Molly Lynch is an award winning choreographer and artistic director, with over 30 years of experience creating, producing, and presenting dance. She is currently an Associate Professor of Dance in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. She teaches ballet, pointe, partnering, ballet repertory, and dance management. Ms. Lynch is the Founder and Artistic Director of the National Choreographers Initiative, an internationally known project to nurture the development of new choreography.

She was the Artistic Director for Ballet Pacifica from 1988-2003. During her tenure, Ms. Lynch established Ballet Pacifica as Orange County's leading professional dance company and one of the area's top performing arts organizations. Among her innovative trademark programs was the Pacifica Choreographic Project. Under Ms. Lynch's direction, the company worked with forty choreographers, premiered more than forty new ballets and restaged some of America's most beloved classics by George Balanchine, Antony Tudor and Choo San Goh. Ms. Lynch has also choreographed over 30 concert and story ballets, 6 children's ballets and a full-length production of "The Nutcracker". Ms. Lynch has recently created new ballets for Sacramento Ballet, Nashville Ballet, BalletMet (Columbus, Ohio), Dance Collage (Hermosillo, Mexico) and Academies of Ballet In Philippines (Manila).

Melissa Barak, was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She trained at the Westside School of Ballet for eight years. In 1997 she entered the School of American Ballet in New York and joined the New York City Ballet as a company member in 1998.

Ms. Barak has achieved a multitude of accomplishments as both a professional ballet dancer and choreographer. While dancing with the New York City Ballet, she began exploring her choreographic talents. She was invited by Peter Martins, director of the New York City Ballet, to participate in the first NY Choreographic Institute. The piece she created impressed him so that he commissioned her to choreograph a ballet for the School of American Ballet’s workshop performance. The ballet she made, Telemann Overture Suite, was met with critical acclaim. Mr Martins brought Telemann into the company’s repertoire the very next season, and immediately asked her to choreograph again, this time on the company. She was only 22, making her the youngest choreographer in New York City Ballet history to be commissioned an original work. Melissa has been awarded the Mae L. Wien and Choo San Goh Awards for Choreography and was named one of the “Top 25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine. She has had numerous articles written about her in such publications as Pointe Magazine, Dance Spirit, TimeOut NY, ELLEgirl, Angeleno, LA Times Magazine to name a few, and appeared on the nationally televised CBS Early Show in 2002.

She has created new works for American Repertory Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, and Los Angeles Ballet as well as the National Choreographer’s Initiative and several New York Choreographic Institutes. In 2009 and 2010, she was invited to return to the New York City Ballet where she created two more works.

Her dancing credits with New York City Ballet include Fairy Carabosse from Sleeping Beauty, Coffee from the Nutcracker, and Russian pas de deux from Swan Lake. In 2007, Barak joined the very new Los Angeles Ballet and danced lead roles in Balanchine’s Serenade, Kammermusik No. 2, and Stravinsky Violin Concerto among others. She has worked closely with choreographic notables Alexei Ratmansky and Elliot Feld. The highly esteemed choreographer Christopher Wheeldon created principal roles for her in his Rhapsodie Fantaisie, and Klavier.

KT Nelson (ODC/Dance Co-Artistic Director) joined ODC /Dance in1976. In addition to choreographing over 60 works, in 1986 Nelson choreographed and directed the Company¹s first full length family ballet, The Velveteen Rabbit, which has since been performed annually in the Bay Area as well as touring nationwide, reaching an audience of over 350,000. Nelson has been awarded the Isadora Duncan award four times: in 1987 for Outstanding Performance, in 1996 and 2012 for Outstanding Choreography, and in 2001 for Sustained Achievement. Her collaborators have included Bobby McFerrin, Geoff Hoyle, Kim Turos, Gina Leishman, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Max Chen, Zap Mama, Barry Steele and Marcelo Zarvos. In 2008 her work RingRounRozi in collaboration with French-Canadian composer Linda Bouchard was selected to be performed at the Tanzmessa International Dance Festival. In 2009 Nelson was one of three artists selected for Austin Ballet¹s New American Talent Competition. In 2012 she created new work for Western Michigan University as part of their Great Works Dance Project.

In addition to her work as a choreographer, Nelson served on the Zellerbach Community Arts Panel from 2005 to 2011; ran the summer dance department for Center For Creative Youth at Wesleyan University 2003-2006; founded the ODC Dance Jam (youth dance company) in 1997; and partners with Brenda Way directing the ODC Dance Company. Nelson has been awarded the Daisy Award and the California Educators Artists Award. Over the last 25 years has played a major role in defining and implementing ODC¹s on-going as well as project based outreach programs. She has mentored with the Margaret Jenkin¹s Chime Project and continues to mentor emerging artists in the bay area and abroad.