Exploring Infinite Pathways

Alyssa Myers (she/her) is a choreographer, dancer, and leadership professional passionate about fostering collaborative and inclusive artistic experiences. She is the director of (All)Ways Dance Company, which focuses on creating meaningful work that bridges performance, exploration, and dialogue.  

Originally from Yuma, Arizona, Alyssa trained at Yuma Ballet Academy and performed with Ballet Yuma as a pre-professional member. She earned her BFA in Dance from the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance in 2020, where she performed works by renowned choreographers, including William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Azure Barton, George Balanchine, and Crystal Pite. During her time at USC, she worked closely with influential mentors such as Thomas McManus, Fiona Lummis, and Bret Easterling.  

Alyssa’s choreography “Undoing,” created for Ballet Yuma, received a Choreography Recognition Award at the 2024 Ballet Alliance Festival. She has collaborated with a wide range of organizations, including MOVE|NYC|, Falco Dance, Utah Metropolitan Ballet, Traverse City Dance Project, Terre Dance Collective, and Columbia City Jazz Company. In 2022, she joined Jodie Gates for an NYU residency to explore themes of identity and inclusivity in ballet and was awarded a Converge2Emerge Fellowship to create the immersive performance *LENS|Beta.*  

In 2023, Alyssa was an inaugural fellow and project manager with NVA & Guests and has continued to perform and create with Robert Rubama's Terre Dance Collective.  

Alongside her artistic career, Alyssa is a Senior Associate at 3 Summits Leadership, where she specializes in leadership development, team cohesion, and communication strategies. Her interest in conflict resolution and feedback shapes her work, bringing thoughtful perspectives to both the arts and professional development.  

Through movement workshops, performances, and open dialogues, Alyssa aims to inspire others to reach new levels of creative expression, understanding, and connection.

Originally from Silicon Valley, California, Aurora Vaughan (she/they) is a freelance movement artist based in NYC. She graduated in 2021 with a BFA in Dance from the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. While in school, they had the honor of performing works by choreographers Crystal Pite, William Forysthe, Sonya Tayeh, Jiří Kylian, Andrew Winghart, and Barak Marshall. Since then, they have worked with artists such as Alan Lucien Øyen, Dance Lab New York, Madi Hicks, Eamon Foley, Tracie Stanfield, Stephanie Saywell, and FangTing Yeh, performing in many of New York’s independent venues and working with MOVE|NYC| (dir. Chanel Dasilva and Nigel Campbell).

She is a company member in The New Jack Cole Dancers (dir. Camden Loeser) and Moving Forward Dance Collective (dir. Madison Hicks), and previously was with alma Collective (dir. Kat Bark and Bianca Dam). They are a dance artist that is concerned with and prioritizes humanhood in order to access artistry. She is an avid collaborator, whether it be with fellow dancers in the studio, as a sounding board for a choreographer, with a musician/composer, or as a director in a dance film; most importantly as an activist.

Aurora began dancing at age three at Menlo Park Academy of Dance, and continued with Leyla Boissonnade at Bay Area Dance School in Los Altos, CA. While receiving extensive dance training, they were also privileged to grow up in community theaters and choirs, and due to this, Aurora loves to work with text and voice within her own work. She currently studies vocals with Megan Loomis. Along with their degree in Dance with a concentration in Music, they earned their minor in Performance Science, a combined degree of Business, Biology, and Psychology, from the USC Marshall School of Business.

Aurora enjoys being a student, and has made a goal of learning something new each year; since graduating she has earned her certification in Pilates, has become a 200-hr Yoga teacher, and is currently learning German.

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Aidan Tyssee is an LA native, receiving his early training in ballet and contemporary at Lauridsen Ballet Centre while dancing with the formerly known pre-professional company South Bay Ballet, now Ballet California. Aidan went on to dance at the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California with an Arts Excellence scholarship, where he has performed existing works by the likes of Ohad Naharin, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, and Justin Peck, as well as getting the chance to perform in new works created by Yue Yin, Dani Rowe, and other esteemed choreographers. At USC Kaufman, he not only furthered his training in ballet and contemporary, but in Jazz, hip-hop, Gaga, and modern dancing as well. 

In 2022, Aidan performed pieces by Ohad Naharin, Justin Peck, and Tessandra Chavez in Germany. He ventured to Italy where he danced with Orsolina 28, learning repertoire by Jiří Kylián and Marco Goecke. In 2023, he danced in Vancouver, BC at an intensive affiliated with Ballet BC where he learned repertoire by Medhi Walerski and Imre and Marne Van Opstal. 

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Upon graduating from USC Kaufman with a BFA in Dance Performance in 2023, Aidan moved to New York to continue his training. Recently, Aidan was asked to be a part of Benjamin Millepied’s Romeo + Juliet world tour with L.A. Dance Project, performing at the Sydney Opera House and Dubai in 2024. He has also gotten the opportunity to join (All)Ways Dance Company as a founding member as the company’s Producer.

