PAT TAYLOR Artistic Director/Choreographer    "The melding of heritages and cultural influences that defines America is the same dynamic that feeds my work and inspires me to explore the collage nature of jazz music through dance..."   Pat received her early dance training in Los Angeles, completing her undergraduate dance studies at UCLA before continuing as a full scholarship student at Inner City Cultural Center (Los Angeles) and the Ailey School (New York). She danced with local companies, and then went on to spend seven years performing, choreographing and teaching in Sweden, Finland, Germany and England. Although raised on jazz music, it was while living in Europe that Pat rekindled her love for America's jazz legacy and the African American roots at the heart of the music. Upon returning to the States, she established The Dance Collective - a cooperative dance studio that was Los Angeles' center for dance of the African Diaspora for over 13 years - and also co-founded JazzAntiqua. Pat is a multiple Lester Horton Dance Award nominee and the recipient of several awards including a Brody Arts Fund Choreography Fellowship and grants from the Doolittle Foundation and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. She was a finalist in the 'Dance Under the Stars' Choreography Festival and also a 2009 Leo's Dance Award finalist (Jazz Dance World Congress). Her work has been presented at the Lehman Performing Arts Center (New York) Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, McCallum Theatre (Palm Desert) South Coast Hotel & Casino (Los Vegas), Glashuset (Stockholm), Ford Amphitheatre, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California African American Museum, Watts Towers Jazz Festival, The Jazz Bakery and many other venues.   She is also the director/choreographer for the nationally touring production “Here & Now: The Legacy of Luther Vandross.”  Pat is the dance department chair at Crossroads School for the Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, CA. She has served on grant panels for the California Arts Council, Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and Nevada Arts Council. For several years she was a facilitator for the California Arts Project and a mentor for the Getty Museum/Los Angeles County Arts Commission internship program.     LADY WALQUER VEREEN Associate Artistic Director   Lady has performed with Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell, the Dance Theater of Harlem, Eartha Kitt, Geoffrey Holder and Olatunji Babatunde. Her stage credits include: Hair, Sophisticated Ladies, For Colored Girls…, No Place to be Somebody, Ain't Misbehaving, The Great White Hope and Your Arm's Too Short to Box with God. Her film credits include the award winning The Color Purple. She has also performed with her brother entertainer-actor Ben Vereen, as well as with entertainers Harry Belafonte, Melba Moore and South African star Miriam Makeba, among others. Lady’s career has included performing, choreographing and teaching in Africa, Bulgaria, Canada, Greece, Italy, Puerto Rico, the West Indies and Yugoslavia. Her résumé includes tenures at the prestigious University of Hong Kong, UCLA, USC and Loyola Marymount University; the National Black Theatre of New York and Inner City Cultural Center in Los Angeles. A Harlem native, Lady has returned to NYC where she is currently developing her one-woman show The Grand Queen Mother.