Staff
Our staff is a dedicated team of four artists, Cherie Hill, Felicitas Fischer, Karla Quintero, and Rebecca Fitton.
We share a passion for dance and social justice that manifests in Bridge Live Arts' organizational culture and programming. We are active in the dance field as choreographers, teachers, performers, activists, writers, community builders, and more.
Cherie Hill is a curator and the Director of Arts Leadership at Bridge Live Arts. She has co-curated Power Shift: Improvisation, Activism, & Community; Anti-Racism in Dance; and the Money in the Arts series. She co-presents on distributed leadership and worked with community engagement artists as the previous Director of Art in Community. Cherie is a researcher and has published articles in Gender Forum, the Sacred Dance Guild Journal, Dance Education in Practice, and In Dance. She presents at national and international conferences and has held multiple residencies, including choreographic residencies with Footloose Productions, Milk Bar Richmond, the David Brower Center, and CounterPulse’s Performing Diaspora.
An advocate for equity and inclusion, Cherie teaches students of all ages and abilities and produces performances in community-based and alternative spaces. She holds degrees in Dance and Performance Studies and African American Studies; Dance, Performance, and Choreography with graduate certificates in Women and Gender Studies and Somatics.
Cherie Hill | she/her
Director of Arts Leadership
Photo of Cherie Hill by Carla Rhea
Felicitas Fischer manages the Community Engagement Residency at Bridge Live Arts, one of B.L.A's primary programs supporting movement & dance artists in leading community-centered creative processes. Since joining in 2021, she has expanded her work to support marketing, web design and media production for the organization.
Graduated with a B.A. in Performing Arts & Social Justice, Felicitas works actively in the community as an organizer, creative strategist, and performer. She has worked with choreographers locally and internationally for the past 10 years, engaging in projects that reflect her interests in immigration, environmentalism, intersectional class struggle and labor. Her own artistic approach incorporates diverse movement practices rooted in exploration of the body, emphasizing kinesthetic research and psychophysical methods.
Felicitas is also a co-founder of Artists For Justice, and contributes annually to the dance journal, Stance on Dance. Currently, she is working towards an M.S in Applied Physiology & Kinesiology to further her research and work as a movement educator & somatic strength trainer.
Felicitas Fischer | she/her
Community Engagement Manager
Photo courtesy of the artist
Karla Quintero co-directs Bridge Live Arts with Cherie Hill and Hope Mohr and serves as B.L.A.'s Director of Marketing and Development. Quintero graduated from Barnard College with a BA degree in Urban Studies and later earned a BFA from the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. For five years she worked for the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives (NYC) supporting pedestrian safety and community health efforts in Latino and immigrant communities. Karla's performance work explores intimacy, consumption, and biculturalism. Recent highlights include the dance film Flavedoom, which screened at the 2021 San Francisco Dance Film Festival. Karla also enjoys performing in the works of other artists, including Gerald Casel, Catherine Galasso (NYC), Hope Mohr, and Maxe Crandall.
As an arts administrator, Karla worked with PUSH Dance Company coordinating their annual mixed-genre dance festival, PUSHfest for many years. She also served as the Production Manager for the Festival for Latin American Contemporary Choreographers in 2019.
Karla Quintero | she/her
Marketing & Development Coordinator
Photo of Karla Quintero by Neha Gautam
Rebecca Fitton is from many places and peoples. She cultivates community through movement, food, and conversation. Her work in the dance field as an artist-scholar, producer, and advocate centers on shifting cultural policy, asian american communities, and disability justice. She has been an artist-in-residence at Center (MI), The Croft (MI), LEIMAY (NY), EMERGENYC (NY), and received a 2020 New Work Grant from Queens Council on the Arts (NY).
Fitton serves as the Studio Director for Will Rawls, performs and writes audio description for Adrienne Westwood, and organizes direct action with Structures for Change and Dance Artists’ National Collective. She was a member of Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee from 2018-2020 and in 2021 was part of Dance/USA’s Institute of Leadership Training. She holds a BFA in Dance from Florida State University and an MA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin.
Rebecca Fitton | she/they
Director of Operations & Development
Photo of Rebecca Fitton by Sarah Annie Navarette
Image description: Rebecca, a mixed race Asian American person with messy short brown hair smiles. Their hands are in the pockets of a short sleeved, navy corduroy jumpsuit.
