been published by the journal Theatre Symposium, Vol. 32.

Gin is an award-winning Harvard University/Moscow Art Theatre graduate, most recently seen in POTUS at ACT Theatre and Blithe Spirit at Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, Washington. Gin has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts grants for multiple plays, and her book, Returning the Bones, is a National Indies Excellence Finalist and a Gold Winning INDIES Book of the Year winner. She is also co-founder of the Meditations for Actors mobile app. Gin’s recent solo show, Living IncogNegro, will be released as a feature-length film in 2025.

After a Bachelor in Ethno Anthropological Sciences from the University of Bologna, he graduates as Actor in the Lecoq’s Scuola di Teatro di Bologna “Alessandra Galante Garrone” (2012) and as Director in the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio d’Amico” in Rome (2015) where he covered the charge of Board member of the international organization E:UTSA (Europe:Union of Theatre Schools and Academies) for 3 years. Participant since 2012 at the International Summer Program of the Watermill Center, in Long Island, New York, founded by Robert Wilson in 1992, he collaborates with the Texan director in performances (dancer for Dom Perignon at the Palace of Versailles) and Opera: Verdi’s Macbeth in San Paolo (Brasil) and Bologna as movement coach, La Traviata in Linz (Austria) and Perm (Russia) and Le Trouvere in Parma and Bologna, and Turandot in Madrid as assistant director, Hamletmachine as co-director and stage manager in Spoleto (Festival dei 2 Mondi), which toured in Italy during 2017 and 2018 (Piccolo Teatro Milano, Auditorium della Musica di Roma, Teatro della Pergola di Firenze).

In 2016 he started teaching at the Scuola di Teatro di Bologna “Alessandra Galante Garrone” both Acting (with focuses on Mask and Music) and Organization and management.

Is Founder of Officine Montecristo, a company based in Arezzo for organization, production and distribution of Theatre and Music works, with which he toured his shows in Czech Republic, Germany, India and Italy in national and international Festival, like the ITFOK – International Theatre Festival of Kerala, India (2017), UWE, Munich (2015), SETKANI/ENCOUNTER, Brno (2015), Inventaria, Rome (2017), Salviamo i Talenti @ Teatro Vittoria, Rome (2017), Cosa sono le nuvole?, Lucca, (2017).

In 2018 his work LONELY was accepted among the finalists of the Premio Scenario Infanzia. Since May 2019 he is producer of the Arezzo Crowd Festival, the Partecipative Festival for Young Theatre. The Festival counts 40 shows and performances every year and more then 30 partners and focuses on creating an artistic committee of young non professionals that will learn how to create the event throughout the year with the tutoring of a network of companies and professionals.

In 2020 he created Arezzo Crowd Tv, a platform to share cultural meetings, talks, lectures during the pandemic which reached more than 200.000 contacts in the first 4 months of life and hosted more than 90 digital events in one year.

Helena Fernandino holds a masters degree in cognitive linguistics. She started her dance training in her home country of Brazil and continued her education in Belo Horizonte and throughout Europe, including Germany, Belgium and Austria. She has been based in Germany since 2003 working as a dancer, teacher and choreographer. As a dancer and choreographer her work includes video dance, site-specific performance and interventions in public spaces. In 2013 she was awarded the graduate scholarship from the State of Saxony for the Artistic Masterclass at Palucca University for Dance Dresden, researching the interface between dance and cognitive linguistics, with a focus on contemporary dance for children and adolescents. In 2014 she began her training as a Somatic Movement Educator – Body Mind Centering – © BMC.

Ivan Truol is an actor, dancer, choreographer and teacher. He studied at the  Escuela de Teatro de la Universidad de Chile. He worked with  Sosta Palmizi, Corte Sconta, Adriana Borriello, Marco Baliani, Gigi Dall’Aglio, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti. He performed in Chile, Brasil, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, England, United States and Canada.  

In1997 he founded the Atacama company with Patrizia Cavola and they performed in theatres and international festivals in Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France, Brazil and Poland. 

In 2009 he became artistic director of the La Scatola Dell’Arte in Rome. 

In 2010 he taught at the Instituto de Estudios Secundarios de la Universidad de Chile, in Santiago del Chile, Chile. 

In 2014 he was a member of the jury of the Premio MarteLive Danza.

