Gesine Moog was born in Germany in 1976 and received her Bachelor of Arts at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts 1997. After graduating she danced for several German companies, including the Frankfurter Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Staatstheater Mainz, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Saarländisches Staatstheater Saarbruecken and Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Munich. In 2004 Gesine was named a “dancer to watch” by the leading European magazine tanz.

In 2007 she went to Sweden, where Riksteatern and Batsheva Dance Company toured Ohad Naharin’s Kamuyot to schools. She was awarded the Riksteatern’s award for “Dancer of the year 2007” for her outstanding performance and dedication.

Since 2008 Gesine Moog has been a member of Cullberg Ballet, touring in Sweden and internationally. Throughout her career in Germany and Sweden she has performed a rich repertoire of multifaceted styles and pieces. Her experience spans classical and neoclassical ballet, modern and contemporary dance, body mind centring and many more. She has worked with, among others, Mats Eck, Ana Laguna, Ben van Cauwenbergh, Jiří Kylián, Crystal Pite, Johan Inger, Alexander Ekman, Gaetano Soto, Carolyn Carlson, Edouard Lock, Robert Cohan, Antony Rizzi, Benoit Lachambre, Eszter Salamon, Deborah Hay, Jefta van Dinther and Ian Kaler.

Since 2001 she has also created her own choreographic and creative works such as paintings, crafting with wood and performative installations.

Omagbitse Omagbemi received her BFA in dance at Montclair State University. In 2012 she was awarded a Bessie for Sustained Achievement in Performance. She has performed nationally and internationally with the Punchdrunk production “Sleep No More” in New York City and Shanghai as well as in works by Kat Válastur, Joanna Kotze, Yvonne Rainer, Neil Greenberg, Vicky Shick, Maria Hassabi, Heather Kravas, Jon Kinzel,  Deborah Hay, Ralph Lemon, Wally Cardona, David Gordon, Jeremy Nelson, Keely Garfield, Irish Modern Dance Theater, Walter Dundervill, David Thomson, Anna Sperber,  Bill Young, Pearson/Widrig Dance, Urban Bush Women, Shapiro & Smith, Gerald Casel, Barbara Mahler, Christopher Williams, Sean Curran and Kevin Wynn.

Miki Orihara, born in 1960, is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, for which she earned a Bessie Award in 2010. She has performed on Broadway in The King and I and with Elisa Monte, PierGroupDance, Lotuslotus, Rioult Dance, Twyla Tharp, Martha Clarke, Anne Bogart (SITI Company), and Robert Wilson. She has presented her own choreography in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and in Japan.

Her teaching credentials include numerous workshops in Japan, at Art International in Moscow, and at Peridance, the Ailey School, New York University, Florida State University, Henny Jurriëns Stichting (Holland), Les Etés de la Danse in Paris, and New National Theater Ballet School.  She is on the faculty of the Graham School and The Hartt School (University of Hartford). She has set Martha Graham’s work all over the world, including for Diana Vashineva’s Dialogue and on Wendy Whelan of the New York City Ballet.

As a choreographer, Miki Orihara premiered her solo work Searching Dimensions in New York in 1995, followed among others byVOICE, a piece for eight women, for M’Deux Ballet in Nagoya, Japan (2001), Stage (2008), Prologue (2014) and Shirabyoshi (2017). In 2018 she released the first Martha Graham technique DVD, collaborating with Dance Spotlight and the Martha Graham Center.  A second DVD for intermediate level is in development.  Her film Broken Memory was featured at Dance on Camera Festival in New York in 2017. Miki Orihara was featured in the Inaugural performance of Peace is… at the United Nations as a part of the Permanent Mission of Japan in April 2017 and August 2018.

Tim Persent was born in South Africa in 1964 and has been a dancer and artistic collaborator with the dance company LeineRoebana in Amsterdam since 1994.

After graduating from Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in 1986, he initially danced for Second Stride and Rambert Dance Company in London. From 1987 to 1994 he was a permanent member of the Rotterdamse Dansgroup. In the early 1990s he also worked with Ton Simons and the Brenda Daniels Dance Company in New York. In the Netherlands, he continued to perform in works by the choreographers Krisztina de Châtel, Paul Selwyn Norton, Michael Schumacher and Roland Shankula.

