Future Forward

Amy Seiwert enjoyed a nineteen-year performing career dancing with Smuin, Los Angeles Chamber, and Sacramento Ballets. As a dancer with Smuin, she became involved with the “Protégé Program,” where Michael Smuin was her mentor. She retired as a dancer from Smuin in 2008. That same year, Celia Fushille named her Choreographer in Residence, a position she held for a decade. She is the recipient of numerous choreographic awards, including a “Goldie” award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2010, which described Seiwert as the Bay Area’s most original dance thinker, “taking what some consider a dead language and using it with a 21st-century lingo to tell us something about who we are.” 

In 2017 Seiwert’s first full-evening work, “Wandering,” set to Schubert’s Winterreise, was commissioned by the Joyce Theater in New York. The NEA and Kennedy Center have also supported Seiwert’s works. A former Artist in Residence at ODC Theater, she has also served on the Artist Faculty for Jacob’s Pillow’s Contemporary Ballet program. Her creations are in the repertory of Smuin, ODC/Dance, BalletX, Ballet Austin, and AXIS Dance, as well as Washington, Atlanta, Oakland, Kansas City, Colorado, Louisville, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, American Repertory, and Milwaukee Ballets.

Born in South Africa, Andrea Schermoly trained at the National School of the Arts, on full scholarship at both Rambert Ballet and Contemporary School and The Royal Ballet School, London. She competed internationally as a member of The South African National Rhythmic Gymnastics Team and danced professionally for Boston Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT). She has choreographed nationally and internationally for companies such as Royal New Zealand Ballet and Kansas City Ballet, among others, and has choreographed for movies, music videos, and commercials in Los Angeles. Andrea choreographed an all-new Rite of Spring dance film for the Company’s 2020-2021 all-digital season. She most recently premiered VIBES for the Spring 2022 Spotlight Series and Limbic for the 2023 Spotlight Series.

Photo by Helen Bruce

Skarpetowska is a native of Warsaw, Poland. She is an alumna of the NYC High School of Performing Arts and received a BFA from The Juilliard School in 1999 under Artistic Director Benjamin Harkarvy. In 1992, at age 15, she was the youngest cast member of the Broadway show, Metro, directed and choreographed by Janusz Józefowicz. Kate was a member of Parsons Dance from 1999 until 2006 where she performed lead roles in the company’s repertory including the iconic Caught. From 2007 until 2014, she danced for The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company performing at many reputable venues such as New York City’s City Center, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. She has appeared as a guest artist with The Battleworks Dance Company, The Buglisi Dance Theater, and was one of two featured dancers during the Glimmerglass Opera Festival. In 2008 she toured Italy with Why be extraordinary if you can be yourself, a show by Daniel Ezralow. Skarpetowska has worked as repetiteur and assistant choreographer to Lar Lubovitch, David Parsons and Robert Battle, setting works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Introdans, Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, Ballet Austin, Atlanta Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Repertory Dance Theatre, and Mikhailovsky Theater in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her choreography has been commissioned by BalletX, Richmond Ballet, Rochester City Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet, Parsons Dance, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater II, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Buglisi Dance Theater, Big Muddy Dance Company, Owen/Cox Dance Group, Bruce Wood Dance, The Juilliard School, and National Choreographers Initiative. For her choreographic achievements, Kate was named Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2016 and was nominated for a NY Dance and Performance Award, The Bessie, in the emerging choreographer category in 2017. In 2018, Kate choreographed an Opera Theatre of Saint Louis production of Orfeo and Eurydice, in collaboration with director Ron Daniels and Maestro Pierre Vallet. Skarpetowska holds workshops throughout the world and has served on the faculty of the American Dance Festival, American Ballet Theater summer program, School of American Ballet, Boston Conservatory summer program, Peridance, Washington Ballet @THEARC and is a part time lecturer at University of California at Irvine. Kate resides in Saint Petersburg, Russia and New York City with her husband Aleksei and their French bulldog, Sloy.  

“In 1994, Michael Smuin set out to “infuse ballet with the rhythm, speed, and syncopation of American popular culture.”

In 1994, Michael Smuin set out to “infuse ballet with the rhythm, speed, and syncopation of American popular culture,” and Smuin Contemporary Ballet (née Smuin Ballets/SF, or more recently, Smuin Ballet) was born. Michael Smuin’s vision lives on following his sudden passing in 2007, and the Company continues to push the boundaries of contemporary ballet within a distinctly modern style, combining classical ballet training, technique, and artistry with uncommon physicality and expression.

Company Founder Michael Smuin was born on October 13, 1938, in Missoula, Montana. Smuin studied tap dancing as a child and became instantly enamoured with ballet when his mother took him to see the Ballet Russe on tour at the University of Montana. At the age of 15, Smuin moved to Salt Lake City to study dance on scholarship at the University of Utah. A few years later, San Francisco Ballet director Lew Christensen recruited Smuin for San Francisco Ballet, where he danced for six years. Smuin took a leave of absence from the company in 1962 to relocate to New York, where he performed in Bob Fosse’s Little Me on Broadway. During this time, Smuin created a nightclub act with his then-wife and fellow dancer Paula Tracy. Their “well-disguised ballet,” as Smuin would call it, toured widely and was billed alongside such entertainers as Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra. The act later appeared on television on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, and Bell Telephone Hour, among others. Smuin joined American Ballet Theatre in 1965, where he choreographed Pulcinella Variations, The Catherine Wheel, Eternal Idol and several other pieces for the company before returning to San Francisco in 1973. During his years in New York he also worked with Leonard Bernstein, choreographing Candide.

Smuin spent 12 years as a choreographer and co-director of San Francisco Ballet, a period that coincided with his direction of Sophisticated Ladies on Broadway. Smuin served as Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet until 1985, and was instrumental in raising the company’s profile in the international arts community. His ventures included serving as co-chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel (1979-1981), staging a performance at the White House, and presenting his Romeo and Juliet and his Emmy Award-winning feature A Song for Dead Warriors for PBS’s Dance in America program. In 1988, Smuin received both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his choreography for Anything Goes.

Outside of ballet and Broadway, Smuin choreographed several Francis Ford Coppola films, some of which include Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. His choreography can also be seen in such films as A Walk in the Clouds, The Joy Luck Club, The Fantastiks, and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Special Edition).

Michael Smuin’s ballets are currently in the repertories of major dance companies around the country. Since founding Smuin Contemporary American Ballet in 1994, he created 40 new works for his company alone. His creations range from classical, as seen in his acclaimed September 11th tribute, Stabat Mater (2002), and Carmina Burana (1997), to the innovative Bluegrass/Slyde with its revolving-pole set, to one-act story ballets like Pinocchio (1999) and  Zorro (2003). Many of Smuin’s ballet’s boast a touch of Broadway flair, such as the wildly popular Dancin’ With Gershwin (2001) and Fly Me to the Moon (2004).

Smuin passed away suddenly on April 23, 2007, surrounded by his dancers while teaching company class. His vision, style, and energy remain with the Company to this day.