Board Members
Marie N'diaye
Dr. Marie N'diaye (PhD) is a Lindy Hop and African American Vernacular Jazz choreographer, performer and educator as well as a dance researcher.
Marie has been dancing almost as long as she has been walking, training mostly in modern Jazz. She fell in love with Lindy Hop and other African American Vernacular Jazz dances in 2006.
A true scientist (She obtained her PhD in Neuroimmunology from Karolinska Institute, Stockholm Sweden in 2018), Marie loves history and facts. She has been applying her scientific method and dance education to conduct an embodied practice-based research of Jazz dance through the study of original video clips and collaborations with many established dancers. She has also researched the cultural and social context of the Jazz dance era through literature study and interviews of artists. Her main focus is on the African American Jazz Women and Chorines (chorus girls) of the time. She is also a board member of Frankie Manning Foundation and the newly founded Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, working to perpetuate the legacy and oral tradition of Lindy Hop and Jazz.
Marie worked and danced with the fantastic teachers of the Cat's Corner Studio in Montreal, Canada and Chicago Swing Dance Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. She also teaches internationally, in France, Spain, England, Australia, Russia, USA, China... as well as at the world famous Herräng Dance Camp.
Breai Mason-Campbell
Breai Mason-Campbell is a native of Baltimore, USA, a community activist, teacher, dancer, cultural counselor and Harvard graduate.
In 2017, Breai designed Moving History, an arts-integrated, kinetic curriculum which teaches American history with a focus on the contributions of African Americans. The Baltimore Children and Youth Fund awarded Moving History $180,000 in 2018 to bring this curriculum to students in the city. Moving History is nested under the umbrella organization, Guardian Dance Company, of which Breai is the founding director. Guardian is committed to practicing, performing and passing on African American history and culture through movement. Breai is the mother of three.
Mikaela Hellsten
Mikaela first got in contact with Lindy Hop and Jazz dances in her early teens in the late nineties and instantly fell in love with the dance. Since then, Lindy Hop and other related dance forms have kept on growing on her and she finds it to be an endless source of inspiration. The more she learns about Jazz music, Jazz dance and its history, the more she enjoys it and the more she wants to learn.
Mikaela has been performing in different settings since around 2005 and especially enjoys the performing aspects of dancing in theatrical settings. She finds the richness of jazz dancing a great form of expression, on and off stage.
Felipe Braga
Felipe grew up in an environment where music, dance, and rhythms are a part of everyday life.
Spending most of his youth in music studios, theatre productions and performing absurd
theatre sketches in a local theater in his hometown in Brazil, Felipe only encountered Swing Dancing when he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to study film making.
Feeling drawn to Jazz Music and the beauty of the social dance culture, Felipe's pursuit in the Jazz Dances took him to the biggest dance camps and competitions around the world.
There he would learn more about the origins and history of this culture that had captivated him.
In the next few years, Felipe would establish himself as an avid performer and instructor, sharing his passion and love for Jazz history, music and dance.
Hannah Lane
Hannah Lane is from Baltimore, Maryland, where generations of her family have social danced. As a young child, Hannah watched her father and mother dance bachata and salsa together and with friends at the small house parties they would host. Her grandmother, a west Baltimore native “jitterbugged” as a young woman in different music venues in the City. Hannah first encountered swing dancing in Baltimore, too, at the Mobtown Ballroom in 2013. It was through her time there that she fell in love with Jazz music and Lindy Hop, and began understanding her own family’s historical connection to music and dance in the African Diaspora.
From the time she started dancing, Hannah has always balanced her love of Jazz dances with her academic and professional life. In 2018 she graduated from Goucher College with a degree in History, Historic Preservation, and Africana Studies, with focuses on slavery in Maryland during the 1800 to 1864 period and African American genealogical research. After completing her undergraduate degree, she worked in the Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland department at the Maryland State Archives, where she researched enslaved African Americans and slaveholders from southern Maryland. She then worked with the Maryland Historical Society, and, most recently, joined the Enoch Pratt Free Library as a librarian in the African American department. Hannah is also a committee member of Goucher College's Hallowed Ground Project, a study of the history of slavery on the college's land.
Currently, Hannah is a performance and teaching artist in Guardian Dance Company, founded by Baltimore’s Breai Michelle, and will begin teaching Lindy Hop at the Mobtown Ballroom. Hannah’s desire is to deepen her relationship with the histories of the dances she loves, to use her voice and skills to support Black dancers, and to continue learning about her family’s connections to the local histories of jazz and social dancing in Baltimore.
Felix Berghäll
Felix started dancing back in 2000 and after several years of competing he moved to Stockholm, Sweden and became part of the Harlem Hot Shots. During that time, his career started to bloom and he combined competing with traveling the world teaching, performing and sharing his passion for jazz. Felix has gained international acclaim and now teaches and performs in Sweden, Europe as well as around the globe.