In 2015 he worked in the movie, Per Amor Vostro directed by Giuseppe Gaudino and presented at the 72 Venice Film Festival. 

In Rome he taught at the Duncan 3.0, La Scatola dell’Arte, Accademia Internazionale di Arte Drammatica Teatro Quirino Vittorio Gassman, Q Academy Nuova Accademia Internazionale Arte Drammatica Teatro Quirinetta, and Accademia Arte Drammatica Cassiopea. 

He teaches courses, seminars and masterclasses in dance academies and theatres in Italy and abroad.

Jon Kellam’s career spans over 35 years. He has worked throughout the US, Europe and the UK, as a theatre director, teaching artist, acting coach, writer, and performer. Jon developed, Superdrama™, a theatre training, devising, and performance technique. He co-founded and served as artistic director of Bämsemble Company (Italy), and is Co-Artistic Director of Drama and Performance along with Madeleine Dahm, of Blue Box Earth, an innovative transformable sculpture, gallery, and performance space (coming to Amsterdam in 2026).

Jon will be directing a one-act Opera IL PARNASUS CONFUSO (July 2024), composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck for OperaSeme in Arezzo, Italy, and is developing in part through a residency at Accademia Dell’Arte, an adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s DIABOLIAD. Most recent work includes NOSFERATU produced by Casa Bit and Parco 5 at Teatro Juvarra in Torino, 2022. And touring in 2024-25. He directed,TOSKA, a work-in-progress/residency, at Teatro Di Villazzano in Trento, and performed at Teatro Vascello for the Roma Fringe Festival, 2021. Jon directed TARTUFO SUPERDRAMA™  for Atelier Teatro Fisico in Turin (September 2020), served as Associate-director for FENG CHA in Dusseldorf Germany (July 2020), co-director KAFKA’S MONKEY (August 2020), Palais Sommer Festival, Dresden Germany, director and co-writer, FATA MORGANA, A Hallucination From The Mad Sensational Life Of Nico, conceived and performed by Margherita Remotti – at the Chapel Playhouse, London, (2020), Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022, Milano, 2023, and Teatro Argot in Rome, 2023. Jon directed and co-created a free adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes classic interlude, El Retablo De Las Maravillas entitled SALT; THE MARVELOUS PUPPET SHOW, for Bämsemble Company, scripted by Francesco Botti. After a residency at Accadmeia Dell’ Arte and Cavellerizza, SALT was presented at Anti-teatro Fabio Chiesa, Viareggio; Spazio Seme, Arezzo; Teatro C’Art, Castel Fiorentino; Cavallerizza Reale, Torino; and Teatro Franco Parenti, Milano (December 2018  and June 2019).

Jon currently teaches acting, and storytelling at Accademia Dello Spettacolo, also at OFM, and teaches annually a Superdrama™ workshop at Atelier Teatro Fisico, in Torino, Italy. In January 2022, Jon served as the lead teacher of the 2021-22 Commedia dell’Arte block at Dell Arte International, in Blue Lake CA. The specific curriculum of the course initiates a symbiosis between SUPERDRAMA™ and COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE, establishing a contemporary approach. Jon frequently teaches independent Superdrama™ workshops, often collaborating with Ginevra Scaglia.

Kevin Crawford is a founding member of the Roy Hart Theatre company. He toured extensively with the company for over twenty years, and acted as a “gerant” of the troupe for a four-year period before moving to Ireland in 1993, where he was a member of faculty at the School of Drama, Trinity College. In Ireland he collaborated with a large number of theatre, dance and musical groups,as well as regularly contributing to programs at University College Dublin and University College Cork. He has been a guest facilitator at the Abbey (National Theatre of Ireland), The International Workshop Festival(London), The Lir, National Academy of Dramatic Art, (Ireland), and CIRA, (Strasbourg). In 2001 he was awarded an MA in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

On his return to France in 2002 Kevin was appointed Lecturer at the Université d’Artois before joining the Accademia dell’Arte in Arezzo, Italy as a founding member of faculty. From 2009-2016 he directed the MFA in Physical Theatre at the Accademia. Directorial credits include “Wolf’s Bride “ for Kuopio City Theatre (Finland), “The Bacchae” and “Oedipus” for the Samuel Beckett Centre (Dublin) and “Bartholomew Fair” for the Baker Theatre (Muhlenberg College, United States). He wrote and recently performed “Montee” in collaboration with Caroline Boersma, Cellist, with performances in the US, Italy and France.

