Andrea Blesso
Andrea Blesso has danced with each of the elements – underwater, 18ft in the air, spinning fire fans, and in the mountains of Portugal. She has many careers – as a Director of Dance at the Boston Center for the Arts, as a performer & Board member for EgoArt, Inc., as a model for artist Judith Larsen, as a Board member for ANIKAYA Dance Theater and Boston Dance Alliance. Throughout her dance life, Andrea has performed with Snappy Dance Theater, Bennett Dance Company, Falling Flight Project, Partners for Youth with Disabilities, and Annie Kloppenberg & Dancers, among others.
Andrea founded the current layers of dance programs at the Boston Center for the Arts in 2009 and has been refining and creating opportunities for the dancers of New England ever since. With over a decade of experience creating and managing dance programs in direct response to community need, Andrea has produced and partnered with over 90 dance companies in a program leadership role.
Smitha Radhakrishnan
Smitha Radhakrishnan is Professor of Sociology and LuElla LaMer Slaner Professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College. She is a feminist ethnographer of gender and globalization currently researching India’s microfinance industry. When she is not teaching or writing, she performs and teaches classical and contemporary Indian dance forms, especially Bharatanatyam. She is a longtime dancer with Aparna Sindhoor’s Navarasa Dance Theater, now based in Los Angeles, and serves on its board. In 2015, she established NATyA Dance Studio in Natick. Smitha earned her academic degrees — A.B., M.A., Ph.D – from the University of California at Berkeley.
Laura Levitan
Laura Levitan is Business Development Manager at Mintz who recently relocated to the Boston area from Chicago. With 15 years of experience in legal marketing and business development, Laura leads client acquisition, engagement and retention initiatives and develops brand awareness and market penetration strategies. Laura received her degree in political science from The George Washington University. As a childhood dancer Laura wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton lobbying for increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her passion continues to this day and she thrilled to support dancers across the Boston metropolitan area.
Jason Jordan
Jason Jordan is a teaching artist who teaches dance full time at Orchard Gardens K-8 Public School in Roxbury, where he has also been the director of dance for the BPS Summer Arts Intensive and BPS Citywide Dance Company. His professional dance career in the US and Canada began with Feld Ballets NY and encompassed dancing with Twyla Tharp, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens De Montréal and Rubberbandance Group, Cedar Lake Dance Ensemble, and Buglisi/Foreman Dance Company, where he was a principal dancer. He choreographed Stations for Vision Festival XV at the Abrons Arts Center. Locally he has performed with Fukudance and in Tony Williams’ Urban Nutcracker.
Qiong (Tiffany) Wu
Qiong (Tiffany) Wu is BDA’s summer 2019 intern. A graduate of the Beijing Dance Academy and a former professional ballroom dancer whose career was cut short by an injury, she is currently an M.A. candidate in Fine and Studio Arts Administration at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).