Courses
In The Studio
Modality
Auditioning for the Stage: Adult
Diana Trotter
Diana Trotter (she/her) is a Seattle-based actor, director, educator, coach, and the Founding Artistic Director of Artemis Theatre Project. Locally she has performed with Taproot Theatre Co, Annex Theatre, Center Stage, Second Story Rep, Thalia’s Umbrella, UW Theatre, and Fern Shakespeare. She has also been seen on stages in Texas, Illinois, Montana, California, Oregon and Idaho. Favorite roles include Mrs. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice, Roz in 9 to 5, Mae Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie, Vivian Bearing in Wit, and Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (twice!). Recent directing projects include Into the Woods (Icicle Creek Center for the Arts), Camelot, and Christopher Durang’s Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike (Contra Costa Theatre) and Steven Dietz’s Last of the Boys (The Modern, Spokane). Diana specializes in audition preparation and has taught auditioning master classes for the University of Washington, Seattle Youth Opera, and Viva Vocalists where she is also the acting coach for their musical theatre training program. Diana holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and is the former head of the acting program at Whitworth University in Spokane.
Dance Intensive + Audition Prep & Performance
Audition Prep Ages 12-14
Sophia Franzella
Sophia Franzella is a teaching artist and professional actor working in the Seattle area. After 11 years of classical ballet training, she decided to transition into the world of Theatre at the age of 14. After falling in love with Theatre in high school, Sophia earned her BFA in Theatre Arts from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas in 2013. She is also a 2014 graduate of A Working Group (a Meisner-technique acting program). Sophia has taught acting and dance throughout Seattle over the past 10 years (Lakeside Middle School, Village Theatre KIDSTAGE, Sing Out Seattle, STG, Mode Music, Coyote, 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle Rep, Taproot Theatre). Sophia also offers private lessons for audition preparation! When she is not teaching, Sophia works as a professional actor in Seattle. She is a co-founder and company member of the theatre lab Filament: A Collab Lab for which she often choreographs and directs. She is also a Pony World Theatre company member. Sophia also enjoys hiking with friends, reading, watching spooky movies, and learning new subjects!
Choreography & Performance
Auditioning for Musical Theatre Dance: Adult
Nicole Beerman
Nicole is an actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, teacher, visual artist, wife to Josh and mother to Max and Huxley. Nicole has lived and worked on both coasts, loves to create, garden, and do construction! On screen, Nicole has been seen in Nike, LG, and T-Mobile commercials. On stage in Adrift (Sam French Festival), Big Effing Deal! (Duet with Reggie Watts), Cabaret (Gregory Award Nominee), Mary Poppins, Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed, Once Upon A Time in New Jersey and many Village Originals (Village Theatre), The Constant Wife (Seattle Rep), Cabaret (5th Ave, AMTSJ, Ordway Center), Wonderful Town (5th Ave), Ming the Rude (Empty Space), Elephant and Piggie, Fire Station 7, Sleeping Beauty (SCT), Tapestry (Oregon Cabaret Theatre), and many more. As a choreographer and dancer Nicole had the honor of working with Sonya Tayeh and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with running the dance call for the original production of Head Over Heals. In New York, Nicole’s work has been seen at the HERE Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Astoria Performing Arts, The Management and Acting Manitou. In Seattle, at KIDSTAGE, Cornish, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, The Triple Door, Café Nordo, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Fantastic Z, and Art Institute of Seattle. Nicole is currently teaching at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle Film institute, and Westlake Dance Center. She has also taught at UW, Art Institute of Seattle, Hunter College High School, VAM Studios, 5th Avenue, Century Ballroom, McCarter Theatre Company, Jersey City Dance Academy, and The Studios. Nicole holds a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, is a certified Simonson Technique teacher and a member of Actors’ Equity.
Dance for Musical Theater
Jimmy Shields
I was born into a military family in Honolulu, HI and moved to the Pacific Northwest as a toddler. Already singing and dancing by the age of two, I began my formal dance training at the age of 8 while attending Elk Plain School of Choice, an arts elementary school that allowed me to study all disciplines of dance.
Over the years, my strong passion for music & the arts has given me the opportunity to sing and share the stage with the likes of Sugar Ray, Keith Sweat, (the REAL) Lady-A, Kim Archer and Tiffany Wilson. Singing has also allowed me to perform for the Seattle Seahawks Season Opener and the Make a Wish Foundation.
If you are local to the Seattle area, you may have seen me acting on stage at Village Theatre, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, or ACT Theatre. I’ve also directed and choreographed for Showtunes Theatre Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Village Theatre, Theatre Puget Sound and Tacoma Arts Live.
On this site you will get to see all sides of me. Be it through my words, my music, or my movement, I hope I make you feel something.
Street Dance Forms
Improvisational Practices
Alia Swersky
Alia Swersky is a movement artist, performer and educator deeply engaged in dance improvisation, durational time-based art, film, site-specific work, and environmental installation. She is an artist and an educator with degrees from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in dance from the University of Washington.
