Beth Braun is the Artistic Director of Esperanza Dance Project and Director of Dance at Rincon/University High Schools. She has been performing professionally and teaching since 1982 in Tucson, throughout Arizona, in New York, California, and internationally. Originally from New York, Beth received her MA Degree in Dance Performance and Choreography from State University of New York at Brockport. Beth has worked with just about every modern dance company in Tucson, starting back with Territory Dance Theatre and including being the associate director of ORTS Theater of Dance (OTO Dance) and ZUZI Dance Company, and while in NY she worked with Joy Kellman and Company and Randy James Danceworks for their first season. She has taught every age student from 13 month old babies to 60 year old differently-abled adults. Beth is currently completing her eighth year as director of the dance program at Rincon/University High Schools where she teaches all styles of concert dance, improvisation, choreography, lighting design, mentors students and produces four major dance concerts each school year. Between the years of 1998 and 2005, prior to her founding and directing The Esperanza Dance Project, whose mission is to raise awareness and educate about childhood sexual abuse, the impact it has on all of our lives and to deliver a message of hope for healing, Beth created and produced her own work with musician/composer/husband, Arthur Miscione. Through their work together they created and funded, with yearly performances, a Pediatric Heart Transplant fund at University Medical Center. Beth was the 2005 recipient of the prestigious Buffalo Exchange Arts Award.
Michelle Sigafus is a Native Tucsonan. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a major in both instrumental and vocal music. She has worked for TUSD for 13 years, teaching Band, Choir, Orchestra, Keyboarding, General Music, and Music Theater throughout the district. She is currently teaching music grades 3-8 at Roberts/Naylor K-8. She fills her school days teaching 3 violin classes, 2 piano classes, 2 recorder class, 2 trumpet classes, 2 clarinet classes, a choir class, a before school Band and Musical Theater after school. In the summer she teaches Musical Theater with the Fine Arts Youth Academy. In 2004 Michelle Sigafus was the recipient of the University of Arizona’s Gold Star Arts Educator of the Year Award for her work with Opening Minds Through the Arts. In 2008 she received the Luz Social Services Hispanic Sports and Academic Teacher of the Year, for her work with Hispanic Students. She is the wife of Brent Sigafus and has two wonderful children, Macy and Clayton. They are both following in her foot steps learning to sing and play instruments.
Kevin Lee Lopez is a 7th grade language arts teacher. He teaches at Baboquivari Middle School, located approximately 70 miles west of Tucson, on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. Kevin is an enrolled member of the Dakota-Sioux Indian Nation and has lived in Tucson for over twenty years. He is an educator of children for 19 years, covering assignments ranging from preschool, severe and profound disabilities, middle school social studies and language arts. He was the lead organizer of a three year school series, “Stories From the Maze”, which brought nationally recognized Native American poets and local Tohono O’odham students together to dream, craft, and present formal poetry productions on stage. As a cultural consultant, Kevin leads workshops and presentations that seek to integrate culturally appropriate responses to the various phases of educational challenges and growth opportunities for Native American students and their teachers. Currently he is the advisor for his middle school poetry club, “The Encouraging Writers”.
