Moving Life Stories Coordinator
Tom Truss is a performer, creator and educator. His 30 year career includes dancing, acting, choreographing, directing, devising and teaching. He toured with the Liz Lerman/Dance Exchange (’89-’94); ran his own dance company (’94-’01); was a community artist at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (’94-’99) leading workshops at local schools and various communities throughout Berkshire County; taught at American Dance Festival (’93-’98); and has been a teaching artist with Flying Cloud Institute since ‘95. Tom has been published in Dance Magazine, Contact Quarterly, and was a frequent contributor to OutRightRadio an award winning radio show on PRI. He has performed all around the world and his work has been seen at the Kennedy Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, New Zealand’s Wellington Fringe, American Dance Festival, On the Boards, Dance Place and The Foundry to name a few, as well as in parking lots, rivers, furniture stores and cars. Truss graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Texas; obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography from the University of Iowa; a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the College of Wooster; is an AmSAT certified teacher of the Alexander Technique; and is a level one certified Internal Family Systems practitioner. Some awards Tom has received are Best Choreography – Austin Critics Table Awards (HAIR), Best Actor- Austin Critics Table Awards (The Idiot), Best Actor Nominee – B. Iden Payne Awards (The Idiot), New England New Works grant – New England Foundation of the Arts, and an Artist Fellowship – Massachusetts Cultural Council. Currently he is touring a dark comedy, solo show about growing up queer called, Tell me what you learned Tuesday, and ReWritten, a multimedia evening length duet co-created with Matthew Cumbie about the intimate relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Kim has studied a variety of dance styles and has come to love the traditional dances of Africa. She has been studying, teaching, performing, and sharing these dances with children and adults for more than 30 years. Kim holds a Masters Degree in Education and her extensive classroom teaching experience makes her dance classes accessible to students of all levels. In addition to Berkshire Pulse, she currently teaches throughout the Berkshire public school system in grant funded programs, is a faculty artist at Berkshire Art Center, and program coordinator for parent/child education at CHP. She has been working with Berkshire Pulse since its inception as the Flowering Child Performing Arts Program in 1996.
Teak Welch (They/Them) grew up in Dallas where they attended the Dallas Ballet Center for 15 years. They studied ballet, tap, jazz, modern, hip hop, and lyrical. They were a teaching assistant while there and went on to teach Musical Theater dance in their summer workshops for the next 4 years. They attended Booker T. Washington HS for the Performing and Visual Arts, where they split their studies between theater and dance.
Teak has been involved in professional theater since a very young age and continues to love this form of expression more than twenty years later. They grew up performing with their musical parents on the road and have appeared in many productions in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area over the years. They performed on an Equity stage for the first time at the age of ten in a production of Peter Pan as Michael Darling. To this day, they refuse to ever truly grow up. Some favorite roles include Hen in Giggle Giggle Quack- Dallas Children’s Theater National Tour; Kelli in Hands on a Hardbody; Bess in The Human Comedy; Dre/Rhiannon/Evelyn/Others in Precious Little; Anna (Original readings) in Creep: The Musical; Eveline in (Original reading), The Manufactured Myth of Eveline Flynn. And the cherry on top was dancing in the prominent LGBTQIA+ fundraising event, Broadway Backwards, in 2018.
Wendy Welch happily moved to the Berkshires from Dallas in 2019. She was in WAM Theatre’s zoom production of ‘Roe’, the WAM Gala at the Mahaiwe, and directed and performed in ‘A Broadway Cabaret’ at Dewey Hall in Sheffield the last 2 Decembers. She has spent her 35 year career in the theater as an actor, director, coach, and teacher. She received her BFA in Acting from SMU, and did graduate studies there as well. She studied at HB Studio and was an intern at Chelsea Theater in NYC. While living in NYC she and husband, singer/songwriter Willy Welch, and their band were regulars in the NYC folk circuit (Folk City, Bitter End, Speakeasy, West Bank Café) and around the country. In Dallas, Wendy worked at most of the D/FW theaters and regionally, in roles from Margaret Johnson in Light in the Piazza, Sally Durant in Follies, Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman, Sonia in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Madame Armfeldt in Little Night Music, and Mrs. Bennet in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice, to name a few. She has been seen in many commercials, TV: Murder Made Me Famous, Deadline Crime, Barney and Friends, Sweet Tornado, Film: Upstream Color, Occupy Texas, Cyberdancing, and the Emmy Award nominated documentary Shatter The Silence. Wendy has taught voice and coached privately for over 25 years. She taught Voice and Diction at SMU, Musical Theater and Acting at Richland College, and Musical Theater/Performance/Audition Master Classes at SMU, OCU and USI, as well as in public professional settings. She has taught and directed a number of musicals in colleges, and teen camps including Dallas Theater Center, Lyric Stage, Dallas Ballet Center, Park Cities Dance.
Isadora Wolfe is a dance-theater artist located in New York City and the Berkshires. She is currently an Artistic Associate of Punchdrunk, following her tenures as Resident Director and Associate Artistic Director at Sleep No More. Isadora has collaborated with makers such as Johannes Wieland (Kassel, Germany and original member of Wieland’s NYC company), Martha Clarke (Garden of Earthly Delights, Angel Reapers), Punchdrunk (Sleep No More), Richard Jones (The Hairy Ape), David Auburn, Maxine Doyle and Gerald Casel. She has taught for companies and institutions including Alvin Ailey II, Ballet Hispanico, Jacob’s Pillow, Marymount Manhattan, NYU’s Tisch School, Rutger’s University and Springboard Dance Festival; and is on faculty at The Juilliard School where she continues to develop her Acting for Dancers course. www.isadoramovementarts.com
Daphne Zneimer is originally from Los Angeles, CA where she trained with Los Angeles Classical Ballet, Yuri Grigoriev, and Marat Daukayev School of Ballet. When in Los Angeles, she has performed with Royal Danish Ballet, Los Angeles Classical Ballet and been a guest artist for Aoelian Ballet. Daphne has studied during the summers with ABT, the Kirov Academy, Boston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet School, and LINES Ballet. Daphne spent a decade in San Francisco dancing nationally and internationally with Liss Fain Dance, Napoles Ballet, Adhesive Dance Theatre, Perceptions West, Maligrad, and Push Up Something Hidden. Daphne graduated with a B.F.A in Ballet Pedagogy from The Hartt School, University of Hartford. There she was featured in La Bayadere, Sleeping Beauty, works by Martha Graham, the title role of Juliet in Jean Grand-Maitre’s Romeo and Juliet and, performed with Adam Miller Dance Project. When Daphne moved back to Los Angeles she earned her pilates certification from Whole Body Method. Daphne is now teaching dance and pilates at Marat Daukayev School of Ballet and Bodyscape PT Clinic. Her focus is using all her ballet, modern, and pilates knowledge to build strong and healthy movers and dancers.
