“Dance It!” Summer Intensive Program will take place this year in Sofia, at the spacious studios of “Dance Station” in „Paradise Mall”, third floor, Cherni Vrah Boulevard 100, between August 24 and September 4. This is a two-week long international summer intensive dance program which this year will also include classes for children.

The program is being implemented with the financial support of America for Bulgaria Foundation.

Classic Ballet

Paula Weber

Professor of Ballet, Chair of Dance, Conservatory of music and dance, University of Missouri at Kansas city

Paula Weber received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance from Butler University and her Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance from Smith College. She has studied ballet with such masters as Maria Tallchief, Jean Paul Comelin, Dermot Burke, Basil Thompson, Larry Long, Marjorie Mussman, and Maggie Black. During her professional career, Ms. Weber performed solo and principal roles of more than 45 major works which include such classics as Swan Lake (Odette/Odile), Giselle (Giselle), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Cinderella (Cinderella) and Coppelia (Swanhilda), and contemporary works as George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco (First Violin), Agnes DeMille’s Fall River Legend (Lizzy Borden), John Butler’s “Carmina Burana”, and Alvin Ailey’s ”The River”. She has worked with renowned choreographers such as Bill T. Jones, Margo Sappington, Laura Dean, Sean Curran, Charles Moulton, and Kevin “Iega” Jeff. She has been a member of the Milwaukee Ballet (principal), the Albany Berkshire Ballet (principal),Lyric Opera Ballet of Chicago (soloist), Chicago Ballet and the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre, and guest principal artist with the Hartford Ballet. She is currently the assistant director and rehearsal director for the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company and is ballet mistress for the Albany Berkshire Ballet. Ms. Weber has been a guest instructor of ballet in many prestigious schools throughout the United States. In 1996, she was invited to be a guest instructor of ballet for the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, Shenyang, China, making her the second American ballet instructor to teach at that conservatory. Ms. Weber was the 1997 recipient of the Mrs. Ewing Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2001 recipient of the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2007-2008 recipient of the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2011 Muriel McBrien Kauffman Faculty Service Award all presented to her by the Conservatory of Music and Dance, University of Missouri – Kansas City. She is on the official adjudicator for Regional Dance America and a site evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Dance. Ms Weber’s choreography has been performed by the Kansas City Ballet, the Albany Berkshire Ballet, the Kansas Regional Ballet, the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, Midwest Youth Ballet, Alexandra Ballet, Kansas City Youth Ballet, Allegro Ballet of Houston and City in Motion. Her first professional choreographic work, “Carmina Burana”, was performed by the Kansas City Ballet in 1996 with repeated performances in 1998 and May of 2002. In 2003 Ms. Weber was commissioned to create a new ballet for the Kansas City Ballet, “Canzone” which later by invitation became the three movement ballet, “Toccata e due Canzoni”, created for the 2005 Fall Season of the Kansas City Ballet. She has received three Craft of Choreography Awards from Regional Dance America (2004, 2008, and 2014). Summer of 2008 her work, “From Within” and 2013 her pas de deux in the piece “Blue” were selected to be performed for the Young Tanzommers Dance Festival in Austria by the Allegro Ballet of Houston. In 2010 she received the Regional Dance America National Choreographic Award and was named a choreographer for the 2011 National Choreographers Initiative. She is a member and former President of the CORPS de Ballet International, Inc.

Ballet for children

Nikolina Karageorgieva

Iliev Dance Art Foundation, Bulgaria

Nikolina is a graduate of the Bulgarian National School of Dance Art – Sofia, where she studied with Lilyana Draguleva and Fanny Cherneva. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Ballet Pedagogy from the Academy of Music, Dance and Visual Arts – Plovdiv. In 2008 she participated in the first edition of Dance It! Spring Intensive, organized by the Iliev Dance Art Foundation, and was one of the first recipients of full scholarship for summer training in the US. She joined Ballet Chicago’s Summer Course and Advanced Intensive and took classes with Daniel Duell, Patricia Blair, Gary Abbott and Petur Iliev. Additionally, she was invited to continue in the full year program of the ballet and was featured in “The Nutcracker.” She performed with Ballet Chicago until the end of 2009, when she became a member of Balletto Del Sud – a private ballet company in Italy. In 2012 Nikolina returned to Bulgaria and is currently teaching at Ballet Studio Odette and at Iliev Dance Art Foundation’s “Dancing Kids” program. She performed in Petur Iliev’s “Click” (2013) and “A Swallow’s Flight” (2014). Nikolina has participated in many ballet competitions and is the winner of several prestigious honors and awards, amongst which: fourth place at the International Ballet Competition, Nice, France – 2006; Diploma from the National Competition for Young Ballet Dancers “Anastas Petrov”, Sofia, Bulgaria – 2008; Diploma in each year of her participation inthe International Ballet Competition, Varna, Bulgaria (2002-2007), and Diploma from each year of her participation inthe Dance It! Spring Intensive (2008, 2010-2012). As a student at the Bulgarian National School of Dance Art she danced in Giselle, Swan Lake and Don Quichotte, and with Balletto Del Sul she was The Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty, Juliet’s Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and was a soloist in Carmina Burana, Phaedra, Scheherazade, Carmen and La Traviata, amongst others. She has been a guest dancer at festivals in Cyprus and Frankfurt – Germany as well.

