director & founder

Christina Noel Reaves is a multidisciplinary performing artist, choreographer, and educator. She received her BA in Music: Voice Performance from Georgia State University and an MFA in Dance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. As a performer Reaves has worked with the likes of Danielle Russo Dance Co, Patricia Noworol Dance, Collectivodoszeta, Ivy Baldwin, Nathan Trice/Rituals, Monstah Black, Zoetic Dance Ensemble, expanDANCE, more.

Reaves has presented original work at Peridance Capezio Center, The Irondale Center, Judson Memorial Church, Teatro LaTEA, Triskelion Arts, Dance Theatre of Ireland, The Bessie Workshop, the DanceNOW Dancemopolitan Festival ,Joe’s PUB, LaMama, Legros Women in Dance Studio Series, Fete de L’Hurricaine Festival, DanceNOW Raw Festival, Dixon Placeʼs Crossing Boundaries Festivals and more. She originated “Rapture Of The Heroine (guurrrl)” on Zoetic Dance Ensemble of Atlanta in 2012 & 2013.

Reaves has been a teacher and choreographer for Dancewave of Brooklyn, Open House Nursery School, Muse Academy, and The Dalton School. She has led master classes and workshops for Irelandʼs Shawbrook School, Scotlandʼs Aberdeen International Youth Festival, and Zoetic Dance Ensemble of Atlanta. Reaves has been an Ambassador for Zoetic Dance and is the Resident Movement Instructor for The Harrower Professional Opera Workshop held annually in Atlanta

In 2011 Reaves founded her company, ChristinaNoel & The Creature creating cohesive works drawing on the unique talents of her performers.

In 2016 Reaves formed her own children’s performing company, The Ephyras, which derives its name from the youthful stage of a jellyfish lifecycle. Her process for Ephyras is to develop children’s technique by first focusing on their imaginations by employing exercises in creativity.

company manager

Liz Westbrook is a movement artist and choreographer originating from New Hampshire. She attended Bennignton College and The University of the Arts (BFA, Dance).

She has previously interned in dance administrative, education, and publication based roles with Critical Correspondence, Movement Research, Vermont Dance Alliance, Urbanity Dance, and Mark Morris Dance Group.

Westbrook was an instructor at Urbanity Dance in Boston, where she specialized in community-driven initiatives that supported children with physical and developmental disabilities, underfunded arts programs in schools, and immigrant-focused vocational training programs. Through her work, she harnessed the transformative power of dance and movement education to empower and uplift these communities.

To make dance, is to build a world. Liz approaches her collaborators with research as a way to invite them into her vision, which they shape together. Their practices become a study to examine and manifest these worlds. She creates these worlds to observe and acknowledge human experience — often experiences we might not otherwise acknowledge. 

She’s recently danced in work by: Katia Tubini, Anna Limberea, Nadine Gerspacher, Shaina Schwartz, Grant Jacoby, Laura Sanchez.

@liizwestbrook

www.lizwestbrook.com

director of education

faculty member

Tonya Goltsev (she/they) is a theatre-maker, educator, visual artist, and director based in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up between California and Moscow, she trained at the American Conservatory of Theatre in San Francisco. Her studies took her to New York and Berlin, and in 2020, she earned a BFA in Acting from the  Experimental Theatre Wing and a minor in Film Production, at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Tonya’s artistic influences include training with theatre and movement practitioners such as Enrico Stolzenburg, Monika Gossman, Kevin Kuhlke, K.J. Holmes, and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Previously, she taught theatre at Portola Valley Theatre Conservatory in the Bay Area, and developed Arts and STEM curricula at Curious Jane in Brooklyn. In 2023, she started the theatre program at The Ephyras, where she teaches acting, improv, and devised theatre in weekly classes and summer programs. Passionate about fostering spaces for laughter, creativity, and collaborative storytelling, Tonya is dedicated to empowering young performers through movement-based theatre.

faculty member, creature performer & collaborator

Isabelle Dayton (she/her) was pre-professionally trained in Chicago, Illinois at Extensions Dance Company under Lizzie MacKenzie before receiving her BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2020. After graduating she spent a year working professionally in Chicago with companies and collectives like Symbiosis Arts, Boom Crack!, and Identity Performing Arts. She is now currently based in Brooklyn, NY and working as a freelance artist with The Creature, Urban Tribe, Arsenal Movement, and Grace Tong. This is her second season with The Creature, and she’s looking forward to seeing how this next process will develop!

faculty member, creature performer & collaborator

Maddie Hopfield is a New York City-based dancer, performer, choreographer, writer, and taiko drummer (Casual Fifth, Taikoza). She has shown work at spaces including Kestrels, LifeWorld, the MAAS building, Urban Movement Arts, and Vox Populi. She currently makes work with Marin Day under the name PEPTALK. She has performed in the work of Barnett Cohen, Amelia Heintzelman, Paris Cullen & Sarah Zucchero, Lindsey Jennings, Maya Lee-Parritz, Leah Stein Dance Company, Philly Kerplop (Vince Johnson), Lily Kind, and Concept Kinetics ("Cricket" / James Colter), among others. She graduated from Bard College in 2017 with a BA in Dance and Written Arts. maddiehopfield.com

faculty member

Kaylin Williams is a dancer, choreographer, musician, and digital artist. She received her BFA in Dance Choreography and Performance from the University of Southern California's Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. As a dancer, Williams has collaborated in works with Dwight Roden, Desmond Richardson, Aubrey Lynch, Leyland Simmons, d. Sabela Grimes, Marcella Lewis, Amy O'Neal, Robert Battle, and Debbie Allen. Williams frequently choreographs works in collaboration with multidisciplinary artists such as animators, gallerists, projection artists, cinematographers, musicians, and singers, as well as contributing original music compositions to projects.

