Dance With Teachers Winter Weekend 2025

Tom Bozigian, a California native of Armenian descent, grew up immersed in the rich cultural traditions of Fresno’s Armenian community. From an early age, he learned the music and dances that reflect the heritage of Armenian survivors of the pre-1915 era, fostering a lifelong passion for preserving and sharing these traditions.

With a Master’s degree in education and fluency in English, Armenian, and Russian, Tom began formal dance training with Jora Makarian in Los Angeles before undertaking advanced studies in Armenia. There, he completed a seven-month program and furthered his education at the Yerevan Sayat Nova Choreographic School. His repertoire includes solo, group, line, and partner dances, as well as dances for male- or female-only ensembles, showcasing Armenia’s diverse cultural legacy.

Tom’s influence extends beyond Armenian dance, incorporating Russian, Greek, and Lebanese folk styles. As a skilled percussionist, he specializes in music from the Caucasus and Near East and leads a folklore orchestra, producing numerous recordings. His work also includes directing “Hye Bar Entertainment,” a music and DJ service.

Sheree King, Tom’s wife and collaborator, is a dancer, choreographer, and director of the Dance Department at Long Beach City College. A certified Pilates instructor, she complements Tom’s artistic endeavors, and together they reside in Los Angeles, home to one of the largest Armenian communities outside Armenia.

Billy Burke is known for his extensive contributions as a dancer, choreographer, and educator. His immersion in folk dance began in early childhood, accompanying his mother to her dance practices and performances. By age five, he was participating in children’s classes, and by twelve, he was part of a youth performance group.

At fifteen, Billy joined his first adult performing group, Madelynne Greene’s Folkance Workshop in San Francisco, and later engaged with various ethnic dance clubs, including Russian, German, Balkan, and Scottish ensembles. At nineteen, he toured the United States and Canada as a professional dancer with the Don Cossack Choir. In 1970, he moved to Los Angeles and became a member of the AMAN Folk Ensemble, where he served as the first director of the chamber group.

Billy’s passion for education led him to teach traditional dance in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for over 25 years. He has been instrumental in training teachers to incorporate traditional and recreational dance into their curricula and has contributed to the development of LAUSD Performing Arts Standards and state standards. Additionally, he has directed the folk dance performing group Tanza and is on the staff of Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks, California, where he directs the Millikan Dancers.

Throughout his career, Billy has taught at numerous folk dance camps, festivals, and universities across the United States. He has also authored works, including “Celebration of Diversity: Multicultural Experience Through the Art of Dance,” reflecting his commitment to promoting cultural understanding through dance.

Billy’s dedication to folk dance and education has made him a respected leader in the community, inspiring countless individuals through his teaching and performances.

Fusae was born in Oita, Japan. She began folkdancing as a college student in Tokyo, engaging in a broad array of international dances. In the mid-1970’s, after her graduation, her interest focused on Balkan dancing. She began traveling abroad to learn more about the dances and their cultures. She has studied dance in Romania and Macedonia and has taken additional classes in Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

For the last thirty five years, fusae has regularly taken foreign dance teachers on tour in Japan where they have taught workshops and weekend camps throughout the country. She moved to Sacramento in 1984, but returns to Japan three or four times a year for the tours. She was invited to camps throughout Canada and United States to teach as an assistant to Atanas Kolarovski, the now-legendary Macedonian dancer and choreographer.

Joe Kaloyanides Graziosi, of Greek and Italian ancestry, grew up in the Boston area and graduated with a degree in History from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. With a mania for Greek music and dance from an early age, Joe has done extensive research on regional dance in Greece and among Greek communities in the United States. He has taught throughout the world for community groups and at major folk dance camps, including the East European Folklife Center’s Balkan Music and Dance Workshops since 1982. He was a co-founder of New York’s Greek American Folklore Society (GFS) along with its director, Paul Ginis, where he taught throughout the 80s.

Joe has taught and introduced people to Greek dance in Taiwan, Canada, Brazil, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Japan. Joe has also given talks on traditional Greek music and dance for the ethnomusicology departments at UCLA and UCSB. He has served as judge and advisor for the west coast Greek Orthodox (San Francisco Metropolis) Folk Dance Festival (FDF) since 1984, and judge and advisor for the Atlanta Metropolis’ Hellenic Dance Festival (HDF) for the past 12 years. He is along with Ahmet Luleci, co-founder of the annual World Music and Dance Camp, now in Iroquois Springs, NY. Joe produces CD compilations of hard to find regional folk dance music.

Yannis and Simos Konstantinou are highly regarded educators, researchers, and practitioners of Greek traditional dance and music, with deep roots in the cultural traditions of west Macedonia. Both are dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich heritage of their homeland, the Florina and Prespa regions of Greece, through teaching, research, and performance.

Yannis is an internationally recognized teacher and researcher of traditional dance, music, and costumes. With a Master’s degree focusing on the costumes of the Florina region, Yannis explores how historical events, local customs, and the migration of ethnic groups have shaped the evolution of dance and music in west Macedonia.

