Choreographer/director Gabri Christa, in collaboration with dancer/cinematographer Evann Siebens, has created The Breach, a series that makes social commentary with short dance films. Each episode follows a young foster child, Dizzy, while he roams the city looking for his mother. All stories are danced on real locations.


Cast

Rocky J. Smith
Dizzy
Multi-talented and multiracial (African- American and Japanese) Rocky J. plays and dances Dizzy, the lead in the Dance film series the Breach. Rocky J. started dancing almost as soon as he could walk. He learned while sitting in studios watching his father Jojo Smith teach dance. Presently on full scholarship at New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center, Rocky J. also holds a black belt in Goju Karate, models, and plays congas.

Filmmakers

Gabri Christa
Producer/Director/Choreographer
Gabri Christa arrived in New York from Puerto Rico via Cuba, the Netherlands and Curaçao Dutch Caribbean, where she was born and raised. She has danced and choreographed with Danza Contemporanea de Cuba and Danzabierta in Havana, of which she was one of the founders. In the United States she has been a member of Bill T. Jones Dance Company/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Her choreographies have been performed throughout Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America; and in the USA in New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Seattle. Christa currently lives in Staten Island, NY and directs her company, DanzAisa. She also choreographs and directs for film and stage.

Christa's dances are firmly based in her Caribbean/European culture and post-modern dance. She has been interested in social and cultural displacement and her work often deals with negotiating community and identity. Her own vocabulary is informed by her Caribbean/European Culture, African Diaspora Religions, and Popular Culture (mostly influenced by her work with teenagers).

Evann Siebens
Cinematographer
Evann Siebens first studied dance at Britain's Royal Ballet School and the National Ballet School of Canada before dancing and choreographing with the National Ballet of Canada and the Bonn Ballet in Germany. In New York, she has danced with choreographers Yannis Adoniou and Claudia Stoltman. Siebens also works as a dance cinematographer and has filmed dancers such as Bill T. Jones, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jose Navas, Sara Rudner and Viola Farber. Her short films, POTHEAD and Do Not Call it Fixity, have been seen at film festivals around the world. She was one of the first of six artists to participate in the NIPAD fellowship for dance videography and won a grant from NIPAD to direct a feature length documentary on Hawaiian hula dancing that is still in progress.