Her artistic path over the last two decades has been shaped by this yearning for deep and meaningful connections with people and places. As a co-creator, ritual maker, and a “horizontal” director, Alia seeks to touch others through dance, somatic presence, vulnerability, and fierceness. Her work ranges from full audience participation to intimate acts of One-to-One performances, site-specific dances for film and live performance, as well as durational time-based art that includes physical acts of endurance, repetition, stillness, subtlety, singing, soft energetic grace, abstraction, caricature, and a deconstruction of clichés such as extreme high femme expressions. Her teaching and art-making seek to create practices that embrace endurance on stage and in life as acts of resistance, resilience, release, and beauty.
As a performer, Alia has also toured nationally and internationally as a member of the LeGendre Performance Group and has performed in the works with many Seattle artists, some of which include The Maureen Whiting Company, Khambatta Dance Company, Jurg Koch, KT Niehoff, and Salt Horse.
As an educator, she has taught at Cornish College of the Arts for sixteen years and in the Seattle community at Velocity’s Strictly Seattle Festival, and the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). She was a long time Co-artistic director of Dance Art Group (DAG), a non-profit organization that promotes the practice and appreciation of dance and somatic education in the Seattle area, including the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.
Screendance
Social Dance Forms
Lucie Baker
Lucie Baker is a dance artist, educator, and expressive arts facilitator based in Seattle, Washington. Her parents met in a community folk dance group so social dancing is in her bones. She loves social dance for its joy, community, and expansive self-expression. As a teacher, she strives to create a supportive environment where students can connect and explore. Her classes integrate her background in western concert dance and social dance with her love of somatics and anatomy. From a young age she was surrounded by a diversity of dance styles including swing, ballet, modern, balkan folk dance, and more. Her curiosity for movement led her to pursue a career as a professional performer and choreographer in New York City and abroad working with many notable artists including Jane Comfort, Tamar Rogoff, Erica Essner, Phantom Limb and Seattle Opera. In her training, she earned a BFA from the Juilliard School and an MFA from the University of Washington. After many years of performing, creating, and teaching, she became interested in the intersection of dance and mental health and received her expressive arts therapy training at the Tamalpa Institute, founded by Anna and Daria Halprin. She continues to develop her artistic practice alongside while also serving as a faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, University of Washington and Century Ballroom.
Workshop: Dance as Pleasure
Jessica Jobaris
Jessica Jobaris is a Seattle-based choreographer whose dance-theatre works warp perception, guiding audiences to reconsider what is sacred and what is profane. In 2010, she launched Jessica Jobaris & General Magic, a dance-theatre company dedicated to nurturing artistic risk and community connection through dance. Jessica has taught nationally and internationally, receiving funding for her works from city, state, and corporate organizations. Jessical also holds a MA in Counseling Psychology (LMHCA) from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, and runs a private practice in Seattle.
Franklin Method® for Joint Health and Performance
Jenna Spinei
Jenna was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a child she was a competitive swimmer, equestrian, and soccer player. At age eight, she began dancing in her elementary school lunchtime hip hop club. The following year she enrolled in Dexter School of Dance Music & The Performing Arts. There she trained in jazz, ballet, tap, modern, musical theater, lyrical and was part of the competition company. In her teens, she began training at Studio 1 in Ann Arbor and joined the Dance Ensemble of Michigan, under the direction of TeDee A. Theofil. She also danced for the Pioneer High School Varsity Dance Team for four years and was captain for two.
Jenna attended the University of Michigan and received a Movement Science BS from the School of Kinesiology. She was a member of Cornrows Dance Company at the university and danced for companies off campus including Movement Artists’ Guild, People Dancing and AuxWerks Dance. She began teaching dance technique classes and coaching the Pioneer High School JV Dance Team. She also competed with the Dance UL Intervarsity Team while studying abroad at the University of Limerick. After returning from Ireland, Jenna became interested in the circus arts and trained on a variety of aerial apparatuses.
Following graduation, Jenna attended Goldsmiths, University of London, where she received a Dance Movement Psychotherapy MA. Her first year of clinical placement was in a primary school and the second was in a community mental health charity. In addition to academic movement investigation, Jenna studied with numerous movement artists around London, and continued her aerial training at The National Centre For Circus Arts. Afterward, she relocated for two years to Doolin, Ireland, where she taught full time for Broadway Dance and choreographed for the competition team.
Jenna returned to Michigan for two years, where she continued teaching dance technique classes and coached the Skyline High School Varsity Dance Team. She was a teaching artist for the University of Michigan Musical Society and a teaching associate for the University of Michigan Medical School. Jenna joined Youth Arts Alliance and began offering dance workshops and curating performance opportunities for youth in the justice system. She collaborated with the Wayne State University Stress, Trauma and Anxiety Research Clinic to study somatic interventions for addressing trauma in Syrian refugee youth. During this time, she received in depth Humphrey Technique training from Jillian Hopper and performed with Jillian Hopper Dance. She also met her creative collaborator and husband, Brett Campione. Their first performance together was at the Shape//Matter Movement Showcase.
