Team Group: Teaching Artists

Ashley Hartka received her dance degrees from SUNY Purchase (BALA, 1995) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (MFA, 2005). Ashley found her passion for teaching early on with Flowering Child long before it became Berkshire Pulse. She has since taught dance in multiple ways to a wide variety of populations, from teaching college students at the University of Colorado and at SUNY Albany; lower school students in NYC public schools; technique classes to many age groups in various local programs and studios; and movement exploration classes to teens and adults in community settings, both indoors and out.

Ashley greatly enjoys the choreographic process, movement exploration, improvisation, and the art of movement in the everyday. She has been choreographing and performing in her own work and has had the privilege to perform in works by great artists such as Trisha Brown, Martha Graham, Kevin Wynn, Michelle Ellsworth and Gabe Masson, Sondra Loring, Sarah Stackhouse, among many others. She has been a member of a dance collective that performed many site-specific and cross collaborative works. Additionally, she has been involved in a movement lab, a Contemplative Dance Practice and an improvisational group with wonderful movement artists. Ashley is thrilled to be sharing her love of dance to her young students again this year.

Molly Hess is a Berkshires, MA based choreographer, dancer, educator, and art’s administrator who creates playful and tender work meant to be enjoyed by audiences of all ages. She is dedicated to teaching dance with a focus on creativity and process. Molly currently teaches at Studio North Dance Arts. She previously taught with Together in Dance, WR Arts, Cambridge Performance Project, Dance in the Schools, and Dance Place. Molly has a B.A. in dance from St. Olaf College, a certificate in Brain-Compatible Dance education from Creative Dance Center, and is currently part of the 21-22 Jacobs Pillow Curriculum in motion cohort. 

Molly has had her choreography presented all around the US including: Plant Connector (MA), Movement Research (NY), Links Hall (IL), AS220 (RI), The Dance Complex (MA), Mascher Space Coop (PA), and Denmark arts Center (ME). Molly is half of The Picnic Sisters, an ongoing collaboration with Eliza Malecki and is a member of the North Adams artist collective Commonfolk. She is passionate about intergenerational dance connection and was a member of two Boston based intergenerational companies, Back Pocket Dancers and PB&J Dance Company. She is also the associate director of an arts and nature based non-profit, Bearnstow on Parker Pond.

Sereena Hunter is a powerhouse dancer, choreographer, and instructor. Her classes are dynamic, energetic, and LOVED by students of all ages and backgrounds because of her exceptional teaching style and the joyful atmosphere she creates. Sereena studied a variety of dance styles and completed her formal training as a choreographer and instructor at Manchester College and Clague and Green Performing Arts School in the UK. She founded Urbanized Dance Academy in 2014 in Manchester, UK and has been teaching and performing in the UK and US for many years.

Hillary Jackson received her early training at the Princeton Ballet School and Eliot Feld’s New Ballet School (now Ballet Tech) in New York City, as well as in summer intensives at the San Francisco Ballet and Joffrey Ballet schools. She was a YoungArts awardee in ballet and the recipient of a New Jersey Governor’s Award in Arts Education – Student Award. Hillary performed with the Princeton Ballet and Milwaukee Ballet companies as a trainee before leaving dance to pursue other interests, including theatre and music production. She returned to dance in the early 2000s when she discovered Simonson Technique at Dance Space Center in NYC. Hillary is an ABT® Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Pre-Primary through Level 3 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. Since 2018, she has been studying the Vaganova Method with master pedagogue, Annette T. Thomas, and is pursuing certification from the Classical Dance Alliance. Her dance pedagogical studies also include Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet’s Proven Teaching Syllabus©, Laban Movement Analysis, and the Simonson Method of Teacher Training. A teacher of both ballet and contemporary dance, Hillary has been on faculty at Ballet Central New Jersey, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Barefoot Dance Center, and the Catskill Mountain Foundation where she helped launch the Orpheum Dance Program directed by Victoria Rinaldi. She currently teaches at Dance and Theater Arts in Red Hook, New York, and gives private instruction as well. Her choreographic work has been presented at Choreography on the Edge in Woodstock and Kingston, NY. She is the choreographer for the Ellenville Central School District’s musical theatre productions through a partnership with Shadowland Stages.