A lifelong dancer, Yannis honed his skills growing up in the villages of Florina, surrounded by family and community traditions. His teaching style reflects his deep connection to these customs. He frequently teaches and lectures across the United States and Europe, sharing his expertise at renowned events such as the Mendocino Balkan and Folklore Camps, California Kolo Festival, and the Greek Orthodox Folk Dance Festival (FDF). Yannis also serves as a judge for Greek dance competitions and participates in international conferences and seminars.

Yannis is the founder, artistic director, and master instructor of the cultural association “Lygkistes,” which has over 200 members in Florina and Athens. Under his leadership since 1994, “Lygkistes” has performed extensively throughout Europe and the Balkans, earning accolades, including second place at the prestigious Llangollen International Dance Competition. Yannis also organizes the annual “Seminar of Traditional Dance” in Prespa, Greece, attracting dancers from around the world.

Simos, Yannis’s son, is a graduate of the Department of History and Ethnology at Democritus University of Thrace and a postgraduate student in Folklore and Cultural Management at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. His academic background encompasses social anthropology, ethnography, and folklore, with a research focus on the Florina and Prespa regions.

Since the age of 18, Simos has been teaching traditional Greek dance, working with children and students in the Association of Greek Traditional Dances “Lygistes.” He has also taught workshops in various European countries and the United States, sharing his expertise with diverse audiences. In addition to dance, Simos is an accomplished percussionist specializing in traditional Greek music. He has performed at festivals across Greece, Europe, and the United States since 2014.

Together, Yannis and Simos Konstantinou continue to inspire and educate through their unwavering commitment to the preservation and dissemination of Greek traditional dance, music, and culture. Their contributions resonate not only within Greece but also across the global folk dance community.

Steve Kotansky was raised in the San Francisco Bay area where he started international folk dancing as a high school student. Besides, regular folk dancing, he performed with the Westwind International Folk Ensemble (North), and the SF Russian Dance Ensemble. In 1970 he made his first research trip to Hungary and former Yugoslavia. He returned to study dance and Slavic Languages at UCLA. While living in Los Angeles, he performed with AMAN Folk Ensemble and Vincent Evanchuk’s Ukrainian dance troupe. He was also a regularly featured teacher at many of the folk dance “cafes” popular in the 1970’s.

In 1972, Steve received the “Rubi Vucheta” scholarship to study dance in former Yugoslavia, where he traveled with Robert Leibman recording and filming village dance throughout the country. He remained in Europe, living in Munich, Germany, where he worked with ethnic communities, taught regular classes, organized workshops, and co-founded the GAJDA Folklore Ensemble. He took advantage of his proximity to the Balkans and Eastern Europe, pursuing his study and research of their dance cultures. He taught dance all over Western Europe, choreographed for various groups, and began to organize folk dance workshops and tours to Hungary, Serbia, and Macedonia.

He returned to the U.S.A in 1980 to teach at SFDC as well as most major North America dance camps/weekend workshops. Steve lives in NY with his wife Susan and their two (grown) children. They co-founded the GUZSALY Hungarian Dance Ensemble and have choreographed for many Hungarian and International Dance Ensembles in North America. Steve is know for his passion for dance and extensive knowledge of dances and style of Eastern and South-Eastern European Dance. Currently, he has been teaching dances from Macedonia, Serbia, the Albanian diaspora, Bulgaria, Romania (Csángó), and the Roma populations from these areas.

Roo Lester began folk dancing as part of rainy-day phys ed at school and hasn’t stopped since. A college folk dance class subsequently inspired her to pursue and complete a Master of Arts in Dance Ethnology from UCLA; she later turned toward a specialty in Scandinavian dance after taking a class in Norwegian folk dancing from Ingvar and Jofrid Sodal.

Since 1983, Roo has traveled extensively in Norway and Sweden, studying dance and participating in dance and music festivals, competitions and other events. Known in Scandinavia for her keen interest and knowledge of music, dance and cultural traditions, she has served as the American coordinator for several dance and music camps in Sweden and Norway. As a dance educator and ethnologist, Roo has taught Scandinavian dancing throughout the U.S. and beyond for many years and has published a number of articles on Norwegian dances, as well as a guide to Scandinavian Dance Basics.

Roo’s life work in dance has taken many interesting twists and turns, from teaching folk dance in the Los Angeles area public schools, to a 3-month research trip to Spain to study Basque dance. Roo was a director of Barátság Hungarian Music and Dance Camp, and for over 20 years has served as a director of Scandia Camp Mendocino. She had a stint in the television industry working on an episode of M*A*S*H called “Inga.” During the pandemic, Roo has worked with dance in a variety of ways over Zoom, both as a teacher and assisting other dance programs to reach widespread, house-bound audiences.

When she is not traveling, Roo lives in the southwestern suburbs of the Chicago metropolitan area with her husband and frequent dance partner, Larry Harding.