Robin Dekkers, Artistic Director

Berkeley Ballet Theater’s Artistic Director since 2017, Robin Dekkers is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of movers and makers with their vibrant imagination, passion for movement, and commitment to the craft of ballet. Named “25 To Watch” by DANCE Magazine and noted for their direction of multi-disciplinary collaborations that are “inventive, focused, sophisticated, and anything but risk averse” (SF Chronicle), Dekkers is also founder and Artistic Director of Post:Ballet.

Dekkers danced professionally with Ballet Arizona, ODC/Dance, Company C Contemporary Ballet, and Diablo Ballet, where they were nominated for an Isadora Duncan award for “Outstanding Performance – Individual” in 2013. They danced leading roles in works by George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, José Límon, KT Nelson, Val Caniparoli, Lar Lubovitch, Jodie Gates, Trey McIntyre, Dominic Walsh, Septime Webre, and Paul Taylor before transitioning fully into teaching, choreographing, and directing in 2015.

Dekkers has choreographed and/or directed over a dozen new collaborations with Post:ballet, including evening-length productions such as Do Be, Incandescent Body, and Lavender Country; one-act works including Milieu, Mine is Yours, When in Doubt, and field the present shifts; and short films like Tassel and Coming Home, which was commissioned by the San Francisco Dance Film Festival for its 2017 Co-Laboratory program.

Their choreography has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow, San Francisco International Arts Festival, Tanzsommer Festival, Ballet Builders Showcase, Against the Grain Festival, and West Wave Dance Festival. Commissions include Kansas City Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, sjDANCEco, Smuin Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet (with co-choreographer Vanessa Thiessen), and Diablo Ballet, where they were resident choreographer from 2013–2018 and created critically-acclaimed works including Carnival of the Imagination, Flight of the Dodo, and Red Shoes. They have also created new works for the dance departments at Stanford University, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Richmond. Robin choreographed and directed a full-length Alice in Wonderland for Contra Costa Ballet in 2012, and has created short new works with youth companies across the country.

Dekkers choreographed and directed a full-length production of Firebird set to an orchestrated score based on the music of Radiohead for Quixotic Cirque Noveau in 2017, where they continue to work as a guest choreographer. Robin is also Director of Choreography for Art Haus, a Playa performance group whose first production featured a reimagined Rite of Spring with over 40 dancers and performers, accompanied by a full orchestra performing Stravinsky’s masterpiece, at Burning Man 2017. In 2018, Art Haus presented his contemporary work We, Human set to Steve Reich’s Eight Lines, and in the summer of 2019 Art Haus presented his new Firebird on Playa with a full orchestra playing the original Stravinsky score.

Dekkers regularly teaches company class for LINES Ballet, Smuin Ballet, and ODC/Dance, and they hold a degree in business from Rio Salado College.

Sally Streets, Artistic Director Emerita

Sally Streets, Artistic Director Emerita, has danced, taught, and choreographed in the Bay Area for more than thirty years. An Oakland native, Streets performed with Mia Slavenska’s Ballet Variante and with New York City Ballet early in her career. She was a principal dancer with Pacific Ballet and Oakland Ballet. She has served as Guest Company Teacher for San Francisco Ballet, the New York City Ballet, and the Royal Ballet in London. In 2003, Streets was honored with the Isadora Duncan Lifetime Achievement Award. She continues to teach and create new works for BBT and has created seventeen world premieres for Diablo Ballet since March 1994.

Streets is the proud mother of Alexander V. Nichols, who has served as Resident Visual Designer for the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company since 1988 and received the San Francisco Certificate of Honor for his work at the American Conservatory Theater, four Isadora Duncan Awards, four Bay Area Critics Circle Awards, and three Dean Goodman Awards; Kyra Nichols, a former Principal Dancer at New York City Ballet and current ballet mistress with Pennsylvania Ballet; and late son Robbie Nichols, a dancer and choreographer with Berkeley Ballet Theater.

Sandra Chinn, Artistic Advisor

Sandra Chinn is a company ballet teacher for Alonzo King LINES Ballet and ODC Dance Company. She is guest adjunct faculty at New York University Tisch Summer Dance Residency, Visiting Guest Artist at Hollins University MFA Dance Program, and Artistic Advisor at Berkeley Ballet Theater. She has been a guest teacher for Company Wayne McGregor, Jessica Lang Dance, dancers of Paul Taylor Dance Company, Abraham.In.Motion, Lucinda Childs Dance, Smuin Ballet, Aszure Barton and Dancers, Amy Seiwart's Imagery, Post:Ballet, SF DanceWorks, Matthew Bourne's New Adventures, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and BodyTraffic, and she teaches youth and adults at Berkeley Ballet Theater, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, LINES Dance Center, and ODC.

