Members

Meet The Team

Aaron Rodriguez got his dancing start doing line dancing in a country bar in the wine country, then moved onto ballroom while attending Chico State, and finally took up lindy hop with some of the ballroom dropouts. Since then he’s traveled all over the country for swing dancing and enjoys learning new things about it and improving his dancing whenever he can. After taking a short break from dancing, he joined the Swing Cats in 2009, took a year off of the troupe, and joined again in late 2011. He works as a software engineer for a startup in the Peninsula, and when not dancing, he enjoys playing video games, cycling, and working out.
Audrey Kanemoto has been performing for zero people in the privacy of her own room as long as she can recall. She started Tap dancing at age 9, added Jazz at some point, and earned featured dancing roles in high school productions of “Oklahoma!” and “Bye Bye Birdie”. Desiring to sing as well as dance, she joined a choral ensemble and sang in the chorus for “Singin’ In The Rain” before getting small roles as Lucinda in “Into The Woods” and Connie in “A Chorus Line.” Throughout college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and while studying abroad in London and Florence, Audrey sang whenever she could in small groups and ensembles. Today, Lindy Hop and movement inspired by traditional jazz music consumes her life, traveling, performing, competing, choreographing, and teaching. She has performed with Lindy Hop dance troupes SF Bounce, Three Minute Maniacs, and Swing Cats. Today, you can find Audrey co-hosting two peninsula venues, Epic Swing Night in San Mateo and Wednesday Night Hop in Mountain View!
Beginning in his home town of Sacramento, Eliott Gray has been dancing the Lindy Hop since 2006. He took his first class in college, where he was exposed to ballroom dance, and it was SO FUN! After making the switch from ballroom dancing to swing, he got permanently hooked, and has been social dancing ever since! When not swing dancing, Eliott may be found working as a geographer, reading fiction, and playing board games with friends.
Hailing from San Diego, and now wailing from the Bay! Evan Goodwin started dancing ballroom in 2008, before growing wise to the charms of swing. After feeling that pulse and targeting those big hits, he hasn’t turned back. Outside of dance, he’s an engineer by day. Outside of that, he’s playing music, soccer, and speaking wobbly Spanish.
With a bright smile and endless energy, Idalia Ramos swivels across the dance floor day in and day out. Since she found Lindy Hop, she made it her life. The welcoming faces of the swing dancing community in San Francisco, plus the vintage charm of the city, left her with no choice but to transplant herself all the way from Las Vegas to the Bay Area. She didn’t have a job or a place to live, but there was plenty of dancing to be done in the city while the rest fell in order. Now that’s passion. Some of her accomplishments include placing 1st in the Fillmore Jazz Festival in 2011 and making all the finals at Camp Hollywood which included the Amateur Balboa, Strictly Lindy, Classic Lindy, and Jack and Jill. She ended up taking two trophies home for Classic Lindy and Jack and Jill! Not too shabby for her first time competing at a National level. When she is not on the dance floor, and not dancing by herself in her room, she goes on culinary adventures with friends, takes hikes, paints/draws, and occasionally plays bartender to come up with cool cocktails! Idalia is currently teaching beginner and intermediate classes at the Women’s Building in San Francisco with Nathan Dias. She loves to bring a smile to peoples faces through the joy of Lindy Hop wherever she is, and is excited to share it with the world.
Irina Degtiar‘s interest in dance is rather eclectic – starting with jazz dance in 2001, she’s tried every style she can get her feet on. From salsa to bellydance to modern, her interests have her dancing almost every night of the week. A fateful audition for Movement swing, a performing group at Cal, in 2008 brought her into the social dance scene. The fun energy and friendly people have kept her swinging since. In the spare bits of time she’s not dancing, working, or sleeping, Irina enjoys hiking, cooking, and seeing as much of the world as possible.
