Our Instructors

Vicki Suemnicht – Owner/Director, Footnotes Tap Company co-director

Vicki has been teaching, choreographing, directing studio operations and producing shows in Sonoma County for more than 40 years. Her background includes tap, jazz, ballet and musical theatre and she’s had the privilege of training with tap greats Gregory Hines, Eddie Brown and Honi Coles. Vicki has choreographed shows for the Sixth Street Playhouse and Santa Rosa Players including The ProducersThe Drowsy ChaperoneLittle Shop of HorrorsChorus LineUrinetown and others. She has also choreographed for Montgomery High School’s musicals including Some Like It HotBye, Bye BirdieMusic ManKiss Me KateGuys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Vicki is on the board of the Santa Rosa Sister City Committee student exchange program to Jeju, South Korea. She has brought Dance Center company dancers to perform at the Jeju Fire Festival in Korea for more than 15 years where they always wow the international audience as dance ambassadors extraordinaire! Vicki’s goal is to tap dance in every country and she regularly attends international dance workshops to train with international teachers and to connect with choreographers who she brings to The Dance Center for master classes and workshops.

Danielle Maca -Contemporary Companies Director

Danielle began dancing in 1988 at the age of 3 in Fremont CA. She competed her first tap and jazz solos at the age of 5 and loved the stage ever since. Her training at The Dance Center began at age 11 in jazz, hip hop, tap and modern. She competed for 7 years with jazz, tap, and hip hop companies. Danielle has performed in Jeju South Korea, Washington D.C., South Carolina and at San Francisco’s Hip Hop Fest. She was a member of Shadow Optix and Secret Society hip hop companies and was also in a traveling performance group InnerActions, where she performed for teens with a message of prevention through inspiration. Danielle has been part of The Dance Center faculty since 2008 teaching hip hop, jazz and contemporary dance.

Emily Hartley – Tap, Jazz & Musical Theatre

Emily fell in love with tap dancing at age 9 and grew up dancing at The Dance Center with Nina Raggio and Vicki Suemnicht as her teachers. After discovering musical theatre at age 14, her career path was chosen. She has a BA in Theatre Arts from CSU Fullerton. After college, Emily spent an amazing 8 years dancing in L.A. and worked with choreographers Paula Abdul and Kenny Ortega. Some of her favorite projects include dancing in the film Pearl Harbor and the television show Commander-in-Chief. Emily is thrilled to be celebrating her 15th year teaching tap, jazz and musical theatre at The Dance Center, where it all started. She has enjoyed watching her students grow and flourish as both dancers and people. She has been the director of our tap companies for over 13 years. Emily is the proud mom of eight-year-old twins, Lily and William, who dance at the studio.

Monique Borses – Jazz Companies Director, hip-hop, tap

Monique grew up in Austin, Texas, where she began dancing at the age of two with childhood training in musical theatre, competitive ice skating, latin/ballroom and Ballet Austin’s rigorous pre-professional program in ballet. She graduated from The Boston Conservatory with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre. After college, Monique pursued her performing career in Nw York City and studied at Broadway Dance Center and Steps on Broadway with top industry professionals.
Since moving to California in 2019, Monique has taught at several dance studios throughout the bay area. She was also a member of QTZ, a hip hop crew out of Oakland. She loves teaching jazz, hip hop, musical theatre, tap and ballet. Her mission as a dance teacher is to not only teach dance, but to share her passion, joy and kindness with her students. She works to build confidence, grow technique, strength and versatility, and most importantly assure dancers love coming to class.
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James Dory – The Troupe Hip Hop Company Director

James has been dancing since he was 18 and for the past 9 years he has trained with hip hop crews like The U.N.I.T, Academy of Villains, and Auxiliary. He has worked as an entertainer at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom for 3 years.  He is currently one of the directors of Auxiliary, part of the freestyle crews Karpool Gang & Raw Ability, part of a Krump fam under Michael “AO” Edwards, and is the leader of the Krump scene Rosa Buck. Krump is a style of street dance characterized by free, expressive, exaggerated and highly energetic movement. Dancers saw this dance form as a means to express raw emotions in a powerful but non-violent way.

Nina Raggio – Footnotes Tap Company co-director

Nina has been teaching at The Dance Center for over 28 years. She started dancing at the age of 3 in her hometown Long Beach, CA. From age 12 through high school, she traveled to Hollywood to study with tap master Louis DaPron. She began her professional career dancing with Donald O’Conner and performed on television shows including the Smothers Brothers and Glen Campbell, as well as in Las Vegas. Nina received her BA in theatre arts and has choreographed many productions for local community theatre groups including Summer Repertory Theatre at SRJC, Santa Rosa Players and the Sixth Street Playhouse. She enjoys Broadway shows in San Francisco and loves to trade tap steps with her son, Vince, who lives in Southern California and grew up at The Dance Center. Nina directed and produced the opening numbers of our Company Shows “Gotta Dance” and “Holiday in La La Land.”