Modern Dance

Christian von Howard

Alvin Ailey School, VON HOWARD PROJECT

Christian von Howard is the Artistic Director of the VON HOWARD PROJECT, a New York City contemporary dance company. As an international artist, he has worked with many dance artists such as Doug VaroneFernando Bujones,Douglas Becker, Germaul Barnes,Daniel Gwirtzman and various others. Christian is a NJ State Council of the Arts Choreographic Fellow (2006).
His choreographic work has been produced in various venues across the globe including Germany, Japan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Chile, South Korea and in the states at Dance Theater Workshop (now New York Live Arts), Joyce SoHo, Dixon Place, and the Ailey Citigroup Theater to name a few. He is a teaching artist for Dance New Amsterdam (2013), the American Dance Festival (Winter Intensive), Korean Dance Festival (2012) and the Dance It! Program (Bulgaria).
Christian is a 2013/2014 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement in Teaching Award from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts where he was part of the teaching faculty in the Department of Dance & Choreography from 2008-2014
He is currently an Associate Professor in the Theater and Dance Department at Montclair State University and concurrently teaches at Alvin Ailey Schoolin New York City.
He holds a BFA from the School of Classical and Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University and a MFA from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Character Dance

Petur Iliev

Iliev Dance Art Foundation, Bulgaria; Pacific Northwest ballet; Ballet Chicago

Petur Iliev is a Bulgarian-born dancer and choreographer whose career is deeply steeped in the rich folk dance traditions of his family. He started dancing at the age of five at the dance ensemble of his father. Later he graduated from the Bulgarian National School of Dance Art and from the Bulgarian National Institute of Choreography in Sofia, Bulgaria. He began his professional career as a Principal Dancer of Kutev National Dance and Music Ensemble where he worked for five years, before continuing his training at the National Dance Institute in New York where he studied under the supervision of one of the gurus of American dance – Jacques d’Amboise. Subsequently, Iliev became the Artistic Co-Director of Believe in Me — a dance ensemble in Austin, TX, where for four years he trained more than a thousand young dancers. Moving to California, Iliev continued working in the American educational system teaching dance to hundreds of children in a performing arts magnet school. A year later he was appointed the Artistic Director of Westwind International Dance Company — one of the first companies in the US whose mission is to present to the American audience the richness and diversity of ethnic dance. All along Iliev has been teaching master classes in Character dance and Bulgarian folk dances at many colleges and universities in different parts of the US, and has been creating new choreographies for professional and non-professional dance companies in the US and Canada. In 2003 he joined the faculty of the renowned school of Pacific Northwest Ballet and two years later he was attracted to the school of Ballet Chicago. Along with that, for several years Iliev shared his expertise with numerous students in the public school system in Chicago through a 21st Century grant. With this invaluable experience in hand he resumed his activity in Bulgaria in 2008 through the various programs of his foundation established in the same year. The Iliev Dance Art Foundation has since been running several highly successful educational programs: the Spring and Summer Intensives Dance It, as well as children’s dance programs targeting youth from public schools. Most recently Iliev appeared as a judge on the national reality dance show Magadans – The Challenge, as well as created and staged a full-length children’s show Click, performed in October 2013 as part of Sofia Dance Week. In addition, he has also actively been teaching and choreographing at The Anglo-American School of Sofia, both instructing children from various classes, as well as choreographing for the final musicals performed by the graduating classes. In Bulgaria Petur Iliev’s artistic creativity has been gradually coming to its full potential in the creation of several highly innovative choreographies that reach to the core of the Bulgarian ethnic dance and release its structure – unleashing its potential as a means of expression by enriching it with the vocabulary of ballet and modern technique. “In 2014 he choreographed and staged 5×5+1 – a conceptual, interdisciplinary project, and A Swallow’s Flight – a children’s dance show.” In Bulgaria Petur Iliev’s artistic creativity has gradually been coming to its full potential in the creation of highly innovative choreography that reaches to the core of the Bulgarian ethnic dance – unlocking its structure and unleashing its potential as a means of expression by enriching it with the vocabulary of ballet and modern technique. More about the Founder and Artistic Director of Iliev Dance Art Foundation in the section About us/Founder