Meet the Teams!

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Team Gary & Lori

Celebrity - Gary Bowman , Pro - Lori Chase

Gary is a graduate of The University of Montana in Business and has worked as a retail music manager at Morgenroth Music for many years eventually buying the business. He studied music at a young age and at the UM specializing in keyboard, organ, and piano. Gary sings currently with the Missoula Symphony Chorale and was a founding member of the Missoula Gay Men's chorus in 2000.

Eight years ago, Lori Chase accidentally walked into an Argentine tango class in Missoula and fell in love…with the dance and the warm, welcoming community. Since then, she has traveled all over the country as well as internationally to dance and learn from world-renowned teachers. At home in Missoula, Lori teaches introductory tango classes and serves on the Tango Missoula board. She has performed tango as part of the annual Missoula on Main New Year's Eve Dance Showcase and at demonstrations at various locations around Missoula. Lori also teaches yoga at the University of Montana and has taught Yoga for Tango Dancers at the Montana Tango Festival.

Team Rosie & Joy

Celebrity - Rosie Ayers, Pro - Joy French

Rosie Seitz Ayers is a Theatre Director and Teaching Artist throughout Montana. She earned her BFA in theatre and her MA in Integrated Arts in Education at the University of Montana in Missoula where she has been raising her children with her partner, Michael, for the last 25 years. Rosie is currently a theatre teacher at Sussex School and in MCPS through SPARK! Arts for over 10 years. Rosie has an abundance of experience, acting, directing, producing and teaching with Montana Repertory Theatre/MRM, Missoula Community Theatre, Montana Actors Theatre, Grandstreet Theatre, Montana Shakespeare Company, both University of Montana and Carroll College theatre departments, and several other regional arts organizations. She can often be seen performing with her comedy partner, Teresa Waldorf, or teaching at their annual summer camp. Most recently Rosie has been touring with the one person show, Every Brilliant Thing. She is passionate about arts advocacy and has been working in suicide prevention for Project Tomorrow Montana through United Way of Missoula County.

Joy French is a dancer, director, filmmaker, and teacher. French founded and continues to direct Bare Bait Dance, Montana's only full-season professional dance company, which now also owns and operates Missoula's Westside Theater.

Team Louis & Christine

Celebrity - Louis Escobedo, Pro - Christine Kowalchik

Louis Escobedo is the owner of Legendary Beat Production, a full service entertainment company that is family owned and operated, we are dedicated to providing you with high quality entertainment.

National award-winning choreographer and founder/artistic director of Show Tyme Academy, Christine Kowalchik has been a Missoula dance professional since 2013. A native east coaster, Christine classically trained in the Balanchine ballet technique, jazz, tap and modern at the Maine State School for the Performing Arts & Maine State Ballet before receiving her Bachelors of Arts in both Theatre and Dance from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. After college, Christine enjoyed studying and choreographing on three continents- North America, Europe, and Africa- before venturing westward to Montana. Christine founded Show Tyme Academy in 2014 as a children's performing arts academy, and is currently celebrating Show Tyme's 10th season. Her students have traveled across the country, representing Missoula in regional and national dance competitions, and have been accepted into several prestigious summer programs such as Julliard, ABT, Steps on Broadway, SCD Conservatory, Peridance Center, PNB, Complexions, LA Ballet, and more; however she is most proud that her students have been awarded over $750,000 in college dance scholarships to date. In addition to running her studio, Christine has been a choreographer for both the Missoula Community and Children's Theatre for over a decade; totaling 20 productions since 2013. In 2022, she made her choreography debut at BigFork Summer Playhouse and has enjoyed returning each summer since. On the rare occasion she is not doing something dance related, she is spending time with the two most important people in her entire world: her 3 year son, Zander, and her incredibly supportive husband, Alex.

Team Jadi & Nicole

Celebrity - Jadi Rae Curtis, Pro - Nicole Wolcott

Jadi Rae Curtis is a formerly Nashville-based vocal coach who is so elated to be back home in her beloved hometown of Missoula. With a well-rounded background in Jazz, Classical, Theatre, and Commercial vocals, she enjoys the unique challenges of all genres. Jadi Rae originally left her beloved mountains to complete a Music Theatre degree with the prestigious Elon University. Upon graduation, she moved to Nashville, where she has written, recorded, and performed, and continues to do so. Eventually, she also fell in love with helping others to discover the unique and singular nature of their own voices. Jadi considers it a privilege and a joy to play a part in the pursuit of her students’ goals and help them embrace that which makes them unique and memorable.

Nicole Wolcott is a movement artist and teacher who splits her time between Brooklyn and Missoula, MT. In 2003 she co-founded KEIGWIN + COMPANY and was the Associate Artistic Director until 2013. She continues to work with Keigwin on a myriad of independent projects, including their recent online collaboration for Guggenheim Works and Process and ‘Bolero Juilliard’ (broadcast on PBS ‘Great Performances’) She directs ‘The Well’, a dance theater production house she founded in 2018 that is rooted in a collaborative process, generating performances endemic to the artists that create them. The through line of her independent creations of the last twelve years is the artistic collaboration with sound designer, philosopher and friend Omar Zubair. Rooted in improvisation, they create hyper-live dance theater performances with whimsy and aplomb. Wolcott has been in show business for over thirty years. This fact astounds her. In that time she danced in the rural and the chic, she was a cultural diplomat for the United States through DANCE USA dancing with Ethiopians, Tunisians and Ivorians; learning more than she taught. She has helped create dances for Broadway, Off Broadway, a major motion picture, an international art rock band, for shows at The Guggenheim, The Kennedy Center, The Joyce, The American Dance Festival, and CBGB’s. She has been in the ensemble and she has been the star. She loves dance.