Gregg Geoffroy – Tap

Gregg is an innovative teacher who highlights technique as it pertains to liberative movement and enhancing individual musicianship. He’s been teaching at The Dance Center for 16 years, as well as the San Francisco Tap Festival, Tap Into the Network, Dance Masters, and workshops stretching both coasts and ongoing classes throughout the Bay Area.  Gregg has studied extensively with tap greats ranging from “the young lions” (Savion Glover, Vincent Bingham, Roxane Butterfly & Mark Mendonca) to the masters (Gregory Hines, Diane Walker, Sam Weber, & Linda Sohl-Donnell) to name a few.  He has been a pianist since the age of nine and his teaching is infused with music theory and tap history.  While he doesn’t prioritize performing, Gregg’s favorite experiences have been dancing with the internationally known percussion family The Escovedos, a lecture demonstration where he provided the percussion to a jazz combo, “Mittens and Mistletoe” for the Sweet Can Circus and collaborating with middle eastern percussionist Mary Ellen Donald.

Alissa Pearce – Tap, Contemporary, Ballet & Jazz

Alissa has been dancing in the Bay Area for over 40 years. At age 4 her passion for movement and teaching was sparked by the late Bay Area tap legend, Bea Blum. She grew up studying tap, ballet, jazz, artistic/rhythmic gymnastics, musical theater, Hawaiian, and Flamenco and began teaching at age 9. In middle school she was a national rhythmic gymnastics champion, and was invited to attend the Olympic Training Camp in Colorado Springs. While still in high school she performed in the first National Tap Tour in Washington, where she shared the stage with Honi Coles, Brenda Bufalino, Eddie Brown, and Mark Mendonca. In college and in her professional career she expanded her studies to include hip hop, Afro-Brazilian, and several styles of modern dance. While studying modern technique with Annie Rosenthal Parr at RoCo in Mill Valley, and also performing with a local hip hop dance company, she met contemporary choreographer, Stacey Printz, and became one of Printz Dance Project’s founding company members in 1997. For 15 years Alissa was lucky enough to dance professionally with PDP utilizing all her dance disciplines and had the opportunity to travel to places like LA, NYC, and Memphis, as well as Russia, Lithuania, and Ireland. She is thrilled to be dancing with Footnotes tap company since 2012 and to be part of the teaching staff at the Dance Center where she can share her dance experience with others.

Lyndsey Johnson – Ballet & Children’s Tap

Lyndsey started dancing when she was 3 years old and hasn’t stopped since. She was in the ballet company at Petaluma School of Ballet and performed in festivals within the Pacific region. Lyndsey performed in principal roles with the company such as Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty and Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. She has studied many forms of dance including tap, ballet, jazz and modern. Lyndsey has been teaching tap and ballet at the Dance Center for eight years. She is also the mom of two girls, Kylee and Eliana who also dance at the studio.

 

Shannon Lee – Ballet

After taking nearly 20 years “off,” Shannon is very happy to be back studying and teaching dance! As a child in San Diego, she fell in love with theater movement, gravitating most to tap and lyric/musical theater jazz. Her long time tap teacher was Pam Thompson-Spinner, of the California Rhythm Project . In her teens she embraced ballet “because it is good for you,” never as a performance art but to evolve as a well-rounded and balanced dancer. In college at UC Santa Cruz, Shannon was involved in the theater/dance program where she had the opportunity to work with Mel Wong, Tandy Beal, Cliff Keuter, and others. While in college, she taught jazz and turns classes at a hip-hop studio in Santa Cruz. In her 30’s she migrated from dance to shaolin chu’an fa, a Chinese martial arts form, in which she earned a black belt in 2012. “I don’t know if dancing

Rachel Kazarian – Hip Hop

Rachel started her dance training at the age of 3 in tap and jazz. While growing up, she competed as a tap dancer and in high school, was a member of Windsor High School’s dance team. She was a student at The Dance Center for several years before joining our staff of teachers. Rachel has trained at hip hop conventions as well as being a member of hip hop and contemporary companies at UC Davis. She is currently working on degrees in both business and dance at Sonoma State University. Her dance teachers were her biggest motivation to continue dancing and she is excited to be part of a great community of dancers in Sonoma County.

Alyson Oakley – Ballet & Children’s Tap

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