Board of Directors
B.L.A's Board of Directors is a passionate team of creatives, artists, and engaged individuals working to re-imagine Board leadership for a more equitable field. Board members contribute their time and resources to support Bridge Live Arts' mission in a way that feels personally significant and meaningful.
Jessi Barber (she/her) is a queer production manager, technical director, lighting designer and stage manager with over a decade of professional production experience in the Bay Area/Ohlone Land. She is a member of the non-hierarchical Steering Committee that produces the Queering Dance Festival (QDF), and has served as Production Manager at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (Berkeley) and as Producing Lead for Joe Goode Performance Group (SF).
Jessi Barber (she/her) is a queer production manager, technical director, lighting designer and stage manager with over a decade of professional production experience in the Bay Area/Ohlone Land. She is a member of the non-hierarchical Steering Committee that produces the Queering Dance Festival (QDF), and has served as Production Manager at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (Berkeley) and as Producing Lead for Joe Goode Performance Group (SF).
Jessi Barber
Photo courtesy of the artist
Board Member
Ranu Mukherjee is a visual artist. Her paintings and film installations cultivate ecological, somatic, feminist and multidimensional perspectives on time, energy and power to picture differently tuned worlds. She is Chair of the Film Programs at California College of the Arts, San Francisco.
Ranu Mukherjee is a visual artist. Her paintings and film installations cultivate ecological, somatic, feminist and multidimensional perspectives on time, energy and power to picture differently tuned worlds. She is Chair of the Film Programs at California College of the Arts, San Francisco.
Ranu Mukherjee
Photo by Taylor Johnson
Board Member
Lins Derry
Lins Derry is a researcher and principal at metaLAB (at) Harvard, an experimental arts, humanities, and design lab, where she researches how "choreographic interfaces" and "data kinesthetics" can be developed toward both functional and aesthetic ends. For more than a decade Lins was a performer with prominent American and Canadian dance companies, including Jose Navas/Compagnie Flak and Hope Mohr Dance, as well as a solo artist via her platform, Linsdans. In 2018, she began to look for a new medium that could elicit a similar social impact as dance but across multiple settings. This led her to the pervasive field of design where she now works at the intersection of data representation, human-computer interaction, and choreography.
Lins Derry
Photo c/o the artist
Board Member
Jessi Barber (she/her) is a queer production manager, technical director, lighting designer and stage manager with over a decade of professional production experience in the Bay Area/Ohlone Land. She is a member of the non-hierarchical Steering Committee that produces the Queering Dance Festival (QDF), and has served as Production Manager at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (Berkeley) and as Producing Lead for Joe Goode Performance Group (SF).
Holly Jones is a field based arts advocate, practitioner, and producer who is passionate about radical accessibility, equitable curatorial practices, and trust-based philanthropy. She is the Producing Director at Jacob's Pillow and serves on the boards of Bridge Live Arts, The Clive & Valerie Barnes Foundation, New England Presenters and The Croft Residency. Jones holds a masters degree in nonprofit leadership from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice and a B.F.A. in Dance from Marymount Manhattan College. She enjoys performing annually in The Bang Group's Nut/Cracked production and teaching community classes at Berkshire Pulse.
Holly Jones
Photo by Gracce Copeland
Board Member
Jessi Barber (she/her) is a queer production manager, technical director, lighting designer and stage manager with over a decade of professional production experience in the Bay Area/Ohlone Land. She is a member of the non-hierarchical Steering Committee that produces the Queering Dance Festival (QDF), and has served as Production Manager at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (Berkeley) and as Producing Lead for Joe Goode Performance Group (SF).
Afia Thompson-Co-founder of Bahiya Movement has performed nationally and internationally. Trained in West African, hip-hop, and modern dance. She continues to perform, teach, and direct dancers of all ages, gender, and body size. Afia and her daughter Nafi Thompson Artistic Director of Bahiya Movement created Believe In Self emerging artists mentorship program in 2018, a six-week residency for dancers looking to deepen their ongoing artistic practice, create connectivity within the Bay Area and instill skills to succeed as professional artists. www.bahiyamovement.com
Afia Thompson
Photo courtesy of the artist
Board Member
(See bio above in staff section)
Cherie Hill is B.L.A.'s Director of Arts Leadership, and the staff's board representative.
Cherie Hill
Photo by Carla Rhea
Board Member