Taylor Hohman is a native son of Lexington, KY, where he grew up performing at Lexington Children’s Theatre. After completing a BA in Theatre Arts at Catawba College, North Carolina,, Taylor moved to Arezzo to study at the Accademia dell’Arte, receiving his MFA in Physical Theatre in the inaugural class of 2011. Taylor began training in stage combat with the Society of American Fight Directors in 2004 and became a Certified Teacher with the British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat in London, UK, in 2014. He has taught stage combat at the British National Stage Combat Workshop at Rose Bruford College, UK, The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK, ID Fight, UK, Simone Belli Stunt Academy, Italy, and Accademia dell’Arte, Italy.

Wagner Moreira was born in Brazil and has been living in Germany since 2003. As a teacher, freelance performer and choreographer, he has worked in various theatres, universities and international projects. In 2011, he was awarded a scholarship for the “International Choreographers Residency” at American Dance Festival at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina-USA. In 2012 he received the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) award in professional choreography for his outstanding social and intercultural commitment. In 2012 he received a Master of Arts in Choreography. For the last six years, Wagner has extended his C.O.R.E project to several mixed-able-bodied projects in Europe.

Yo-EL Cassell, award winning choreographer, movement specialist and Head of/Assistant Professor at Boston University, has directed movement from the big screen to off-Broadway sensations. Cassell has choreographed and directed movement for Comedy of Errors, All’s Well That Ends Well, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Coriolanus, King Lear, Love Labours Lost, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night and Othello as Resident Choreographer for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC); Lilly’s Revenge for American Repertory Theatre; The Understudy and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play for Lyric Stage Company of Boston; Sound of Music for Nantucket Dreamland Theatre; Kiss Me, Kate (featuring Kerry O’Malley and Marc Kudisch), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Boys from Syracuse, Symphonic Shakespeare, Footloose and Fancy Free (Movement Director/Curator), and Urban Sprawl for Boston Landmarks Orchestra/CSC; Violet for Suffulk University, Good Breeding for Emerson Stage, Sunlight Interior, Sweet and Sour, and The Distance Between for Walnut Hill School for the Arts; A Little Night Music, Alcina,and Orpheus in the Underworld for Boston Opera Collaborative; Sunlight Interior for San Antonio Repertory Ballet; Full-Noon Trill and Gravitate for Skidmore College; Die Fledermaus for New England Conservatory, and Laughs in Spanish(Intimacy work) for Boston Playwrights Theatre.

His previous teaching experience also includes the NY Acting School for Film and Television, Harvard University Dance Department, New England Conservatory, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Sunshine Cottage School For Deaf Children, Celebrity Series of Boston, Commonwealth Shakespeare Apprentice Academy, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference, Boston Ballet, Dance Complex, and Skidmore College, where he served as a guest teaching artist/choreographer in residence for three years.

In 2017, along with BU School of Theatre Director Jim Petosa, Yo-EL developed InMotion Theatre, an Initiative that highlights storytelling, either via an original work or an adaptation, primarily through the lens of many diverse approaches of movement, including design and music. He is also the artistic director and founder of Ensemble 360, a physical-theatre ensemble comprising male actors, dancers, and musicians whose mission is to highlight the importance of storytelling through movement. Cassell was born with a nerve deafness and discovered at the age of 3 that movement was his organic expressive channel for his personal and creative identity. His mission, as a performer, director, choreographer, movement director, educator, mentor, and human being, is to provide the same accessible physical entry point to other’s inner selves that he supportively received as a child and throughout life. He supports accessibility through movement practice in various communities throughout Boston and has served as Resident Choreographer for The Shadow Box Theater in NYC as well as Student Engagement Manager and creative producer for ArtsEmerson at Emerson College’s Office of the Arts. His teaching for movement practice, through a thoughtful fusion of various movement and theatre approaches, stresses the importance of incorporating personal identity with an integration of a strong technical foundation. Thus, balancing the importance of owning, in equal measure, the ecstatic and informative self in and outside the walls of movement study. Cassell is a member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Association of Theatre Movement Educators (ATME).