Saint Joseph Ballet Faculty

Jenn Bassage Bonfil holds a B.F.A. in Dance Performance from Chapman University where she earned numerous awards for outstanding performances and contributions to dance.  As a certified Pilates instructor Jenn was on faculty at Chapman University for three years.  She taught ballet at Orange County Regional Ballet where she appeared as a guest artist in many of their full length ballets.  Jenn teaches ballet and modern for Saint Joseph Ballet and dances professionally with Backhausdance. 

Richard Bowman was born in Auckland, New Zealand and received his ballet training at the West Auckland Ballet. Mr. Bowman pursued his ballet studies at the Royal Ballet School in London. He toured with the Royal Ballet during the company’s tour of the Soviet Union as well as being a member of the Vienna Volksoper’s corps de ballet, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the Leipzig Ballet, the Australian Ballet, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. In 2004 Mr. Bowman moved to Southern California and opened Danse Conservatory where he teaches with his wife Melissa Allen Bowman. He has continued to appear as a guest artist including in Ballet Pacifica’s The Nutcracker, University of California Irvine’s production of Balanchine’s Serenade, Riverside Ballet’s production of Swan Lake Act II, and Inland Pacific’s production of Dracula. From 2005 until recently he was Company Ballet Master and Music Editor as well as appearing in all productions of the City Ballet of San Diego.

Helen Clarke has been teaching dance in Orange County since 1964.  Many of her students have gone on to dance with professional ballet companies and have attended college as dance majors.  She is currently on the faculty at the Backhaus Contemporary Dance Center.

Christiana Melendez Mann joined Saint Joseph Ballet as a student at the age of ten and graduated eight years later.  She attended the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City with the help of Saint Joseph Ballet.  Christiana has danced professionally with Ballet Hispanico of New York, and the Metropolitan Opera, among others.  Christiana returned to Saint Joseph Ballet in 2005 and performed at REDCAT in Los Angeles with other alumni and current students.

Dale A. Merrill is the Chair of the Chapman University Department of Dance. Prior to moving to Southern California, Dale was the Artistic Director of Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle Washington, a repertory jazz company of national prominence performing works by Ann Reinking, Lar Lubovitch, and Lynne Taylor-Corbett. While in Seattle Dale received recognition and awards for his community leadership including the prestigious Corporate Council for the Arts Unsung Hero Award in 2002 and a 2001 Rudy, a national award presented by Safeco Insurance Company for community leadership and advocacy. Dale has over 20 years of choreographic credits including the Seattle Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Fundraising Auction, and Voices Across America starring Paul and Mira Sorvino for Public Television, in addition to numerous original works and musical theater productions. Recently, Dale’s work was present at the 2004 American College Dance Festival Gala performance representing Chapman University. Dale has been a guest teacher for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Washington Contemporary Ballet, Seattle Center Academy of Arts & Science, University of Montana, University of California Irvine, and the University of Washington. Dale is also currently involved as a teacher and artistic advisor for Saint Joseph Ballet in Santa Ana, California.

Kara Miller is a multi-media dance artist.  She received her B.F.A. from The Juilliard School in 1993 and served as the Artistic Director of the Omega Dance Company while based in New York City.  She moved to California to pursue an interest in technology.  She has collaborated and presented digital dance projects internationally in Prague, Canada, Mexico, and Sri Lanka.  Currently Kara is adjunct faculty teaching Dance and Digital at The University of California Irvine.

Omar Olivas, born and raised in Santa Ana, CA began dancing with Backhausdance in the summer of 2007. He began his training at Saint Joseph Ballet under the direction of Beth Burns. He recently completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Dance Performance at the University of California, Irvine where he graduated as a Haggerdy and William Gillespie Scholar. At UCI Omar was a member of Donald Mckayles student repertory company, Etudes. He has performed in many masterpieces – George Balanchine’s Serenade, William Forsythe’s New Sleep, Donald Mckayle’s The Mask of the Red Death, Songs of the Disinherited, Remember Journey, and Personal. He has attended the American Dance Festival, Jose Limon Company Intensive, Idyllwild Summer Arts School, and Impuls Tanz in Vienna. Most recently Omar performed internationally at the Conservatoire de Paris in Paris and at Singapore’s inaugural Dans Festival 2006. He has studied and worked with Mark Haim, Jodie Gates, Gerri Houlihan, Jennifer Nugent, Anouk Van-Dijk, Douglas Becker, and Ming-Lung Yang.

