Ivy has been dancing since 1997 and event planning since 1998. She has trained in standard and latin ballroom, lindy hop, hip-hop, West African, Iranian, and South Indian dance. Ivy draws from all of these influences in her dancing. Never one to be confined or traditional, she was a "Westie-Hopper" from day one. She is enjoyed for her musicality and playfulness in dance yet she is more typically known for her attention to detail and sense of responsibility in business. Ivy founded the Fusion Exchange in Houston in 2008. She was named to the board for Portland Blues & Jazz Dance Society in 2008 and Portland Lindy Society in 2009. When she should be sleeping or dancing, Ivy is a bankruptcy and tax attorney.

Whether you are a beginner struggling to understand the basics of a dance, an intermediate working on the details of making it feel better, an advanced dancer that needs that next inspiration to jump start his dancing, or a teacher looking for new & fresh ideas... Andrew's classes have provided all of that and much more to thousands of dancers around the world, taking them to their next levels, which is exactly what he will do for you.

Andrew Sutton and Anna Whitmire at HFX

www.smoothsavoy.com

Clint loves long walks on the beach...sorry, wrong bio.

With a long and varied history, Clint has traveled...and is finding that it's getting harder and harder to avoid the police. He has been dancing swing weekly (and sometimes weakly) since 1999 and discovered the joys of blues dancing in 2005. In addition to PFX, Clint has been webmaster for over a dozen dance websites, most of which he has treated as his own personal empires, but prefers to think of as "benevolent dictatorships". Clint is the current VP of the Blues Association of Austin and one of the founders of the Austin Blues Party.

His favorite song is "Stormy Monday Blues."

www.danceslut.com

Drew Robinson has been organizing blues and tango events in Portland, OR for also 3 years. She has run Tuesday Blues for that duration and is a founding member of the Oregon non-profit the Portland Blues and Jazz Dance Society.

She is known for her soulfulness and likes to challenge the floor to try new things. She has an affinity for alternative tango music, rock, and folk-blues. Drew Robinson is also a middle-school math teacher and has directed and stage managed countless theater productions throughout her years.

Tango/Fusion with Lorenzo- HFX

Emerald City Blues w/Bryson

www.pdxblues.com

Katie started dancing in 2005 during her time at Scripps College, training in standard and latin ballroom, lindy hop, salsa, and west coast swing with the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company. An active part of the leadership council for the company, Katie organized and hosted events and fund raising, performed for the community, and handled apparel and ticket sales. After graduating she spent 6 months in Edinburgh Scotland, and further expanded her skills of lindy and blues. Since coming back to the states, Katie has joined up with some of her fellow Claremont alumni to form an amateur performance group called "Nouveau Movement." She occasionally dj's at Claremont College's weekly blues event, "Underground Blues." When she's not dancing, she works at a law firm and enjoys glass fusing and photography.

Katie's Farewell Jam Circle

"The Way You Make Me Feel" Solo

Elizabeth has been swing and ballroom dancing since 1997. She discovered blues dancing around 1994/5 and immediately fell in love with it because of the freedom of movement and expression. The play within the moves her partner gives her feeds her creativity and she loves letting the instruments shape her. She pulls feeling from each move, and the interplay between the music & her partner exhilarates her! She teaches blues locally and has been dancing Argentine tango since 1995. Elizabeth is the founder & organizer for Blue Bella, San Diego's only blues & soul dance venue.

Elizabeth loves working with kids and has done so since she received her Master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology in December of 2003. She currently works as an independent contractor performing in-home speech therapy for children. She has one precocious cat named 'Singo that dancers who have met him completely love.

Megan Repar has been dancing for two years, her only regret being that she started a few weeks after the first Fusion Exchange. This computer programmer is a self-described math nerd who helps to organize house parties in Houston, TX.

Tim started dancing in 1997 and never stopped. An active Lindy Hopper, he was a regular at the old Memories and Satin Ballroom until he was swept away to college in Santa Barbara. There he spent two years teaching ballroom at an Arthur Murray before quitting and studying Argentine Tango With Brian and Fay. Once back in LA, Tim Joined the Hollywood Hornets, three time National Jitterbug Champions, where he performed and competed with the team for three years. During that time Tim began learning Blues at house parties and exchanges. Now an avid student of the Blues, he seeks to grow the community through teaching as many people as he possibly can.

His current teaching project is the Blues Kitchen in Sherman Oaks: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=125663961856&ref=ts

Blues Dancing in Sherman Oaks

Greg Avakian is a popular DJ. He has played for dancers at exchanges, competitions, and other Swing and Blues events across the USA, in Canada and Europe. He has been the DJ coordinator at various events including the American Lindy Hop Championships. Greg's DJ style mixes classic swing with very groovy blues and other sweet & funky stuff. A fan of both struttin' vintage music a la New Orleans and sizzling south Chicago sexiness, Greg looks to the dancers -and what they like- in his quest to drive the floor into playful frenzy.

Greg and his partner, Laurie Zimmerman have been teaching and dancing together for over 10 years. They specialize in Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing, and Blues Dancing. They also teach the 35-person Lindy troupe "The West Philly swingers" who won first place in the 2009 Collegiate Team Division of ALHC.

www.SwingandBlues.com

Kayce Spear most recently spent a year in Germany as a Fulbright scholar, spreading her love and knowledge of blues and fusion dancing internationally in Munich and Heidelberg. Since returning to Portland, OR, she's become increasingly active in the blues scene. By day she helps bring power to the people, literally, and by night she's a insatiable beast on the dance floor.

After a taste of blues in his hometown of San Francisco and a year-long dance famine in Tokyo, David came out to Tuesday blues one warm August night and has been hooked since. He is finishing his Economics degree at Lewis and Clark College, and pays the bills doing IT and translation work.

Interested in taking private lessons at SDFX? Ted is your main man! Email him at pic@sandiegofusionexchange.com to schedule a private lesson during the event.

As an organizer, Ted Maddry loves creating the vision of an event and assembling it piece-by-piece. Utilizing his experience as a dance instructor, Ted is a strong organizer and consultant because he understands the value that instructors can provide to students, the joy of dancing and learning, and the complexities that go into making a great event.

As a teacher, Ted has helped many students change their dancing and sometimes even their lives. In his classes, he challenges students to develop dance technique, experiment & take risks in their dancing all the while maintaining a comfortable & entertaining classroom environment. He gives new perspectives, unique material, & methods to improve dancing that can also be used to improve non-dance life.

Having grown up in Portland, Oregon, Emily graduated from the College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, with a BA in communication studies, minoring in studio art. Like many liberal arts graduates, she wasn't thrilled with her immediate options, and so went back to school after a couple years, this time in an effort to combine her major and minor into something more satisfying: namely, design. There, she discovered a love of being artistic while solving problems at the same time. In 2007, she graduated with an AAS in Graphic Design from Portland Community College, started Y-Lime Creative Design, where she has worked ever since. When not designing, she is often found outdoors, making arts or crafts, or dancing tango on an ancient wood floor.