Click below to learn more about the Co-Directors of Telephone:
HEATHER SHAW: CO-DIRECTOR
Image description: Headshot of Heather (female, long brown hair, green eyes) looking at the camera, hands softly at one side of waist.
With diverse experience as a choreographer, performer, filmmaker, and curator, Heather Shaw received her early dance training at Santa Cruz Ballet Theater and TDC of the Bay Area. She is a graduate of the two year acting program at The Meisner Technique Studio in San Francisco and holds a BA in Philosophy (with a Theater/Dance minor) from UC Berkeley.
Heather’s professional dance experience includes performing with MKM Bollystars and Daurden Contemporary Dance Theater in Los Angeles, and currently with ArcTangent Dance in San Jose, CA. In 2016, she participated in the Vertigo International Dance Program in Jerusalem, Israel. In 2020, Heather was selected as one of five Project Tier Choreographers from across the country for Regional Dance America’s NCI.
Heather is the co-director of the activist screendance documentary, Telephone, with Krishna Washburn. The first of its kind, Telephone celebrates the art form of audio description for dance, allowing blind and visually impaired people to be included fully in the joy of artistic expression. The forty-five minute film premiered at New York University in December of 2022, and has since been screened at various organizations across the country, including Mill Valley Film Festival, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Carrollwood Cultural Center, and more.
Heather is currently the Artistic Director of Montage Contemporary Company and teaches ballet and contemporary at Montage Dance Studios, Ayana Ballet, and TDC of Los Gatos. Heather previously taught Barre and movement classes across the Los Angeles area, including at Equinox and on the FOX Studios lot. Her choreography has been performed at YAGP, California Dance Classics, ONYX Dance Co, Dance Mission SF, and more.
As a curator, Heather has served as Performing Arts Manager at the Oshman Family JCC and Co-Curator of TEDxPaloAlto. Her artistic interests include exploring the intersection of movement, sentience, perception, cultural behavior, and aesthetics. She is currently in the early stages of her new documentary “The Kid in Blue”.
More information at www.heathershaw.us.
KRISHNA WASHBURN: CO-DIRECTOR
Image description: Krishna, a thin, pale skinned woman with long dark hair pulled into a braid, poses on a studio stage. She is wearing a simple white dress with her shoulders exposed and a fluffy white headdress perched on her forehead and wrapping down her braid. She looks over her left shoulder as she lightly holds a straight cane between her hands and points her left foot behind her.
Krishna Christine Washburn is the director and teacher of Dark Room Ballet, a pre-professional dance curriculum designed for the educational needs of blind and visually impaired people, the only course of its kind in the English-speaking world.
Krishna holds a Masters of Education from Hunter College, a BA from Barnard College, and multiple certifications from the American College of Sports Medicine with a focus in biomechanics. Dark Room Ballet has been featured in USA Today (Green Bay Gazette, North Jersey News), BLOOM magazine, Speak Out for the Blind podcast, Eyes on Success podcast, and on Bloomberg Quicktake news.
Krishna Christine Washburn has performed with many leading dance companies including Jill Sigman’s thinkdance, Infinity Dance Theater, Heidi Latsky Dance, Marked Dance Project, and LEIMAY.
Krishna has collaborated with many independent choreographers, including Patrice Miller, iele paloumpis, Perel, Vangeline, Micaela Mamede, Apollonia Holzer, and most notably with A. I. Merino, who especially created her signature role, Countess Erzsébet Bathory, and with whom she founded the artistic collective Historical Performances.
Krishna boasts several ongoing artistic collaborations, including work with wearables artist Ntilit (Natalia Roumelioti). Krishna is the Artistic Director of The Dark Room, a multi-disciplinary project with fellow visually impaired dancer, Kayla Hamilton.