Staff and volunteers

Collaborators

Brigid Armbrust
Movement Specialist
Brigid is a modern dancer and current Middlebury College student (class of 2025). She has been dancing her whole life, and has studied with a number of teachers including: Kate Gamble, Peggy Brightman, Neva Cockrell, Daniel Bear Davis, Deborah Harris, and her mother, Kelly Armbrust. In addition to contemporary technique, her movement background includes ballet, yoga, martial arts, contemporary partnering, improvisation (including contact improv), and the Axis Syllabus. She believes that dance/movement practice isn’t just a performance art; it can also help us learn to interact with ourselves, our bodies and our worlds in a more healthy and holistic way.

Kelly Armbrust
Movement Specialist
Kelly holds degrees in both dance and dance/movement therapy and has engaged with dance both artistically and therapeutically for much of her life. As a teacher, her approach blends the traditional and technical with more contemporary and somatic practices, always holding the dual intention of training dancers while supporting her students’ growth as human beings. She believes that dance can connect us more deeply to ourselves and our world, and strives to awaken a growing curiosity and authenticity in her students. She currently teaches modern dance at Open Door Integrative Wellness (in WRJ), homeschools her daughter and grows a lot of food. She feels strongly that we should all be dancing more….and that dancing and embodiment practices are forms of activism! For the more present we learn to be in our bodies, the more we can create positive change in our world.

Molly Armbrust
Movement Specialist

Molly is a dancer/mover and high school student (partially homeschooled/part-time at Hartford high). She first worked with YOH in collaboration with her mom and sister in 2019 on their performance of Metamorphosis and has since helped with a few other shows. Her work included incorporating dance/movement into the shows as well as helping the performers to find a more embodied presence both on and off stage. Molly’s movement experiences include modern/contemporary dance, ballet, contemporary partner work, yoga, axis syllabus, and martial arts.

Conrad Bender
Lighting Designer
He has been a production designer and technical director in the Philadelphia area for the past 25+ years. Conrad has designed scenery and/or lighting for numerous dance and theater artists and companies in the Philadelphia area. Conrad is currently the Senior Technical Director at MC3, where he is responsible for production design and logistics management for a wide variety of corporate events. A founding member of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (now FringeArts), Conrad was the Technical Director of the Festival for the first 12 years, and continued as a production consultant with the festival for several years after that. Conrad has managed many other festivals, including Dance Affiliates’ Next Move Festival, Movement Theatre International’s Clown-Theatre Congress, Philadelphia Dance Alliance’s Transit Dances Festival, and Philadelphia Dance Project’s Packard Building Festival. Because of his minor knowledge of Mandarin, Conrad accompanied Philadelphia artists to the International Sister Cities Arts Festival in Tienjin, China on two separate occasions.

Bethany Formica Bender
Choreographer and Movement Specialist
Bethany Formica has been a professional modern dancer, teacher, and choreographer for the past 25 years. She is currently a performer with Cardell Dance Theatre, guest choreographer for West Chester University Dance Co., teacher at Bryn Mawr College, and the owner of Sawdust Siren, a custom woodworking company specializing in creating objects for the home from reclaimed/repurposed wood. Bethany graduated with a BFA in Dance from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 1994. She has a major interest in partnering, upside down, flip and floor work, teaching how to use one’s upper body as articulately as the lower body, often using elements from Capoeira and Yoga. Bethany spent 10 years in New York City, performing with various groups. She has also performed internationally with Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre and Koncentrat in Poland, Melina Martin (Argentina), and Sylvain Emard (Montreal), among others. Bethany has taught dance, theater, and vocal master classes and residencies throughout the United States as well as internationally in the Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, Ireland, Dominican Republic, Poland, and England.

Holly Levison
Costume Designer
Holly is a costume designer and writer living in Vermont. Over the last 23 years, she has costumed and designed over 200 shows for high schools, summer camps, enrichment centers for adults and youth with special needs, and regional theatre companies. Her first production with Yoh Theatre was Under Milkwood in 2008. Favorite productions include Mamma Mia, Anne Carson’s Bakkhai (played in Woodstock and at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), 1776, Working, Once On This Island, Hair, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Fish Tales, The Secret Garden, Under Milkwood, Seussical, and Scrooge. She has also loved working with words her entire life, in the form of writing plays, speeches, essays, memoirs, and stories. There have even been multiple moments of putting words on fabric while creating healing quilts. Her love of combining theatre and alchemy runs deep and continues.

Diane Martin
Costume Designer Emeritus
Diane has worked Accounts Receivable for Proampac for 23 years. She designed costumes for Yoh Theatre from 2011-2020 and enjoyed every minute of it. She enjoys sewing and gardening. Even after she finished her work as Yoh’s costume designer, Diane has continued to support Yoh in various ways, including helping to organize the program’s volunteer work at the Covered Bridges Half Marathon in 2022. She is an invaluable and well-beloved member of the Yoh community.