Friday, June 5th
2:15 pm - Jackie Lopez and Leigh Foaad- online pre-recorded performance
3:30 pm - Milka Djordjevich-performance followed by a 15 minute live discussion.
Both events will take place on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAms9BWgqF_pByADLaX7GZA?view_as=subscriber
Jackie Lopez is a first generation Los Angeles native. She was the first in her family to graduate high school, continue her education in LA Valley College, transfer to a UCLA and graduate, all due to the impact of the arts in her life. Jackie graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA in 2004 from the Department of World Arts and Cultures, with a concentration in dance. Jackie is the Co-Founder, Co-Artistic Director & Choreographer of Versa-Style Dance Company and Versa-Style Next Generation(certified 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization). Versa-Style’s birth was created by Jackie’s presentation of Senior Projects.
For the last 17 years, Jackie has been working as a professional dancer, choreographer, teaching artist and cultural educator who has worked with students and artists of all ages from LA, NYC, Philly, Israel, United Kingdom, France, Colombia and India.
She currently is a Lecturer at UCLA’s Dept. of World Arts and Cultures teaching Hip-hop dance and is the Supervisor of the UCLA Summer Dance/Performing Arts Intensive for high school students.
Leigh Foaad aka Breeze-Lee since birth has been exposed to dance. He has been training and working professionally as a dancer for Rennie Harris “Puremovement” since 2005 and through RHPM was chosen by The Obama Administration, BAM, and DanceMotion USA to be Cultural Ambassador for the U.S.A, touring the Middle East; Egypt, Palestine, Israel and the United Kingdom.. Breeze-lee found a love for a street-dance style called “Popping” in the year 2002 and since then has competed and won in several national and worldwide competitions. In addition, Breeze-lee is the Co-Founder, Co-Artistic Director & Choreographer of Versa-Style Dance Company and Versa-Style Next Generation (certified 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization).
He currently is Adjunct Lecturer at UCLA’s Dept. of World Arts and Cultures/Dance teaching Hip-hop dance. Breeze-lee takes pride in teaching the history and culture of Hip-Hop and currently teaches all over Los Angeles.
Milka Djordjevich is a Los Angeles based choreographer whose work draws from a variety of compositional strategies to question preconceived notions of what dance should or should not be. Her work has been shown at many venues, including the Kitchen, the Chocolate Factory Theater, the Whitney Museum, the American Realness Festival, Dance Theater Workshop and Danspace Project in New York; REDCAT, Grand Performances, Pieter, LA Dance Platform, the Hammer Museum, Machine Project, Showbox LA/Bootleg Theater, and HomeLA in Los Angeles; Counterpulse and the Berkeley Art Museum in Northern California; and internationally in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, and the UK. Djordjevich was a 2006-2007 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2008/2010 danceWEB Europe Scholar and a 2017-2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellow. Her other projects include serving as guest editor for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence and initiating the Monday Morning Class series at Pieter. Djordjevich has co-authored works with composer Chris Peck, choreographer Dragana Bulut, designer Samuel Yang, and artist Marcos Luytens. She has twice served as Visiting Assistant Professor in the UC Riverside Dance Department and has taught at CalArts, UC Irvine, AMDA, Pomona College, Movement Research and PICA’s TBA:15 Festival. In 2016, Djordjevich established STANA, an organization cultivating Los Angeles, national and international dance connections.