Team Angie & Gillian

Celebrity - Angie Lipski, Pro - Gillian Kessler

Often times accused of being a little dramatic, Angie loves to have a good time and show it. To be present and be alive. Add in possibly wearing sequins and dancing with a fun partner for a good cause are the reason Angie is here today. And why not push one's limit to keep the mind and body doing new things? Why not?! She recently saw a quote that said, "You can't give your life more time, so give the time you have more life."

Gillian Kessler is a lifelong dancer and devoted teacher of all things creative expression. Since she was a child, Gillian was immersed in the world of performing arts, studying everything from hip-hop to musical theatre, jazz to Sondheim, in her hometown of Los Angeles. In 2000, Gillian traveled to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil to study Afro-Brazilian dance and culture as a recipient of an educator awards grant. When Gillian moved to Missoula in 2002, Gillian's brought her enthusiastic teaching style to studios including the Downtown Dance Collective and the Headwaters' Studio.

Team John & Emily

Celebrity - John Calsbeek, Pro - Emily Weiler

John Calsbeek moved to Missoula the summer of 1999. Montana seemed like a good place to hunker down if all the prophesied mayhem of Y2K were to come true. On New Year's Eve 1999, John went to a party at the now legendary Stensrud building and Cash for Junkers, a newly formed country swing band, played in the dilapidated old building on N 1st St. He stood in the corner and tapped his toe secretly wishing he could get out and dance that Western swing. He eventually learned how to dance, got married to woman who loves to swing dance with him, and has a teenage daughter. John is as a Curator at the Missoula Art Museum, where he's worked since 2006. Now that his girl is in High School and rarely seen on the weekends, he and his wife hope to get out dance more often!

Emily has spent most of her life in the beautiful Missoula valley, taking as many dance classes as she could growing up. Everything from jitterbug to salsa, ballroom to ballet. She was always inspired by dance and fell in love with musical theater as a child when her mother performed with MCT. In 2017 she had the honor of participating in Dancing with the Missoula Stars as a celebrity (she’s the state pollen counter!), performing east coast swing and lindy hop. She fell in love with swing dancing and never stopped! She is thrilled to share her knowledge now as the professional and grace the stage with her awesome partner. When not dancing you’ll find her working as an instructional designer for UC-Denver, running EMT exams for Aerie Backcountry Medicine and skating with the Missoula Figure Skating Club! As for dancing on the Wilma stage, this one’s for you, mom!

Team Heather & Julia

Celebrity - Heather Harp, Pro - Julia Duarte

Heather Harp never imagined she would end up on stage dancing her fanny off to raise money for the coolest nonprofit in town. But here she is, doing exactly that, putting her years of story collecting into dance form for the first time. When not dancing, she plays hockey with the boys, driving them crazy with her demands of keeping the lines together. She is a wannabe high school art teacher turned financial adviser who stepped into public service and nonprofit leadership and returned to creating art and music. Those passions culminated in her New Year’s Eve project – “Feltings & Feelings” – an interactive, multi-sensory art show and atmospheric piano performance at the ZACC where she captivated the audience with a group sewing lesson. Arts Missoula gave her that chance to shine. As such, she is delighted beyond measure to be asked to return the favor and be a part of “Dancing with Arts Missoula Stars.”

Julia Lauany Duarte is a Brazilian dancer and choreographer currently based in Missoula, Montana. Julia’s main dance styles are Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Contemporary, and Contemporary, although she has also been professionally trained in classical Ballet within the Vaganova method by Studio de Ballet Inpulso. Currently, she is a dancer at Rocky Mountain Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Beyond Borders organization, both directed by Charlene Carey. She has won many awards for her choreography in the Ballet Beyond Borders cultural exchange festival along with the Cultural Diplomacy Award and Essay Contest Awards. Julia is also pursuing her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Montana where she focuses on Dance with an emphasis on performance and choreography, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts and Media with an emphasis on drawing and painting. Julia focuses on spreading her cultural heritage throughout her career. This passion for combining her formal dance training with her cultural movement vocabulary led her to perform and choreograph in countries such as Brazil, the United States, Italy, Cuba, and Pakistan. She has been invited to speak at the Tea Party of Pakistan’s President and First Lady, and to perform at Islamabad’s Art Festival 2019, where she won the prize of Revelation Artist of the year.

Team Angela & Tiki :

Celebrity - Angela Billadeau, Pro - Tiki Preston

Angela Billadeau has been acting/singing professionally since 1998 – straight plays, musical theatre, improv theatre, operetta, jazz, voice over and film – spanning NW, regional and NYC. When she isn’t filling her maternal cup with her 2 beautiful kiddos, she attempts to weave in some theatre, jazz and composition. Her favorite roles over the years include Mabel in Pirates Of Penzance, Waitress in Hank Williams: Lost Highway, Lizzie Curry in Rainmaker, Madge Duggan in No Greater Love, and Francesca in Bridges Of Madison County.

Tiki Preston graduated from the University of Montana in 2020 with a BFA in Choreography and Performance for Dance. She is a fourth year company member of Bare Bait Dance and enjoys teaching at On Center Performing Arts. Tiki is also a wedding dance choreographer and provides private lessons for couples looking to get married. Tiki has trained in many different styles of dance and she is grateful to have her passion her work as well.

Dancing with Arts Missoula Stars

A Fundraiser for Arts Missoula

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Team Members