Brendan & Arielle Dancing at Bridal Expo. Photo credit: Carrie Swim for Pas de Deux Bridal

Photo credit: Carrie Swim

About the Artists

Brendan first encountered Arielle on the blues/fusion dance floor, where they immediately had a remarkable and dynamic synthesis of their diverse dance backgrounds (which collectively include ballet, ballroom, blues, capoeira, contact improv, contemporary, flamenco, fusion, international folk, jazz, kizomba, latin, modern, parkour, swing, tango, tap, and zouk). After dancing together socially for a couple of years in a very sporadic fashion, they finally wised up to the fact that they had an unusual connection with unique potential, that it went far beyond a fun spin around the floor. There was really no viable reason not to explore a serious partnership and see where it would take them. They began to dance wherever and whenever they were inspired, with the object of making dance a part of real life rather than confined to a prescribed context, and soon both they and their observers came to recognize their work for the art that it was. Brendan and Arielle have been exploring and performing together since 2015, and also enjoy teaching fusion workshops on such subjects as connection, rhythm & flow, and how to build a successful dance dialogue between partners. In 2019, they expanded and began to build a flexible roster of other like-minded dance artists and collaborators with whom they develop and create new work.


Arielle

Arielle is a multifaceted artist whose inspiration constantly seeks its equilibrium among visual, sonic, and physical elements. An avid fusion dancer, her experience includes ballet, tap, modern, contact improv, Luigi jazz, modern/contemporary, salsa, tango, zouk, blues, swing, ballroom/latin, flamenco, and American square dancing. With multiple degrees from the Juilliard School (music) and Fashion Institute of Technology (fashion design, haute couture), Arielle explores the convergence and interdependence of many art forms - especially dance, music, and fashion/costume design - while striving to achieve fluidity and flow in every collaboration. Arielle is a 2021 recipient of the City Artists Corps Grant for her multidisciplinary work. For more info, on Arielle’s other pursuits, please visit www.arielleharp.com.


Brendan Patrick McGlynn

Brendan McGlynn grew up social dancing to Motown tunes at his family's house parties. During college, he toured with an international folk dance ensemble. Brendan learned the Lindy Hop hanging out with the legendary Frankie Manning, and later taught the dance at New York City's leading dance schools, including DanceSport and You Should Be Dancing. He has performed on numerous occasions, including at Radio City Music Hall with Tony Bennett, at the Rainbow Room with Nell Carter, and at the Mohegan Sun Casino with Ben Vereen. Brendan believes in the healing power of dance, and revels in sharing his love of the art form with all those around him.


Andrea Giamettei / DJ GiaSoul

Dancer, DJ, and actor extraordinaire, Andrea is co-host of our monthly fusion dance event, The Pearl Dive! Andrea’s love of music, dance, and playing music for others started as a child in a house filled with eclectic music and dancing. She had her first taste of Djing in the wilds of Maui and has reemerged recently to DJ on the Fusion partner dance scene. Andrea’s curating of music for dancers is a passion fueled by riding the wave of the group to ignite interesting waves of rhythms to dance with inspired from contemporary to hip-hop, to Latin-based rhythms, to lyrical and instrumental music of all kinds. Andrea strives to evoke a journey for partner dancers to engage with each other in a mutual movement meditation to create intimate connection, creative artistry, and freedom of expression.


Emily Smyth Vartanian

Emily Smyth Vartanian (she/her) is delighted to be appearing with the Pearling Principle. She is a graduate of the UCLA Dance/World Arts and Cultures program, the CTI Producing Program, DNA’s Choreographic Investigation Course, Ann Reinking’s Broadway Theatre Project, and the Head Troublemaker of her own company, General Mischief Dance Theatre. Her choreography has been presented at venues ranging from Radio City, the Capitol Theater, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, and Proctors in New York, the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington D.C., to the Freud Playhouse, Highways, and the House of Blues Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Selected performance credits include Weird Al Yankovic’s “Mandatory World Tour”, the national tour of Forever Swing’s “Zoot Suit", New York appearances with Above & Beyond Dance, Metronome Tap, Elise Long/Spoke the Hub, Above the Belt, Fly-By-Night’s Aerial Dance Festival, and the Manhattan Prairie Dogs. She has been taught over the years by Karen Gayle, Rennie Harris, Keith Terry, Cheng-Chieh Yu, Diane Laurenson, and Dawn Hillen. An avid Lindy Hopper, she also served as a producing consultant for events including the Frankie 95 Celebration at the Manhattan Center honoring Frank Manning. She is also a certified yoga instructor and a complete nerd. Visit www.generalmischief.com for more info.