Julie Tsai, an original member of the Swing Cats, is happy to still be a part of the troupe after a long hiatus. A native New Yorker, she transplanted herself a number of years ago to the Bay Area for school. Upon graduating from college she found herself unable to leave such a swinging area and created many ‘opportunities’ to keep herself dancing here. Her dance background includes ballet and social ballroom. As an undergraduate (and beyond) she has performed with the Stanford Viennese Ball Opening, Stanford Vintage Dance Ensemble with Richard Powers, and the Knotts Dance Company. As former Artistic Director of the Academy of Danse Libre, she still performs with them as a current member. When not on the dance floor or at her clinic she can be found reading (anytime, anywhere), watching old movies or new theater productions, cooking (or just eating), gardening, and traveling the world.
Leo Alekseyev needed something to keep him warm and sane during the many years he spent in graduate school. Luckily, he had discovered Lindy Hop while taking social dance during his senior year at Stanford, and decided to give it another shot when he moved to the East Coast. He started to take classes from Skye Humphries, became instantly hooked, and has been dancing ever since! Like many lindy hoppers, he thinks it is completely normal to describe swing dancing in terms of Fourier transforms and scattering theory, and has been known to attach accelerometers and gyroscopes to dancers just to see what would happen. When not on the dance floor, Leo can be found writing code, paging through physics books, and riding his longboard.
Maddie Gardner first discovered lindy with Burnsville High School Swing in her home state of Minnesota. After one jam circle, she was hooked! The warm and welcoming swing communities she’s found in Minnesota, Iowa, and now California have kept her dancing ever since. When she’s not dancing, you can find Maddie cooking, reading, and exploring the far corners of the world through international travel.
A Bay Area native, Robin Lassonde left for many years of school in the Midwest, and returned a swing dance addict. She has been back in San Francisco since 2012. While not dancing, you can find Robin coding, making gluten-free pizza, biking around town, or DJing at the 9:20 Special. If you want to distract Robin, then simply mention cooking or pinball and you’re good to go.
Trevor Gattis made his way from the Tarheel State to the Golden State in 1993. Two years after that, he began to discover the wonders of social dance while attending Stanford University. After being versed in the basic for about 15 different dances through classes at Stanford and DeAnza, he was introduced to the world of lindy at the Monsters of Swing ’99 swing camp. Since then, it’s been a non-stop lindy-coaster ride. When he’s out dancing, you can find him gettin’ his groove on to old school R & B, dancing salsa, Argentine tango, and swing. When he’s not dancing, you can find him playing ultimate frisbee, basketball, dabbling in video production work, gettin’ jiggy wit it, working on miscellaneous programming projects, collecting music, practicing his moonwalk, and just enjoying life. Catch Trevor teaching and DJing at Cheryl Burke Dance.
Usha Farey Lingappa grew up performing everywhere she could, and pursued theater fairly seriously until she went to college and got distracted by science. She always loved dancing and tried a litany of different styles in the past, but never found one that resonated with her so well until she discovered lindy hop in 2012. Pretty immediately thereafter, she became completely hooked, and now dances at every possible opportunity. For work she hunts viruses and aliens (antiviral research in the biotech sector and exobiology at NASA). She is an aspiring astronaut, and hopes to one day swing out on Mars.

Founders

 Rob & Diane van Haaren are considered trendsetters and leaders in the world of swing. They frequently travel all over the United States and Europe to teach and perform. They were voted the No. 1 Swing Dance instructors in the Bay Area, as noted by San Francisco Magazine, “Best of San Francisco,” January 1998. They are known around the globe for their style and flair on the floor. They’ve been featured numerous times on both Fox and ABC television specials, as well as the PBS special with Wynton Marsalis, Frankie Manning, Illinois Jacket, and Jimmy Slide on the life of Duke Ellington, “Swingin’ with Duke.” Perhaps you saw them on Wynton Marsalis’s Lincoln Jazz Orchestra’s year 2000 tour in the Bay Area called “For Dancers Only.” What’s more, they were the opening act for former President Clinton during his visit to San Francisco.