Brett and Jenna moved to Seattle, where they are happily located today. Jenna began dance technique instruction in the area for the Cornish Preparatory Dance Program. She then transitioned to Bellevue College in 2021, where she is an adjunct professor of dance and choreographs for the drama department. She directed the Bellevue College Dance Company through 2024. In 2020, Jenna enrolled in the Seattle Level 1 Franklin Method® Educator Training and became dedicated to the practice. Currently, she is a licensed Level 3 Franklin Method® Educator and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist (RSME/T) through the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA). Jenna is an avid somatics researcher. Her interest in anatomy has led her to participate in multiple Dissection and Embodiment Experiences with EmbodyU at the Institute for Anatomical Research. Her personal movement practices include gyrokinesis, authentic movement and yoga. She loves traveling, cooking and comedy.
Auditioning for the Stage: Adult
Diana Trotter
Diana Trotter (she/her) is a Seattle-based actor, director, educator, coach, and the Founding Artistic Director of Artemis Theatre Project. Locally she has performed with Taproot Theatre Co, Annex Theatre, Center Stage, Second Story Rep, Thalia’s Umbrella, UW Theatre, and Fern Shakespeare. She has also been seen on stages in Texas, Illinois, Montana, California, Oregon and Idaho. Favorite roles include Mrs. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice, Roz in 9 to 5, Mae Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie, Vivian Bearing in Wit, and Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (twice!). Recent directing projects include Into the Woods (Icicle Creek Center for the Arts), Camelot, and Christopher Durang’s Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike (Contra Costa Theatre) and Steven Dietz’s Last of the Boys (The Modern, Spokane). Diana specializes in audition preparation and has taught auditioning master classes for the University of Washington, Seattle Youth Opera, and Viva Vocalists where she is also the acting coach for their musical theatre training program. Diana holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and is the former head of the acting program at Whitworth University in Spokane.
Creative Process
Contact Improvisation
Workshop: Dance as Pleasure
Jessica Jobaris
Jessica Jobaris is a Seattle-based choreographer whose dance-theatre works warp perception, guiding audiences to reconsider what is sacred and what is profane. In 2010, she launched Jessica Jobaris & General Magic, a dance-theatre company dedicated to nurturing artistic risk and community connection through dance. Jessica has taught nationally and internationally, receiving funding for her works from city, state, and corporate organizations. Jessical also holds a MA in Counseling Psychology (LMHCA) from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, and runs a private practice in Seattle.
Audition Prep Ages 12-14
Sophia Franzella
Sophia Franzella is a teaching artist and professional actor working in the Seattle area. After 11 years of classical ballet training, she decided to transition into the world of Theatre at the age of 14. After falling in love with Theatre in high school, Sophia earned her BFA in Theatre Arts from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas in 2013. She is also a 2014 graduate of A Working Group (a Meisner-technique acting program). Sophia has taught acting and dance throughout Seattle over the past 10 years (Lakeside Middle School, Village Theatre KIDSTAGE, Sing Out Seattle, STG, Mode Music, Coyote, 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle Rep, Taproot Theatre). Sophia also offers private lessons for audition preparation! When she is not teaching, Sophia works as a professional actor in Seattle. She is a co-founder and company member of the theatre lab Filament: A Collab Lab for which she often choreographs and directs. She is also a Pony World Theatre company member. Sophia also enjoys hiking with friends, reading, watching spooky movies, and learning new subjects!
Auditioning for Musical Theatre Dance: Adult
Nicole Beerman
Nicole is an actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, teacher, visual artist, wife to Josh and mother to Max and Huxley. Nicole has lived and worked on both coasts, loves to create, garden, and do construction! On screen, Nicole has been seen in Nike, LG, and T-Mobile commercials. On stage in Adrift (Sam French Festival), Big Effing Deal! (Duet with Reggie Watts), Cabaret (Gregory Award Nominee), Mary Poppins, Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed, Once Upon A Time in New Jersey and many Village Originals (Village Theatre), The Constant Wife (Seattle Rep), Cabaret (5th Ave, AMTSJ, Ordway Center), Wonderful Town (5th Ave), Ming the Rude (Empty Space), Elephant and Piggie, Fire Station 7, Sleeping Beauty (SCT), Tapestry (Oregon Cabaret Theatre), and many more. As a choreographer and dancer Nicole had the honor of working with Sonya Tayeh and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with running the dance call for the original production of Head Over Heals. In New York, Nicole’s work has been seen at the HERE Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Astoria Performing Arts, The Management and Acting Manitou. In Seattle, at KIDSTAGE, Cornish, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, The Triple Door, Café Nordo, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Fantastic Z, and Art Institute of Seattle. Nicole is currently teaching at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle Film institute, and Westlake Dance Center. She has also taught at UW, Art Institute of Seattle, Hunter College High School, VAM Studios, 5th Avenue, Century Ballroom, McCarter Theatre Company, Jersey City Dance Academy, and The Studios. Nicole holds a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, is a certified Simonson Technique teacher and a member of Actors’ Equity.