Tim Persent received two important Dutch arts awards for his dancing, the Silver Dance Prize in 1993 and the Golden Swan in 2004. When he celebrated 25 years on the stage in 2012, he presented “A Dance Concert” at Holland Dance Festival in The Hague, featuring choreographies by Ton Simons, LeineRoebana, Richard Alston and Ann van den Broeck.

Parallel to his dance career, Tim Persent has worked for several cultural institutions in different capacities. From 2005 to 2016 he was Artistic Director of the International Theaterschool Festival (IST) in Amsterdam. He remains on the board of directors of the dance collective MAN II O and the KunstenDialoog Foundation. He has also consulted for the Dutch Arts Council and the Dutch Performing Arts Fund. Since 2017 Tim Persent is teaching at CODARTS Dance Academy in Rotterdam and since March 2019 he is the first certified MUNZ FLOOR and MUNZ BARRE coach in the Netherlands.

Jone San Martin, born in Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain, in 1966, studied dance with Mentxu Medel at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and at Mudra International in Brussels. She was a dancer at the Ballet Nacional de España, at Ulmer Theater, with Jacopo Godani in Brussels and at the Ballet Royal de Wallonie in Charleroi. She joined Ballett Frankfurt in 1992 and was a dancer at The Forsythe Company from 2005 to 2015.

Since 2000, she has choreographed many of her own works. She was a guest at the Avignon Festival in 2004 where she performed the solo “Tourlourou”, created for her by Carlotta Sagna, as part of the ‘Sujets à Vif’ series. In 2006, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asociación de Profesionales de Danza de Gipuzkoa. Since 2014, she is Associated Artist of Dantzaz Kompainia in Donostia. She curated the Performing Arts Programme for DDSS16 (Donostia/San Sebastian Cultural City in Europe 2016). Jone has been a member of the Dance On Ensemble since 2015.

Marco Volta, born in Turin in Italy in 1969, studied dance at “Lo Studio” Dance School Bussoleno, Italy. He has been dancing for several theatres and independent dance companies in Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland since 1994, among them Balletto Teatro di Torino, Tanztheater Wien, Theater Freiburg and Cois Ceim Dance Theatre.

Marco Volta has always been fascinated by the fusion of different dance styles that have led him to collaborate with flamenco and urban dance artists. As a choreographer he has created several works that have been presented in Seoul, New York, Turin and Basel, among other places. He is currently contributing to a long-term research project on the subject of “rehearsal as performance”, both as a dancer and a choreographer.

Aside from his dancing, Marco Volta has a teaching practice at several academies, theatres and training institutions for professional dancers. He is currently Lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts, Bachelor of Arts in Contemporary Dance and Higher Education for Contemporary and Urban Stage Dance. He also works with children and teenagers, for example with the miniMIR Education Dance Program and the Young Ensemble Hermesdance. In 2015 he obtained a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Dance Culture at the University Bern.

Lia Witjes Poole was born in 1979 in Ontario, Canada where she began her dance training. She received her formal education at Arts Umbrella in Vancouver, British Colombia. While in their Youth Dance Company, she danced with renowned Canadian choreographers such as Joe Laughlin, Gioconda Barbuto and Wen Wei Wang.

Lia Witjes Poole started her professional career in Toronto as a company member of Desroisiers Dance Theatre. In the Netherlands, she has performed as an independent artist with such choreographers as Pieter de Ruiter, Jennifer Hanna, Itzik Galili, Omar Rajeh and Heather Ware, and has also made two dance films with Ivar Hagendoorn. In 2002, Lia became a regular artist with the acclaimed Dutch dance company LeineRoebana.

After the birth of her two daughters, she has taught ballet and contemporary dance at the Amsterdam Academie voor Theater en Dans, The Dutch National Ballet Academy, Codarts in Rotterdam and has come full circle to Canada where she has been developing an international educational exchange between Arts Umbrella and the Dutch dance institutions. Lia Witjes Poole joined the Dance On Ensemble in January 2019, performing in Rabih Mroué’s piece, Water between three hands.