Summer Vu is a first generation Vietnamese-American movement artist who brings all she knows into all she does. Raised in Gilbert, Arizona, Summer’s career started by dancing on her living room coffee table—the same table where she built miniature houses and drew Crayola masterpieces. Under the mentorship of Mandi Smith, she expanded her practice by exploring numerous styles and dancing competitively. This multiplicity in her early training blossomed a passion for the mixing and merging of all forms, influencing her to study at USC Kaufman.

At Kaufman, Summer continued exploring the boundaries of her own movement while immersing herself in other artistic processes. While working with many acclaimed choreographers like Kyle Abraham, Hope Boykin, Peter Chu, and Yin Yue, she has also danced in a number of student films, movement directed fashion shows, and modeled for motion capture. Within each experience, Summer enjoys learning about each artist’s creative process—finding intrigue in how the puzzle pieces fit together.

To this day, Summer’s passion for mixing mediums has expanded beyond dance. With her proficiency in American Sign Language, she’s currently exploring the intersectionality between sign and dance—researching how they can support and inspire one another. As she begins her freelance career, she has found herself combining her interests through a variety of roles including: assisting choreographer Hope Boykin, restaging work for Kyle Abraham, and standing in as Misty Copeland for the Wicked No Good Deed music video by Universal Studios. She’s excited to continue exploring how movement can enrich a variety of different artistic spaces—connecting all that has inspired her to inspire others around her. She is currently based in Los Angeles and New York.

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LENAI ALEXIS WILKERSON (she/her) hails from Washington, D.C. where she attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, under the direction of Norma Pera. Lenai graduated from the inaugural class at University of Southern California as a Glorya Kaufman scholar with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Political Science. Upon graduation, Lenai became a company artist with Ballet Hispánico, where she toured internationally for three seasons. For the last two seasons, she was a corps de ballet dancer with Cincinnati Ballet, expanding her community engagement in organizations such as Black Art Speaks. Wilkerson has performed works by choreographers including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Martha Graham, Barak Marshall, Azure Barton, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, Jennifer Archibald, Annalee Traylor, Jimmy Orrante, d.Sabela Grimes, and Dwight Rhoden. Additionally, she has assisted Patrick Corbin in setting a Paul Taylor work for Miami City Ballet and had her NYC choreographic debut in the summer of 2024 with Queer the Ballet.

She has trained seasonally with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Bolshoi Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow and with legendary ballerina Suzanne Farrell. Wilkerson was awarded the JarriTODOS dance artist grant in 2022, was a YAGP Top 12 finalist and was one of the seven 2016-17 dance scholars to be awarded a scholarship from Nigel Lythgoe’s Dizzy Feet Foundation. With aspirations to achieve more in life, she currently is in graduate school at The George Washington University to receive her Master’s of Arts degree in Organizational Leadership. Wilkerson is elated to have joined Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre in the fall of 2024. Through Terminus, Lenai became a mentor to young black and brown dancers in ballet through the Catalyst scholarship program with Dance Canvas, as well as becoming the new era Artistic Director of Wabi-Sabi, after a near decade hiatus.

Nicolette Harutunian joins us from Los Angeles, California where she works as a social impact strategist at the intersection of gender, health, and education equity. She currently serves as the Director of U.S. Programs for a global development nonprofit that increases access to health resources in underserved communities. In this role, she has established strategic partnerships to successfully expand programmatic reach across all 50 states and close opportunity gaps connected to period poverty, serving 116,000+ individuals to date. 

Nicolette oversees the growth and operations of the organization’s philanthropic grantmaking in the United States and advocacy/education initiatives across 47 countries. She has leaned on her background in human-centered design and systems thinking to strengthen Menstrual Health Management, WASH, Teacher Support, and Early Literacy programming in underserved communities in the United States, Armenia, Ghana, Laos, and Guatemala. 

Nicolette graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Business Administration and holds a concentration in social entrepreneurship within the non-profit sector. In her free time, she is an avid consumer and admirer of the arts and stands in great pride for (All)Ways Dance Company’s vision. 

Paulo Hernandez-Farella is a Salvadoran-American from Los Angeles, CA where they attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts as a dance and musical theatre dual-major. They were then admitted to the University of Southern California on a full-ride as a Trustee Scholar. Paulo went on to graduate as part of the inaugural class of USC Kaufman Dance Scholars with both a BFA in Dance and a Masters in Public Administration from the USC Price School of Public Policy. Upon graduation, Paulo toured domestically and internationally with Ballet Hispánico for six seasons as a company artist, taking their final bow with the company in the winter of 2024. For five of those years, Paulo acted as the company’s union representative, spearheading two contract negotiations and upholding their contract on a daily basis in studio and on tour. . 

Paulo is now a bicoastal (NYC and LA) freelance performing artist represented by MSA. You can see their work on screen in both movies and TV shows, in several TV and Print commercials, and in live productions all over the United States. Administratively, Paulo serves on both the American Guild of Musical Artist’s Board of Governors and on their NYC Area Committee. Paulo is currently the Development Coordinator at Camille A. Brown and Dancers, where they are thrilled to be pushing the mission forward of an organization that triumphs advocacy in the arts. Paulo is immensely grateful to Alyssa and is excited to be part of the (All)Ways Dance Company Advisory Board.