Belfast Dance Studio & Center for Embodiment

Shana grew up in Freedom, Maine, and discovered her love of dance at Forest Friends Nursery School with Lisa Newcomb. She has studied dance throughout Maine, at Hampshire College, in New York City and in Senegal, West Africa. She danced professionally as a member of Nia Love’s Blacksmith's Daughter Dance Theatre Co. in NYC for 4 years and currently offers her works throughout New England. Shana is the artistic director of Women's Works (an annual offering featuring a collective of movers). Her experience and love/knowledge as a Mother, yoga facilitator, massage therapist, community activist, and physical therapy assistant provide important tools for creating a safe and loving environment to explore in. 

Shana has been facilitating Yoga for over 20 years, & recently completed a 500 HR YTT in addition to a Yoga Class Curator training with Susanna Barkataki; with a focus to decolonize yoga, celebrate and honor the Roots of Yoga, and integrate social justice practices that include all bodies. Shana has been facilitating dance & movement practices since 1997, a practicing & licensed massage therapist since 2002 years & a practicing & licensed PTA since 2006.

While water is her best teacher, she has trained extensively, both in many styles of “belly” dance (including Turkish Roman) as well as in Flamenco, studying throughout the U.S. and in Egypt, Turkey and Spain.  Interviewed for her knowledge of flamenco for the novel "Flamenco Academy," as well as for Oprah magazine, she is an arts educator with an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies/Dance Therapy from Lesley University.

In addition to teaching at the Belfast Dance Studio and several other studios in the area, Heléna spent almost 20 years as a dance teacher and choreographer at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH, and is a juried arts educator for the Maine Arts Commission.  Her work in schools focuses on teaching both Andalusian and Middle Eastern dance, music, and culture, as well as helping Maine’s 4th-graders learn the hard science of local ecosystems through “Dancescapes,” an intellectual, imaginative, and movement-based interactive process she created for children to experience and learn from both their own bodies and the environment. www.daturanightbloom.com

Michele Cox - Ballet, Jazz

Michele Cox instructs Classical Ballet and Jazzin' Hip Hop in four midcoast  locations. The P2PDance Center on 27 Knowlton Street in Camden houses the majority of the schools' classes. Four the past four years, Ms. Cox has also extended her instruction to three outreach dance facilities: the Belfast Dance Studio on Saturdays, the Belfast YMCA on Tuesdays and Saturdays and Great Salt Bay School on Fridays.  A co-founding member of P2PDance and it's performing arm, Atlantic Ballet Company, Ms. Cox performed as a member of the Senior Company, while also acting as rehearsal director for the Junior Company. In 1988,  Ms. Cox restructured P2PDance Center, emphasizing a stronger base in classical ballet technique for each student performer.  Ms. Cox  studied classical ballet, taught in the Russian Vagavona style with Sharon Dante,  director of Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory of the Arts and with Andre Bossov, soloist with the Kirov Ballet. She furthered her training in ballet, modern, jazz and African dance at Bates College, Duke University, Manhattanville College, Portland Ballet and with Sarah Yarborough, soloist with the Alvin Ailey Company as well as with Arthur Hall, a co-founder of People To People Dance Company. She has performed and taught  Ballet, jazz, modern and African dance in theaters and schools throughout Maine.