Rachael Odebunmi, a senior studying dance and musicology, delves deeply into the choreographic exploration of the rich intersections of dance, music, and cultural identities through her studies. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she has performed in and choreographed numerous dance projects within the city’s vibrant art scene. While Rachael feels most at home doing contemporary and modern movement styles, her versatile training also encompasses ballet, jazz, hip hop, and various other dance genres.
Rachael Odebunmi
Madison Hart & Augustus Ahn
Madi is a central California native with a passion for dance, musical theater, choreography, teaching, and all around all things art! She completed her pre-professional ballet training with the Royal Academy of Dance examination program before teaching and choreographing at Carmel Academy of Performing Arts, The Pegler Ballet Conservatory, and Method Dance Studio. Madi is passionate about working with young artists through dance non-profits such as Dance Kids of Monterey County and Spector Dance. While living in New York, she worked with musical artists to create music videos and performed in various student projects at New York University. Madi loves to choreograph interdisciplinary works in collaboration with other artists and is excited to embark on WACSMASH this year with her partner in crime, Augie Ahn! Let’s have a great WACSMASH everyone!
Augie is a current UCLA junior majoring in English after transferring from Santa Monica College. His passion for the arts has led him down a career path in photography, where he has been working for over 3 years professionally through Augustus Photographics. In his hometown of Carmel, he interned with Big Sur wedding photographer Joshua Rose, acted as the in-house photographer for KRML Radio, and the event photographer for Folktale Winery. In Los Angeles, Augie does freelance photography while a full-time student, including photography for Method Dance Studio. He is excited to be a Visual Arts Creator for WACSmash 2024 and work side-by-side Performing Arts Creator, Madi Hart.
Megan Diaz
Megan Diaz is a multi-media artist from Pasadena, CA and a first year World Arts and Cultures major at UCLA. Her artistic focus consists of street dance where she was introduced to her passion of photography. This transformed into a pursuit of shooting 35mm film through which she aims to capture the authentic nature of her subjects. She trains with Versa-Style Next Generation dance company and gained an integrated arts education at California School of the Arts. She is excited to showcase the relationship between childhood and adulthood through cinema in a mixed media photography/visual arts piece!
Born and raised in San Diego, Lexi began dancing at a young age and grew up training in a variety of dance styles including Contemporary, Ballet, Hip Hop, Modern, Tap, and Jazz. She came to UCLA in 2020, pursuing a Dance B.A. and a Physiological Science B.S., two fields of study that stimulate her creativity and provide her with infinite opportunities to learn more about the body. Lexi relishes in every moment she gets to spend on stage; she loves using performance to dynamically explore gestural motifs and human narratives. During these past few years, Lexi has grown to have a more thorough understanding of her Christian faith, which has led to deeper experiences that have reframed her artistic perspective and have inspired the intentions behind many of her choreographic creations.
Alexis Massey
Stephanie Singh
Steph Singh is a 4th year double majoring in Dance and Architecture with a passion for film and photography and hopes to intertwine these disciplines in her future career. She has grown up in Portland, OR training in a variety of styles with Tap, Jazz, Contemporary, and Musical Theater being her favorites. Steph has loved the opportunity to broaden her dance training and experience in UCLA WAC/D.
A Bay Area native, Elena Bruce received her dance training at competitive dance studios in Northern California. She now teaches and choreographs for various competitive and non-competitive dance teams in both Northern and Southern California. Elena is pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in Dance at UCLA. She is a 3rd year student, double minoring in Asian American Studies and Film and TV. Elena has had the privilege to be featured in multiple MFA pieces, Senior projects, and Wacsmash performances, centering around modern and contemporary dance. She has also been a part of UCLA’s Icarus Contemporary Company for all three years as an undergrad. Elena also trains in martial arts, primarily, Kung Fu, Krav Maga, and Hapkido both in Northern and Southern California. She has competed in Kung Fu and plans to continue to earn higher certification in various other martial arts systems in the future.
