Annie
Rosenthal Parr, proprietress of RoCo Dance and Fitness, is a dancer, choreographer, teacher and mother of two. She is a native of Mill Valley, California and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She was a member of Della Davidson Dance and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and founded RoCo Dance and Fitness in 1993.
RoCo Dance and Fitness is a training center for children and adults and it holds over one hundred classes weekly in its four studios. RoCo's youth program, a growing student body of 600 dancers and families, embodies a curriculum of beginning through advanced training in modern, jazz, ballet, hip-hop, break dancing, partnering and composition. The adult program specializes in beginning through professional dance training, hybrid dance fitness workouts, yoga, Pilates, sculpting and spin classes. Annie produces RoCo Dance Onstage, a bi-annual open participation student performance held at the 2000 seat theater of Marin Center. Body Language, directed by Parr, is RoCo's pre-professional youth dance company who performs throughout the Bay Area and prepares young dancers for college and careers in dance. RoCo employs 25 Bay Area dance and fitness professionals whom many have been teaching under the direction of Annie for more than ten years. They are some of the Bay Area's most influential and accomplished people in their industry. They are acclaimed choreographers, master teachers, dance curators, studio owners and college professors. Annie also trains and gives guidance to new instructors by assembling a comprehensive structure for dance and fitness classes of all levels and genres.
Outside of Annie's career at RoCo, she presents work as an independent choreographer and performer. She dances in her own work and recently in that of other artists, including David Dorfman, Jo Kreiter and Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts. Her choreography is selected for many Northern California dance festivals and University commissions. Her piece entitled "Flash" was selected for American College Dance Festival's gala performance in 2006. Annie has received support from Theater Bay Area CASH Grant, Zellerbach Family Fund and the Marin Arts Council to fund her work in the Bay Area.
Annie has been teaching dance and fitness classes since 1991 at RoCo and as a guest teacher in universities and abroad. She is a guest lecturer of dance at University of California, Berkeley.
Annie's approach to teaching is accessible to all type of dancers. Her technical and expressive aesthetic is a unique movement vocabulary that continues to evolve through her constant enthusiasm for dance and performance. Annie's class encourages and teaches multi-dimensional movement that emphasizes efficiency of movement, the use of explosive power, sensitivity, texture, phrasing and clarity. The material presented is a progression of physical challenges that inform and builds onto it. The phases are musically inspired and paced to safely warm up the body and maximize strength and placement.
Jennifer Maecker (Manager of RoCo D &F ) Jennifer graduated highest honors with a BFA in dance from the University of Florida and has been teaching, choreographing and performing for over ten years. She has danced professionally with numerous companies and has been a recipient of the Dance Educator's Fellowship to Bates Dance Festival and received an Emerging Artist Award for her choreography with Fuzion. Recently, Jennifer taught and choreographed for Booker High School's VPA progam (FL) and is thrilled to be back at Roco teaching modern and managing the studio. |