Holly Jones (she/her) is delighted to be joining the faculty at Pulse! Jones is a NYC and Berkshire based dancer, educator, and arts advocate. She is the Producing Director at Jacob’s Pillow, performs with The Bang Group, and serves on the boards of The Clive & Valerie Barnes Foundation, New England Presenters, The Croft Residency, and MMC’s Dance Advisory Board. Originally from Colorado, Holly holds a BFA in Dance from Marymount Manhattan College and a MS in Nonprofit Leadership from Penn.

Fern is a freelance performer and dance maker based in Western Massachusetts and New York City. With a BA in Dance and Birth Studies from Goddard College, Fern has also had the privilege of training at the Gibney Dance Center, earning a certification from the Professional Contemporary Track, as well as various intensive trainings with Shannon Gillen’s VIM/VIGOR Dance Company, and has studied the unique partnering technique of Sharon Fridman (Artistic Director of Compañia Sharon Fridman) in Madrid. She has had the pleasure of performing as a youth performer with Albany Berkshire Ballet Company production, and later with Opera Nouveau, Moving Arts Ensemble, Buglisi Dance Theater’s Table of Silence project at Lincoln Center, Compañia Sharon Fridman’s US premiere of Caída libre, and much more. Fern currently choreographs and performs with VEERdance Company (which she co-founded in 2018), collaborates and performs with Rebecca Pappas’ Projects in Hartford, and Olga Rabetskaya Dance Projects in New York City. Additional work includes teaching Pilates at The Pilates Space and dance at LifeWorks Studio, both in Great Barrington.

Angel Lau is a percussionist based in Newburgh, NY. While his foundation comes from his classical percussion studies at Purchase College, Angel’s interests in Afro-Peruvian and Brazilian music expanded into different folkloric and modern percussion styles from across the globe. Angel is one of the musicians for “Odeon” by Bessie Award Winner Ephrat Asherie and has toured the US including the Spoleto Festival, Vail Dance Festival, and Fall for Dance to name a few. He is currently a faculty accompanist at Bard College and is in a work-in-progress work by Bessie Award Winner Souleymane Badolo from Burkina Faso. Angel has performed and recorded with artists such as Kala and the Lost Tribe, Wallace Roney Jr., DreHall, Anaïs Maviel, Neil ‘Nail’ Alexander, Birdland Latin Jazz Orchestra, and Kelly Quigley.

Dance for Boys Program Director
Musical Theatre Dance Program Director

Tom Masters holds an MS in Special Education from The City College of New York and a BS in elementary education with a concentration in dance and movement for elementary school children. As a performer he has danced with The Park Avenue Dance Company in Rochester, NY, The Alvin Ailey Student Ensemble in New York City, and with various musical theatre productions both nationally and internationally. He has taught dance and creative movement since 1990. Most recently he was on staff at the Center for Kinesthetic Movement in NYC as an educational tutor using dance to teach literacy, and using movement to increase the attention span of students with ADHD. Tom has been with Berkshire Pulse since 2009 teaching dance for boys, Humphrey-Weidman repertory, tap, and Broadway jazz.

Sayer Mansfield has spent the past decade working as a full-time company dancer with Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Montreal, QC) and Pilobolus Dance Theater (New York, NY). Sayer holds a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She received her classical training from The Royal Academy of Dance, Boston Ballet, and Joffrey Ballet and continued her contemporary training abroad at Trinity Laban in London, UK, and The Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria. Sayer has been an adjunct faculty member and guest artist and choreographer at Jacob’s Pillow, Phillips Academy Andover and Roger Williams University. She is a 400hr RYT™ yoga teacher and has been teaching yoga, dance, and embodiment practices for over 14 years. Sayer works as a mentor and coach offering embodiment counsel and support on an individual basis. Through a lineage of incredible teachers, a lifelong devotion to studentship, and personal experience, Sayer has created a unique voice and vision in her approach to the embodiment of self-inquiry, healing, resilience, expansion, and artistic freedom. She now works independently and in collaboration as a performer, choreographer and teacher. Sayer has presented her work in New York City, Montreal, and The Berkshires.