ELENA BRUCE
Ellianna Pascua is a fourth-year Dance major and Film TV minor with a strong external passion for Visual Art. Originally from San Diego, CA, she has been dancing a multitude of styles since a young age, including Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, Contemporary, Tap, and Modern. While living in Los Angeles to further her education, and simultaneously pursuing a dance career in the entertainment industry, Ellianna has continued this training but now concentrates primarily on Modern, Hip Hop, and Improvisational styles in her creative output. She has been fortunate enough to train and perform around the country and world, and employs the creative tactics learned in these experiences into her work. Her passion for visual art often influences her approach to dance, whether conceptually or literally. Ellianna largely aims to explore perspective in order to invoke emotion, curiosity, and experiences-of-self both in her work and her creative approach to life.
Ellie Pascua
Jovahna Solalindez Rivas
Jovahna Solalindez Rivas is a Mexican American Artist who was born and raised in Los Angeles. She uses different mediums of art such as dance, painting, writing and is now exploring photography, film, and fashion to tell stories. She is highly influenced by her personal experiences, environment, and culture to create work that connects her to everything around her. Her work is inspired by frames in TV and film that highlight hair and its significance in Latin and Hispanic culture through time.
Cammie Kao is a fourth year Dance major and VAPAE (Visual and Performing Arts Education) minor from the Bay Area, California. She is extremely passionate about telling stories through movement and sharing her love for dance through choreographing, continuously learning, and teaching dance. Her first style of dance was traditional Chinese fan and ribbon dance, as she choreographed and performed with her troupe at the annual San Francisco Chinese New Year parades. She then started her journey in learning hip hop, waacking, popping, and house by training under Str8jacket. With the team, she performed at events such as World of Dance OC and Bay Area, SF International Hip Hop Dancefest, and the Warriors halftime show. From there, she grew curious about learning and creating street-style and hip hop integrated choreography. She started teaching weekly choreography classes and pop-up workshops at On One Studios and studios around the Bay. She then moved to LA to study dance at UCLA and joined an open-style competition team, Samahang Modern. She now is Artistic Advisor for the team, where she choreographs and helps train the members. She hopes to pursue a career in dance education, continuing her passion towards dance and sharing it with future artists.
Cameron Kao
Born in Mumbai, India, and raised in Dubai, UAE amidst a vibrant tapestry of Indian culture, Abhishek Krishnan’s primary interaction with dance was through Indian Cinema. With his potential being recognized at community dance classes, he was asked to be part of the Shiamak Davar UAE team, at the age of 12. Through this medium Abhi was able to start channeling his passion into his profession and was given the opportunities to dance for and alongside various Bollywood celebrities such as Jaaved Jaffery, Sunidhi Chauhan, and Raghav Juyal. He aims to highlight the global influence on Indian artists and emphasize how diverse dance styles can enrich choreography in Indian music. After performing, learning, and teaching in Dubai for over 6 years, he chose to move to LA to further work on himself as an artist through the WAC/D department at UCLA. Abhi’s goal is to shed light on the beauty and intricacies of Indian dance styles that were born through film (Bollywood, Dappankuthu, etc.) and attempt to fix the misrepresentation that exists in the US, playing a role in fostering cultural understanding and unity through his art.
Abhishek Krishnan
Claire, a transfer dance student at UCLA minoring in film and entrepreneurship, weaves her lifelong passion for dance, nurtured at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, into a rich tapestry of art. She contributes to WacSmash as a producer, choreographer, and performer. Collaborating with diverse dance groups and student organizations, she integrates photography, film, poetry, costuming, light design, and self-produced music in her movement pieces. In this piece, her exploration of dreamscapes and nightmares, especially within the horror genre, delicately incorporates film, music, and movement to evoke an eerie atmosphere. Claire aspires to establish her own dance company, travel globally, and continue a lifetime of performing, choreographing, and creating.
