2021 Artist & Entertainers
Stacy Everson
Stacy Everson’s love for aerial dance found her on the island of Kauai, enthralled by spatial play upon witnessing the abilities of the human body through a Cirque de Soleil performance.
Searching for the new and innovative in aerial representation is her goal. However, her true joy comes from teaching others not to be merely spectators but actual participants.
She has been performing for seven years throughout Colorado in California and beyond at Envision stage in Costa Rica.
Derek "Vincent Vega"
Derek is a fire performer out of Crested Butte. He was inspired by the annual vinotok celebration that occurs during the autumnal equinox. Derek focuses his energy on the dragon staff. Fire spinning in the mountains gives him a great balance between winter activities and summer activities. Derek enjoys inspiring others to follow their own performance aspirations.
Anneke Dean
Anneke grew up in Denver, CO and started playing the violin at the age of eight. She studied at Denver School of the Arts under the tutelage of the Moscow String Quartet’s first violinist, Eugenia Alikhanova. She holds a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the Chicago College of Performing Arts where she studied with Almita Vamos, MingHuan Xu, and Frank Almond. Anneke was exclusively playing classical music for the majority of her career. While in Chicago, she started exploring other genres including jazz and mariachi. At that point, she continued broadening her genres. Since moving to the Telluride area in 2018, she has worked with numerous local musicians exploring country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, improvisation, classical, and more. Anneke joined the local band, Birds of Play, during the summer of 2020 and tours full time with them.
Dan Gundrum
Dan Gundrum specializes in immersive digital art through projection mapping, lasers and special effects with his company, Pivotal Effects. He serves the community’s tech needs through his primary company Home Technology Group by installing home automation and lighting control in clients homes. He regularly shares his talent through artist workshops and holds an annual welding workshop for Rocky Mountain Arts. Dan is the Technical Director and Ensemble Member with Telluride Theatre, helping direct the cogs behind the scenes to make the show go on seamlessly. He is an active member at Deep Creek Experimental, and fine tunes his plethora of creations in a studio built in an old limestone mine.
Ben Dukeminier
An actor turned clown, Ben has been in the performing arts for over 15 years. He is one of the founding members of the "Secret Circus Society", in which he trains in a multitude of skills such as: aerial silks, street magic, clowning, rolling globe, playing with fire, juggling (and the list always seems to be growing), but what he is best known for, is his work on stilts. He prides himself on not being just a stilt walker, but instead: a stilt dancer, who likes to climb mountains, dance above the crowds and push the limits of what a 10-foot tall person can do. He is teaching several free workshops at the library Saturday and Sunday.
Jesse The Juggler
Jesse has been performing and teaching juggling and unicycle for 15 years. A Portland, ME, native, he learned how to juggle in the second grade. He’s an avid circus artist, always working on improving his craft. Jesse recently spent a year in Little Rock, AR, where he worked as a teacher and performer with the Arkansas Circus School. Additionally, Jesse is also a performer with The Durango Circus. Jesse is an advocate for health and wellness and a talented musician as well. He will be teaching two free juggling workshops at the library.
Tia "Tempest" Uphoff
"Tempest" is a Tribal Fusion Bellydancer, originally from Memphis, Tennessee. Teaching and performing many different styles of dance has been one of her main life goals since 2007. Tempest is a Telluride local that lives to share her love and joy of the wondrous art of dance.
Evan Beloni
Based in Denver, Evan Beloni draws upon his engineering experience in aerospace, machine design, machining and metal fabrication and electronics to create unique art, both as a hobby and professionally. Evan is the recipient of many grants for his fire sculptures. His flaming art installations will be on display at Resurrection Saturday night.
Viele Maloy
Viele is a fire performer based in Crested Butte, CO. She finds freedom expressing herself through movement and loves sharing her flame with others through performance and teaching. She has been dazzling audiences with her fire fans and dragon staff at festivals and private events all across the U.S. for the past five years.
Vera Sizintseva
Vera is a Russian circus and flow performer based in Denver, CO. She has spent six years immersed in learning and teaching flow arts, with her favorite prop being the dragon staff. She will be gracing the stage at the end of the box canyon at Resurrection Saturday, Dec. 4. She loves performing and teaching dragon staff.
Gale Force
Gale Force is a performance artist, specializing in stilt and aerial dance. With over a decade of professional experience, she owns the stage from the moment she emerges until she leaves. Gale Force is always innovating new and beautiful dimensions and movements to share and stir up absolute joy in audiences.
Gale is also the creator of Gforce Baubles: high-vibe, intentional, wearable resin art.