A native of Berkeley, California, she studied with Jane Stamps in Albany, California and received full scholarships at National Academy of Arts and Joffrey Ballet School. A New York Drama Desk Award nominee (“Best Featured Actress in a Musical”), she won praise as a “charismatic, expressive young star” for her various comedic dance portrayals in the Off Broadway production of Funny Feet (Stephen Holden, New York Times). As a company member of Dennis Wayne’s Dancers, Finis Jhung's Chamber Ballet USA, and American Ballet Comedy, she has toured extensively throughout the world. She has danced a diverse repertory from works of Petipa, Balanchine, Anthony Tudor, Michael Fokine, John Taras, Brian MacDonald, Norman Walker, Samuel Weber, Norbert Vesak, Bob Bowyer, and Kathryn Posin.

Chinn has extensive Vaganova teacher’s training (Level 1–5) under Karen Morell, and she is primarily inspired by the generosity and positive spirit of ballet teachers such as Maggie Black, Lawrence Rhodes, Marjorie Mussman, Ernesta Corvino, Gwynne Ashton, and Meredith Baylis. In addition, her ballet class is somatically informed through studies with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Body-Mind Centering, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Franklin Method, Alexander Technique, Iyengar Yoga, Gyrotonics, and Gyrokinesis. Chinn believes in applying these embodied concepts to dance education and seeks to reveal to concert dancers additional possibilities for rich, efficient, and elegant movement.

Liz Farotte Heenan, School Director

Susan Weber, Dance for PD® Director

Susan Weber danced in the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, touring extensively in North America and Europe and assisting Mr. Lubovitch in setting works at the Royal Danish Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and on Lynn Seymour of the Royal Ballet, among many others. More recently, she assisted Mark Morris as he created new works at San Francisco Ballet: A Garden, Later, his full-length Sylvia, and Joyride. She has also helped set his works at the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet. In July 2019 she performed in two short Samuel Beckett plays Morris directed for the Happy Days Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

Trained in Cecchetti ballet technique and later mentored by master teachers Mia Slavenska, Jack Cole, and Maggie Black, Weber is also a certified yoga instructor and a passionate lifelong student of anatomy and kinesiology.

Weber founded the Dance for PD® Program at BBT in 2008, motivated by her father’s twenty-year experience with Parkinson’s disease and by her long friendships with Mark Morris and founding teachers David Leventhal and John Heginbotham. Weber has the honor of being the first Dance for PD® certified teaching artist in the state of California. She holds M.A. and B.A. degrees in Dance from UCLA, where she graduated with honors and first began teaching during graduate school.

Weber is Director of BBT’s Dance for PD® Program, teaches Levels 8 and 9 in the Youth Division, and serves as Advisor to members of the Studio Company.

Kaori Ogasawara, Rehearsal Director

Kaori Ogasawara was born in Japan and studied ballet with her grandmother Kazue Ogasawara and her coach Takao Hisamitsu. In 1993 Ogasawara came to the US to train at the Boston Ballet School; she danced at Boston Ballet before joining Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in 1999 with her husband Christopher Rendall-Jackson and was promoted to soloist in 2004. After joining PBT, Ogasawara performed featured roles including the Sugar Plum Fairy and Marie in Terrence S. Orr’s The Nutcracker, Myrtha in Giselle, Mercedes in Don Quixote, Svetlana in Ben Stevenson's Dracula, and Queen of Hearts in Derek Dean's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. Among many opportunities to dance George Balanchine’s ballets, Ogasawara’s performances included the Russian Lead Girl in Serenade, Sylvia: Pas de Deux, Theme and variations, Divertimento No. 15, and Who Cares? Ogasawara also performed in contemporary ballets by choreographers such as Paul Taylor, Dwight Rhoden, and Jean-Christophe Maillot.

Among other things, she is currently the Rehearsal Director for Berkeley Ballet Theater; company class teacher for various companies, including ODC and Oakland Ballet Company; and guest teacher and choreographer for New Ballet Ensemble in Memphis, Tennessee. She and her husband are also proud parents of two children, Emiya and Hana.