Faculty Biographies
Shari Bernhardt
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Shari Bernhardt received her tap training in Los Angeles, New York, and Spain. She danced professionally in Las Vegas and Reno for five years and was involved with the Broadway touring company of "42nd Street." Shari operated her own dance studio and taught at various studios in the Seattle area for over twenty years, including Backstage since 1987. She spent several summers in Portland, Oregon studying from tap masters such as Savion Glover, Diane Walker, Eddie Brown and also served as a teacher assistant for tap master Carnell Lyons. Shari hopes to share her knowledge of tap, not only technically, but also the history of the art, with her students through the use of videos and different rhythm instruments. |
Lisa Buettner
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Lisa Buettner has been teaching ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop and lyrical for eight years throughout the Seattle area. She received her training in the Seattle area and at Bellevue Community College. She has danced at the University of Washington, the Eastside Moving Company and Fusion Dance Company. |
Mari Engel
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Mari Engel received her early training at Makie Naoi Ballet School. During her Ballet studies, Mari was accepted to the prestigious Butai Geijustu Gakuen (Academy for Performing Arts) in Tokyo Japan where she studied Modern, Ballet and Jazz dance. After graduation Mari continued to study at Chacott Ballet in Japan, Ballet Pensacola & Kaleidoscope in Florida and Modern at the Wurzburg Dance Theater in Germany. She started her professional dance career with Nakura Kayoko Jazz Dance Company performing on stage and screen. She continued performing professionally with Kazco Takemoto's Dance Venus and Swerve in Pensacola Florida. She was a contract dance teacher for U.S. Navy Japan's Morale Welfare and Recreation and has choreographed and taught locally at Reflections School of Dance. |
Sarah Mercer
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Sarah Mercer has been dancing all her life. She has trained in modern dance, ballet, flamenco, jazz, musical theater, west and east coast swing, lindy hop, salsa, some tap, tango and West African. She is a graduate of Bard College in New York, where she majored in dance and psychology in 2007. She is a founding member of Seattle's new Sapience Dance Collective. She was also founding member of Barrio Flamenco, a flamenco dance collective, in 2007-2008. She has danced with local choreographers Kristina Dillard, Danny Herter, and Dayna Hanson. Other choreographers include Peter Pucci, Aileen Passloff, Maria Simpson, Jean Churchill, Leslie Boyce. She has choreographed dances for high school musical theater productions and has been teaching dance all over the greater Seattle area since 2007. Sarah also works at Seattle Children's Home as a residential counselor for teenagers living in the treatment facility. |
Tracy Schreiber
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Tracy Schreiber received her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts with an emphasis in performance and choreography. Prior to college, she studied ballet at the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet and with Gwendolyn Bye in Philadelphia. She has had the opportunity to work for Seattle choreographers, such as Amii LeGendre, Juliet Waller Pruzan, and Kristina Dillard among others. Tracy has had the pleasure of teaching students creative movement through advanced levels ballet and modern and also teaches senior fitness. She works as the Events Coordinator with Washington State Arts Alliance/Foundation. Tracy plans on becoming certified in the Feldenkrais Method. |
Christine Weh
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Christine began her dance training with Mary Hunt, Heather Renk, and Lila Zali protege Cynthia Tosh, in Portland, Oregon, performing with the Portland Community Ballet. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance cum laude from Cornish College of the Arts in 2005, working with such choreographers as Pat Hon, Tonya Lockyer, Gary Masters from the Limon Company, and Mary Sheldon Scott. She has studied Creative Movement under Gail Heilbron and Christine Juarez, and has been teaching her love of dance in creative movement, ballet and modern techniques since the year 2000. Currently she is a member of Weaving Dance Company, performs locally in Seattle modern dance projects, and is the Administrative Assistant for Preparatory Dance at Cornish College of the Arts, where she also teaches ballet. She has worked with the Catherine Mayer Foundation in multidisciplinary arts education since 2006. |
ZJ Zhang
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Zhenjun "ZJ" Zhang was one of four kids selected from an arts school of hundreds to enter a dance company school. His prize for surviving the audition process was joining the army and taking eight actual hours of dance classes of day, including Russian-style ballet, Chinese Classical Dance, Folk Dance and Acrobatics. After almost 6 years of training, ZJ was offered a job. As a member of the company he performed in many places in China, from the Great Hall of the People to lonely mountain outposts. During this time he also spent long hours practicing alone with a tape recorder; naturally, he began choreographing and after several years, he went to the Beijing PLA Arts Academy to study choreography. Shortly thereafter, he moved to New York where he danced with companies including the Martha Graham Company and the Jose Limon Company, performing work by Graham, Limon, Tudor, Kylian, McKayle, Varone, Haim, Robbins and others. ZJ appeared in The King and I Broadway and West End productions and has been involved with productions of The King and I in different capacities including choreographer, dance captain and performer. ZJ is a member of Actor's Equity and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. In 2007, he completed his BFA at Cornish where he teaches for the Summer Program. ZJ teaches ballet, modern and creative movement in Seattle and China. He also continues to choreograph. |