Rikki Morehouse
Rikki is a passionate and dedicated performer, teacher, and designer of things. She is also a contortionist-hand balancing-aerialist clown, and one of the creators of SacCirque, a Sacramento-based collective of circus and flow artists (saccirque.com). She currently lives in Paonia, CO, where she has formed a performance organization called Homestead Circus Productions with her partner Dominic Del Signore. You can read more about Rikki here: http://www.rikkimorehouse.com/
Homestead Circus Productions
Homestead Circus Productions is a Colorado-based company on the western slope focused on evolving circus entertainment, culture, and education, while pushing the boundaries of contemporary circus everywhere. This is their second year collaborating with Rocky Mountain Arts for the Friday, Dec. 4 show at the Palm Theater.
Dominic Del Signore
Circus performer Dominic Del Signore shares the art of object manipulation in western Colorado. He has recently displayed his acts at Carbondale’s Mountain Fair and the Telluride Fire Festival. As Co-Founder of Homestead Circus Productions with his partner RIkki Morehouse, Dominic practices a multiplicity of skill toys. Constantly expanding upon the visually elusive practice of balance and isolation, he brings an element of mystery and playfulness to all his performances. Photo by Scott London.
Jesse Morville
Jesse is a Jersey born-and-raised "Dragon Daddy", with a love and respect for all things sketchy. He is a self-taught flow artist, professional fire performer, CoSM resident performer, member of Cosmic Karma Fire, and Tamed Flame Collective. Says Jesse, “watch my face do its thing while I‘m spinning; I’ve been told it’s wild.”
Niel Ringstad
Originally from NYC, Niel is distinguished as a 31-year Telluride local, living for his first 10-years in a ski-bum shack of 72 square-feet. Though a graphic designer at heart and an accomplished painter, Niel has graciously built five towering sculptural works (out of clean, salvaged lumber) for the Festival, which have been the cornerstones of Fire on the Mountain from 2016 to 2020. We welcome him back this year again, as one of the trio of artists for this year’s reimagined event at the end of the box canyon.
Keith D’Angelo
Keith has participated in the fire festival many times. You may remember Keith’s flaming 30-foot long LOVE, which burned at the top of the ski resort in 2018. This year, the 10-year veteran of Burning Man join’s us with two flaming sculptures: "My Heart’s On Fire" and the interactive "Agni", both on display at Resurrection. Roots run deep for Keith in Telluride, his family has been in the area since the 1880’s. He has been making public sculpture since his high school years and has public art installations in Carbondale, Aspen, and Telluride. He feels blessed for the fact that he can contribute to the Telluride Fire Festival again and looks forward to showing guests how to interactively participate in fire artistry.
Gammaspace
The Gammaspace crew are thrilled to bring the 23-foot wide and 15-foot tall flaming, Arcus Hymenoptera (fire flies) to welcome all to Resurrection, Saturday night. Hailing from Denver, CO, Caitlin Morris, Veronica Rivard, Eric Stapleton, Jim Barter, and Tricia Duran are looking forward to telling you about the inner workings of this artistic, flaming marvel.
Tiffany Perry-Marks
Tiffany Perry-Marks began her belly dance journey like so many, timidly wriggling to instructional DVD’s in her living room. It was a college belly dance course that changed her life, transforming a nascent interest into a life-long passion. Learning from a real, live instructor ignited a deep love of the form and began her study of the cultural and historical evolution of the dance, culminating in study in Cairo, Egypt as part of a Mellon-Mays Fellowship. Tiffany has performed in multiple Telluride Dance Collective shows, teaches beginner belly dance classes, and has been a volunteer model for the Telluride AIDS Benefit Fashion Show.
Colin Sullivan
Colin, well-known for his years as the Telluride Theatre’s Executive Director, has appeared in Telluride Theatre productions since 2008. He’s trained at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville’s professional apprenticeship program, the Michael Chekhov Institute, Double Edge Theatre, and the SITI Company. This will be his fourth year as the Festival’s MC. He looks forward to entertaining you in between acts at the Palm Theater.
Tsubasa Yamada
Originally from Osaka, Japan, Tsubasa first started dancing by taking a hula class during her time at the University of Hawaii. After performing Hula in Italy and Cambodia, she moved to Telluride seven years ago, where she first graced the stage in Burlesque Cheap Thrills show. She has now participated in multiple Telluride Dance Collective shows, performing hip hop, contemporary, and belly dance. She has also given her time as a model for three Telluride Aids Benefit Fashion Shows.
Ellen Bator
Ellen Bator is a dancer, choreographer, and visual artist, who currently resides in the Denver area. She began her dance training at Joel Hall dance studio in Chicago, IL, where she was inspired by the company’s ability to mix different styles of dance along with it’s acceptance of all identities, ethnicities, body types, and ages. Ellen spent 16 years performing and teaching in Chicago, Denver, Telluride, and Las Vegas, before she began to combine visual arts with her choreography, which is now an integral part of her elaborate and playful work.