Claire Ciserella
Lilah Horton & Marcella Thile
Born and raised in Southern California, Lilah Horton is currently living in Los Angeles, California, studying dance at UCLA while pursuing a professional dance career. With the expectation to receive her undergraduate degree from UCLA a year early in Spring of 2024, Lilah is an active participant and creator of works in the Dance department and has danced in performances ranging from Afro-House to Tap to Contemporary. Outside of her university experience, she has performed live and on-screen in such events as World Of Dance Season 3, the Emmys Governor’s Ball, as well as at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Lilah has also engaged with more intimate community opportunities such as representing Orange County as the Orange County Register's Artist of the Year in 2020 and received the title of Walt Disney Concert Hall’s Spotlights Non-Classical Dance Winner in 2019, representing her self-choreographed Tap solo. Her versatile training in Tap, House, Modern/Contemporary, Hip Hop, and Broadway Jazz have led her to work closely with and perform alongside innovators such as Tyce Diorio, Jason Janas, Toyin Sogunro, and Gracie Whyte. Never limiting herself to a sole genre of dance, Lilah has found a mission in honoring and merging her love for dances in different forms. She emphasizes the respective historical and cultural values of each movement practice, as is reflected in her teaching practices both for studios and in K-12 Arts Education. With a constant hunger for growth, Lilah lives in the fusion of her movement practices and is dedicated to preserving and expanding Street and Concert forms in performance and educational spaces.
Marcella Thile is pursuing her third year as a dance and history double major at UCLA. A native San Diegan who began her love affair with dance nearly 17 years ago, Marcella continues to eagerly explore freestyle movement and choreography within the WACD department. She is most passionate about both Street dance forms and Modern dance styles, as well as finding where they can intersect. Moreover, she continues to investigate the intersections of her two disciplines--history and dance--connecting her studies to her own lived experience and personal movement practice.
Aryeal Lands & Joy Arreola
Aryeal “AryLove” Lands is a Black female street dancer born in Riverside and raised in Los Angeles, CA. In her early days, Aryeal trained in various styles including Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Modern, Contemporary, and West African under the Debbie Allen Dance Academy. With a more focused goal of preserving Black culture and livelihood of the styles created by the African diaspora, she now solely trains in Street dance styles with Versa-Style Dance Company in their secondary company, VS Legacy. Aryeal has performed all over the city of Los Angeles exposing the youth to the possibilities of Hip-Hop/street dance as a career and she plans to expand her career to dance education as her next step.
Joy Arreola, from Los Angeles, CA, is a first year Dance major at UCLA. She is proud and excited to share the work she and her co-creator, Aryeal Lands, are creating about authentic Street Dance representation in film (and lack thereof).
Joy is currently a member of Versa-Style: Next Generation, where they train in a variety of street dance styles. Her favorite dance styles include: Hip-Hop, House, and Popping.
She hopes to travel around the world performing, battling, creating work, and share her knowledge and love for Hip-Hop with others.
Nina Schmidt is originally from San Francisco, where she grew up doing street photography as her primary artistic medium. In addition to using a camera, she loves reading, writing, playing the bass guitar, and generally doing anything creative. Through the WAC undergrad program, she is incredibly excited to blend her love of art with her passion for social justice, and is looking forward to deepening both her understanding and her practice of arts activism throughout her next four years at UCLA.
Nina Schmidt
Reba Thomas & Kylee Miller
Reba Thomas is a fourth year, second year transfer, undergraduate student within WAC/D. She is a Dance and Communication double major at UCLA. Reba has been a dancer for seventeen years, and has both a competitive and concert dance background. She has trained in contemporary/modern, jazz, tap, ballet, and a little folklorico. Currently, she is a member of the Bruinettes, which is the first ever danceline team at UCLA! Through experiencing danceline and HBCU culture, Reba has been able to find and express her artistry in a space created to protect Black identity, representation, and culture. She is really excited for this opportunity to create a similar space with her choreography and can't wait for the show!!
Kylee Miller is a 2nd year dance major at UCLA. She has 16yrs of training in various different styles, including ballet, modern, improvisation, jazz, and musical theatre. She went to a performing arts highschool, HSPVA, located in Houston, Texas. Kylee has been a part of two pre-professional dance companies over the years, Noble Motion 2 and Houston Contemporary 2. This is her second year being a part of Wac Smash and first time being a creator. Kylee is so excited to explore the significance of having danceline and black culture in spaces like Kaufman with the audience.