Rebeca Ramos was born in Mexico City and graduated with an Advanced Certificate from the Royal Academy of Dancing at age 16.  Soon after, she joined the National Ballet Company of Mexico where she performed as Chorus du Ballet and soloist for the next ten years.  Rebeca has been a member of Saint Joseph Ballet’s faculty since 1998 and served as a rehearsal assistant for The Music Came Last, All Heaven Broke Loose, and Mi Corazón Canta, each with casts of over 100 dancers.

Amy Sennett Starner, originally from Montana, has been dancing professionally for 15 years. She has performed with many concert dance companies as well as performed commercially throughout the United States and Internationally. Amy has worked with legendary choreographer, Donald McKayle, as his assistant for the last three years. Her teaching experience includes Butler University, the University of Washington, the University of Montana, Ballet Pacifica, under the direction of Ethan Steiffel, American Ballet Theater’s Summer Intensive, and the University of California, Irvine where she recently completed her MFA in Dance.

Sarah Swenson was recently named Dance Education Director for Saint Joseph Ballet and is the Artistic Director and principal choreographer of Long Beach-based Vox Dance Theatre.  From 1990 to 1996 she was Rehearsal Director for the Alvin Ailey Student Performance Group, and taught the Lester Horton technique and performance skills at the Alvin Ailey School in New York City. She received her M.F.A. from California State University, Long Beach in 2000, and has taught and performed throughout the United States, Asia, and the Middle East. Sarah also works with post-modern mavericks Simone Forti and Rudy Perez in Los Angeles.

Musician Biographies

Monti Ellison is an accomplished percussionist, composer, performer and teacher. He has performed worldwide as a soloist with Harry Belafonte, Stephanie Mills, Lonnie Liston Smith, Little Steven and others. As a dance musician, Monti spent 15 years at the Alvin Ailey School in New York where he was head staff musician. He is currently an accompanist at CSU, Long Beach, Loyola Marymount University, Orange Coast College, Cypress College and Saint Joseph Ballet. He has composed numerous dance scores including "Divining", choreographed by Judith Jamison’s for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Monti is a former dancer and trained in New York for six years in Dunham, Horton and Graham techniques, jazz dance and ballet, and also teaches West African dance and drumming.

Yoshi Gurwell was classically trained as a pianist in Tokyo, Japan. Since coming to Los Angeles in the 1990’s, she was introduced to the ballet world. In a short time, she became very interested in ballet, so trained and studied as an accompanist. She has spent countless hours viewing the works of many major companies and choreographers, attending performances, as well as documentaries on DVD and video, of works from the early eighteenth century to the present. She is also studying and arranging music of many ballet composers. Yoshi takes ballet classes, when time permits, to gain a dancer’s perspective, which was a great help when she recorded the tailored arrangements for her CD, "Music for Ballet Lovers Vol. 1". Yoshi is currently on staff of the Dance Dept. at Cal State Univ. Long Beach, as well as at Westside School of Ballet in West Los Angeles, Saint Joseph Ballet in Santa Ana, and South Bay Ballet in Torrance. She has also had the opportunities to work with many former and present professional dancers, including Alexi Moskalenko from the Bolshoi Ballet, Colleen Neary of the New York City and Pacific Northwest Ballet, Susan Jaffe, Melissa Hale Cole of ABT, Patricia Barker of Pacific Northwest Ballet and Evelyn Cisneros-Legate formerly with the San Francisco Ballet, Thordal Christensen, who danced with The Royal Danish Ballet, New York City Ballet, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and who is Co- Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet with his wife, Colleen Neary.

Brian Sepel was born, and lived most of his life, in Cape Town, South Africa. After completing school and a compulsory stint in the army, he decided to pursue his ambition to become a professional musician. There was no formal musical education available at that time and place, so all his education, music, composition or otherwise was self taught and is still constantly being honed amongst peers and colleagues. After a career in advertising in South Africa, he immigrated to Irvine, CA. Having had enough of dealing with the advertising and corporate world, he chose not to go that route and somehow drifted into dance accompaniment. It has become a new passion as well as his living. He is now Brian Sepel, dance accompanist/composer.