People

Olive Mckeon, co-director (current) 

Olive Mckeon is a dancer and researcher from Northern California. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, writing a dissertation on American modern dance history and political economy. Her writing has been published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Pavilion Magazine: a journal of the Bucharest Biennial, Activate Journal, and Fuse Magazine: Art+Culture+Politics. Her book of poetry, Communism is up there and we are down here but it is happening now (2014), was published by Timeless Infinite Light, a poetry press in Oakland. She is a member of a curatorial collective called SALTA that puts together a monthly series of experimental dance in Oakland. She has danced recently with the choreographers Abby Crain, Jmy James Kidd, Nick Duran, Laurel Tentindo as well as in her own work.



Randi Evans, co-director (current)

Randi Evans is a PhD student in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. She holds a BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts, an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Washington, and a certificate in performance curation from Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. Prior to coming to Berkeley she spent her time working as an arts and culture administrator, community-based teaching artist, and a lecturer in contemporary performance practices at University of Washington Bothell. Current research interests include participatory and community-based practices in dance in relationship to institutional structures and critique, cultural policy, and social practice.

Heather Rastovac, co-director (2013-2014)

Heather Rastovac is a PhD candidate in UC Berkeley's department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexualities. She is a dance artist, scholar, and yoga instructor with over a decade of experience as a performer, choreographer, artistic director, researcher, and teacher. Her dissertation research critically engages dance and movement-based performance by Iranian artists (dis)located in diaspora. She considers how diasporic and transnational subjectivities are enacted, negotiated, and expressed through these artists' works, as well as how their works are framed within the local and transnational geo- and bio-politics. She further examines how contemporary Orientalisms are reconfigured and circulate in “World Dance” markets in the post-9/11 era. She received her Bachelors degree in 2008 from the University of Washington where she majored in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (with focus on Persian language and literature), with Minors in Anthropology and Dance.