Danspace Faculty

Beth Hoge (aka Beth Brunberg, Beth Jahn) founded Danspace in 1976, after a lengthy dance career in Los Angeles and New York. Her early dance experience included work with Joseph Rickard, in the Southern California Ballet, and with Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch in the Greek Theatre’s summer production of “Giselle.” She then traveled to New York to attend Juilliard. There she studied with Antony Tudor, Margaret Craske, Martha Graham, and Alfredo Corvino who was to become her lifelong mentor, and teacher.While studying at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, on scholarship, she performed in the Opera Ballet frequently, appeared with many of the companies who appeared at the Metropolitan: The Royal Ballet , the Bolshoi and the Kirov. She was invited to assist Miss Craske in the Children’s Division of the Ballet School. Other performing experiences included being a charter soloist with Manhattan Festival Ballet, off-Broadway, touring musicals such as Camelot, Oaklahoma and many summer stock venues. She appeared on the Phyllis Diller Television variety show, and in the opening ceremonies at Lincoln Center. Upon returning home to Cailfornia she began her teaching career and founded Danspace in 1976. She taught Ballet at Mills College from 1983 to 1994 where she made an invaluable connection with the Modern Dance community, and greatly enjoyed luring some “fallen away” ballet dancers back to ballet class by sharing the work of her teacher Mr. Corvino. The clean, unmannered style, and clear principles of movement based on musicality and efficiency, bridged the gap for many dancers; some continue to study and teach at Danspace today. Others return regularly for class, in support of their careers as dance professionals around the world.

KT has been dancing since the age of four. She trained with various instructors at Contra Costa Ballet Centre in Walnut Creek, Pamela Hayes in Sacramento and Kimberly B. Valmore and Beth Hoge in Oakland. She has danced with COterie DAnce Company (CODA) since it was founded in 2002. CODA performs annually at Works in the Works in Berkeley and Spring Forward in San Francisco.

Mary is a teacher, choreographer, dancer, and Feldenkrais Practitioner, and the director of the Mary Armentrout Dance Theater (MADT). Starting to dance at age three, she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1985. Over the years she has taught movement and dance of many varieties to people from ages 4 to 60+. Her understanding of movement and the human body is informed by her decades of study of Contemporary Modern Dance, Ballet, Butoh, Aikido, Authentic Movement, Alexander Technique, and of course the Feldenkrais Method. Her current teaching practice spans Feldenkrais, dance technique, and creative fusions of the two. She teaches on-going classes in the Bay Area, in festivals and intensives, and recently taught master classes at universities in Louisiana, England, and China. Working across disciplines, her experimental choreographic works attempt to viscerally engage and complicate aspects of intentionality, presence, identity, and being-in-the-world for her audiences, and recently garnered an Isadora Duncan Dance Award. Her work has been presented at numerous venues all over the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as across the US and the UK, Europe, and China, recently touring to the Brighton Fringe and appearing in the San Francisco International Arts Festival. She also organizes of the Dance Discourse Project, an on-going series of artist-curated discussions of the Bay Area dance scene, and co-curates The Milk Bar Performance and Residency Space at The Bridge Art Complex in Richmond. Mary has been studying ballet with Beth Hoge since 1987 and has been teaching at Danspace since 1996. Her eclectic background combined with a profound respect for the Corvino Approach and a creative integration of Feldenkrais principles make her classes inviting and accessible to adults who have never danced, as well as those returning after a long absence, and to dancers of all backgrounds looking to clarify the role of ballet in their practice.