Her original choreographic works have been presented at film festivals, at the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Trinity Laban Conservatory in London, and at the Special Olympics opening ceremony. 

Williams is a teacher and freelance artist working in Brooklyn. Her mission is to give back to the vibrant NYC arts community that raised her, centering Afro-diasporic dance and experimentation in all her processes. 

creature performer & collaborator

Jonathan Matthews-Guzmán (they/them) joined The Creature in 2015 for Ash and Honey not long after graduating NYU Tisch with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Music. Their studies in work have taken them abroad to Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, Toscana Dance HUB, Springboard Danse Montréal, and the International Theatre Festival of Kerala. They have additionally performed and choreographed with Darrah Carr Dance, Valerie Green/Dance Entropy, This is Not a Theatre Company, mishiDance, and BREAKTIME. A collaborative musician, Jonathan sings in The Cecilia Chorus of New York and Cantori New York, accompanies dance classes at Tisch and Barnard College, and music directs at West Milford Presbyterian Church. They were a 2021 dance curatorial fellow at SMUSH Gallery, and their writing can be found at Eye on Dance and the Arts, Dance Magazine, and BAC Stories. Jonathan's teaching has brought them to PS107, Irish Arts Center, The Calhoun School, and The Ephyras, for which Jonathan assistant teaches. 

creature performer & collaborator

Rebecca Gual (she/her) is an Afro-Latine performer, choreographer, and project manager from Queens, New York. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Performance and Choreography from California Institute of the Arts. Gual creates dance works exploring involuntary emotional responses, dormant stimuli, and brutal honesty. Her works have been presented at venues including REDCAT, Ailey/Citigroup Theater, and Queens Museum. Alongside her choreography, she is a performer with ChristinaNoel and The Creature. rebecca-gual.com

creature performer & collaborator

Jamie is a freelance artist, performer, choreographer, and dance instructor in NYC. Originally from Long Island, NY, Jamie received her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from Adelphi University with a major in Dance and minor in Psychology, and studied abroad at the London Contemporary Dance School in the UK. As a choreographer, she has set pieces at Adelphi University, for music videos, and on various dance studios. As a performer, she has danced works by Ohad Naharin, Azure Barton, Alexander Ekman, Paul Taylor, Manuel Vignoulle, Alice Klock, Florian Lochner, William Briscoe, Wesley Ensminger, and Michelle Thompson Ulerich, among others. Jamie has been a movement artist with Urban / Tribe, VALLETO Dance, Zullo/Raw Movement, Cloude.nyc, and currently, SAXYN Dance Works, TAKE Dance, and ChrstinaNoel & The Creature.

company musician

Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer Cameron Mizell, has been part of the diverse New York City music scene for over a decade, performing in a wide variety of genres from experimental improvisation to bluegrass musicals, salsa bands to solo jazz guitar. As a band leader and solo artist, Mizell has released eight albums in the past 17 years, ranging from jazz-funk to Americana to avant-garde experimentalism, and has collaborated with or produced artists on dozens more recordings. His latest solo effort, a meditative album titled The Order of Things, is a cinematic trip through ambient and post-rock textures, melodies, and improvisations. The Order of Things was created to find balance and calm through slow, purposeful, meditative music. Said New York Music Daily of the result: “Quietly and efficiently, Mizell has put together a remarkably tuneful, eclectic, understatedly cinematic body of work. In a world overpopulated by guys who play a million notes where one would do, Mizell’s economical, purposeful style stands out even more.”

To hear his music and learn more, visit http://cameronmizell.com.

company musician

Andreas Brade was born in Waiblingen, Germany but moved Massachusetts to study music at Berklee College of Music where he received his BA. After Graduating with his masters in Music from Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusettes, Andreas moved to NYC. Since then he has been an accompanist at the Mark Morris Dance Center, the Martha Graham School, the Joffery Ballet School and played classes for Alvin Ailey, Peridance, Tisch NYU and many more. As modern dance composer, Andreas has been composing music for over five years for Cornfield Dance and is music was performed at the 2015 Bryant Park Summer Concert Series, University Settlement, Dixon Place and the Scranton Civic Theatre. Andreas has performed with several world music groups at festivals and venues such as the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Kennedy Center, Boston Symphony Hall, The Blue Note and the Apollo Cafe, to name a few.

visual media artist, company musician

Aeric Meredith-Goujon was raised in southern Indiana but has been a New Yorker for the past decade and a half. In 1999 he received an MFA from Pratt Institute and his photographic interests revolve around bodies in states of extreme activity. Music, erotic portraiture, dance and fashion are among the subjects he pursues. Aeric lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children. http://aericmg.com

project director & facilities