Ever since 2013 he works as a professional dance teacher, performer, choreographer, DJ and A few years back he became part of the Herräng Dance Camp crew which he works with on a daily basis. He specializes in dances and music from the 1920’s to the 1950’s that originally derived from Harlem and teaches dances such as the Lindy Hop, Jazz, Charleston, Tap and Boogie Woogie.
In 2019 Felix moved to Madrid, Spain and he still travels the world as a professional dancer. His mission is to keep spreading the knowledge and the tradition of this art form and plans to be a big part of the community for a long time.
Anaïs Sékiné
Anaïs Sékiné has earned a PhD in the sociology program of Université de Montréal and published her thesis "The Worlds of Lindy hop – Cultural appropriation and the politics of joy" in 2017. The research involved the analysis of life experiences shared by the Black Elders of the dance in major Lindy hop events and its reception by predominantly white audience members. Her academic training is based on qualitative research & ethnography, (black) feminist methodologies, standpoint theory, postcolonialism and critical theory (ref. Howard Becker, Stuart Hall, Patricia Hill Collins, Hannah Arendt, etc.). She presented several papers at international conferences (AISLF, ACSALF, SDHS, DSA, NWSA), and was hired for talks and training on cultural awareness for jazz dance organizations in Canada, California and Europe.
Anaïs has been jazz dancing since 2005. She has 12 years experience teaching vernacular jazz dances locally and internationally, coaching new talents and performing for shows, festivals and competitions in North America. For her, learning, practicing and teaching jazz dance and jazz history is a way to develop a consciousness for the world(s) we live in, and to train body and mind to the practice of radical togetherness and democracy.
Anaïs operated as the elected artistic co-director of Cat’s Corner Swing Dance School in Montreal from 2014 to 2017 with Sylwia Bielec, leading educational reforms and artistic projects for the organization since 2013. Now a mama of two, she’s committing her work to refine how we collectively practice and teach jazz dance by working with several local and international collectives of dancers such as CVFC. She took over Cat’s Corner with Meghan Gilmore in 2019 to further push the reform of jazz dance businesses as they currently exist.
Stephen Atemie
Stephen is a fresh young talent emerging from the new generation of Lindy Hoppers. Balancing successfully a career as a Mechanical Engineer with his artistic pursuits this UCL alumnus is equally at home tutoring STEM subjects as he is dancing in front of the camera shooting tv commercials. He is also a Parkour and Wing Chun Kung Fu practitioner.
In 2017, Stephen travelled to South Africa to spend a month working with the charity Sing Inchanga. There he shared skills with local children & young people across their own dance styles and lindy hop.
Following three years representing Swing Patrol as a core teacher, Stephen began his apprenticeship with Angela in 2018 to delve deeper into the roots of jazz dance, and further lindy hop education from Ron Leslie.
Stephen's performance/competition credits include 10 Downing Street, Harrods, Savoy Cup (France), ILHC (USA), Rock That Swing (Germany).
Shana Weaver
Shana Maria Weaver is a professional swing dancer and dance instructor in New York City who holds a Bachelor's degree in Music, Jazz Studies (CSU Los Angeles, 2011), a full-time music teacher at York Early College Academy in Queens, New York and is currently finishing her Master’s in Music and Music Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Her background in music fueled her passion for dance as a Lindy Hopper as she began her journey in Hip Hop dance at the age of 12. She moved to New York in 2013 to pursue her dreams in the arts and has devoted her time in both performance and education.
Shana has performed with: The Sophisticated Ladies, The Big Apple Lindy Hoppers, Gatsby Entertainment, The Harlem Strutters, The Rhythm Stompers, The Rhythm Ambassadors, Chorine, and The Wild Rhythm Dance Company.
Shana is an active educator in Lindy Hop and Jazz history and has created a platform, The Shana Weaver Workshop Series (2017), to educate students about the vast history of music, dance, and black history.
Shana is a member of the Black Lindy Hop Foundation and has worked with choreographers including Dormeshia Edwards, Mickey Davidson, Chester Whitmore, Sonny Allen, and Norma Miller.
Shelby L. Johnson
Shelby is a dance instructor, DJ and lecturer based in Dallas, TX. He’s been in the scene since 2011, but he grew up dancing to hip hop, R&B, Funk, Electronic, and, due to the local Latin scene, Salsa.
Growing up, he also experienced a wide array of Jazz music ranging from Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, George Benson, and David Benoit. So when he started dancing Lindy Hop in Orlando, Florida, he already had a knack for solo movement, musicality, and, fairly quickly, partnering.
Over the years, Shelby has developed a wealth of knowledge not just of lindy hop and jazz dance steps, but connected the dots between the cultural customs and traditions of these and other dances to those of current Black dances and spaces.
Shelby isn’t just a keeper of classic steps and choreographies, but also of stories of how these jazz dances came to be and how they evolved over time, along with the music and events that shaped them.