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Meet the Team

Our Artistic  Team includes former principal dancers and ballet masters (Dance Theatre of Harlem, Texas Ballet Theatre); award-winning lighting, film-production, and costume designers; Broadway gypsies; gallery artists; a New York entertainment lawyer; theater producers, B’nai Brith and synagogue leaders; Arts Leadership and Entrepreneurship experts; and two digital media company CEOs.

 

Harnessing our diverse networks will help us engage with a wide swath of international, national, local, regional, arts, social justice, and educational communities.

Dr. Suki John
Project Director & Choreographer

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Dr. Suki John is a Professor in the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University. Suki has worked internationally as a dance artist and scholar -- teaching, choreographing, and writing about the intersections between dance, history, and culture. She has performed with the London Festival Ballet (under the direction of Rudolf Nureyev), The Joffrey Upstarts, Jennifer Muller, Sara Sugihara, Rachel Lampert, Living Art International, Dance Company Narciso Medina, The Horse’s Mouth, People’s Theater of Yugoslavia, and Route 66 Dance Company, which she co-founded with Ninotchka Bennahum. Suki has choreographed for Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, Snug Harbor/Staten Island Center for the Arts, Narciso Medina, Danza Espiral, Ritmo Flamenco, The Culture Project, Connecticut Repertory Theater, Adelphi University, Cuba’s Superior Institute of the Arts and National School of Art, NYU, TCU and the University of New Mexico. A widely published author, her book Contemporary Dance in Cuba: técnica cubana as Revolutionary Movement is a personal and scholarly account. She is the outgoing Director of Dance for the Texas Jewish Arts Association, where she proudly served since 2017. 

Suki has been working on Sh'ma for over 30 years. She created the original choreodrama  in the former Yugoslavia, close to Budapest, from where her mother's family was deported during the Holocaust. The horrific tragedy of the Bosnian war impelled Suki to produce Sh'ma again in New York City, as new “Never Agains” reverberated across the globe.  Suki has shown excerpts of the stage work at the New York Festival of Jewish Culture, YIVO, B’Nai Jeshrun, Fort Monmouth Army Base, and the Dallas Museum of Biblical Arts. Her new dance film Sh'ma: A Story of Survival is at the heart of The Sh’ma Project: Move Against Hate. 

Creative Collaborators
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CAST

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Board of Directors "the Mensches"

Kimberly Florsheim, Chair
Shayna Coyne
Zoe Stein Pierce
Suzie Jary
Jan Ayers
Rebecca "Rivkah" Cannon

Advisory Board

Brie Lowry Cox
Jonathon Herzog
Susan Jaffe
Richard Laermer
Josh Pais
Michael Sherrod
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