Tybladt Ulrich

Tybaldt Ulrich, a West Coast Swing and Hustle Champion, has traveled all over the country competing and teaching. Tybaldt specializes in the Swing family of dances, (many of which are danced to modern Pop and R&B) and teaches a variety of regional styles, including West Coast Swing, Carolina Shag, Houston Whip, Lindy Hop, Charleston, Balboa, East Coast Swing, Smooth Lindy, Collegiate Shag, and North Texas Push. Tybaldt got his training with the early masters of these dances which date back to the '30s. He also has a strong musical background, having earned a degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of North Texas. There he studied and performed traditional music from Ghana, Indonesia, Southern India, Brazil, Trinidad, and Cuba, including 6 years performing with various Steel Drum bands. With an emphasis on partnering essentials, his objective is to inspire joy and confidence in the dance eperience, imbuing it with groove and flow throughout.

Lynne St. Clare Foster

Lynne St Clare Foster, a New York City based visual artist and Illustrator, lives with her husband Kannan Menon and 2 French Bulldogs on the Upper West side. The conceptual portrait is the foundation of both her personal and commercial work, and brings light to social issues through conversation, interview and sometimes humor. You can find her illustration work published monthly in the Indypendent. Her most recent work, "The Gender Project, reimaging gender", is a visual narrative that tells the stories of people who exist on the gender spectrum and identify as non-binary. As an aside, Lynne plays in the field of street photography, traveling and documenting people all over the world. She is the founder of the Tuesday/Thursday Jazz Sketch night at The Society of Illustrators and teaches at Pratt Institute and City College. When not in her studio you can find Lynne eating Laksa and drinking cappuccino while sketching in Kuala Lumpur, traveling the world, or at home in New York drawing at The Met or at Bethesda Fountain, her favorite location. For more information, please visit www.lynnestclarefosterillustration.com.


Sydney Schiff

Sydney Schiff received her bachelor's degree in History of Science and a Certificate in the Program in Dance from Princeton University, and her Master of Fine Arts in Dance with a focus on Choreography and a Certificate in World Performance Studies at the University of Michigan. Her MFA thesis explored Brazilian Zouk as a convergence of partnered social dancing, concert dance, and performance in everyday life through multimedia collaboration. ​While pursuing her New York City-based performance and choreographic career, she was a 2012-2013 Arts Fellow at Drisha Institute for Jewish Education and a 2014 resident artist at Dance Omi International Dance Collective. She has presented work at numerous venues including Princeton University's Richardson Auditorium, Dixon Place, Manhattan JCC, Center for Performance Research, Congregation Ramath Orah, The Tank, and Judson Church. Since January 2016, she has traveled throughout North America and Europe to study Brazilian Zouk dancing and pedagogy, teach workshops, DJ and co-organize Zouk events. By sharing and presenting content from communities in which we are immersed, Sydney hopes that her work sparks introspection and dialogue among diverse audiences about their own journeys and suggests that journeying is a state of being and provides a basis for unity and universality. More info at www.sydneyschiffdanceproject.com and www.sydneyzouks.com.



Cherise Tricia Fung


Cherise's first experiences with music and dance began with piano, ballet, tap, and Irish step. However, the rest of her dance journey has been an informal one. In high school, she was the first girl on the tech crew in drama club. In college, she focused on vibraphone while using her admin talents to support music festivals produced by the director of Cornell University's experimental jazz band. He saw the value of the Internet early on and urged her to learn HTML when email was still new on campus. During the Great Recession, she herded game designers and rocket scientists as a volunteer track leader for I-CON and DragonCon. That HTML came in very handy for remotely wrangling all the moving pieces and time zones. An Astor Piazzolla CD at an Ithaca music shop spurred her on to seek out private Nuevo tango lessons and do the impossible after moving to NJ-- dance to his intense music. After taking a moderate hiatus from dance, Cherise went all in by adding west coast swing and fusion to the tango foundation, starting with 2013's TIPDI (The International Partner Dance Intensive), then the Denver Fusion Exchange, Motley Hue and the DJ Experiment. A workstudy position at Dardo Galletto Studio (DGS) lured her deeper into the shadowy world of Argentine Tango, where she managed the volunteer program for a year. She then branched out into the wider dance community providing admin support for popular NYC milongas and fusion dances. In the spring of 2020, she began minding the registration desk for The Pearling Principle's Elements of Fusion workshops and their nascent bi-monthly social dance, The Pearl Dive. When pandemic lockdowns went into place, she suggested they could move their activities online to Zoom just like all the tango teachers, which is how she joined the Collective and has been supporting their recurring online event series Soirée des Muses behind the scenes ever since.


Additional and Past Collective members include:

Kelly Lynne Epstein

Tara Moore

Kathleen Evans

Arnaud Espanel

Joe Russo

Tova Moreno

George Henik

Ray Johns

Josef Schlech

Angel Akili