ARTIST BIO

Cinthia "Kitty" Conlon Macías is a multiracial Ecuadorian-American dance professional with a background in visual art, applied science, and dual language education. She had the privilege to train privately with Tamara Statkoun and study year-round at the San Francisco Ballet School, Kirov Academy of Ballet (Washington, D.C.), Conservatorio Franz Liszt (Quito, Ecuador), and Ballet West Academy. Kitty holds a California Multiple Subject Credential with Bilingual Authorization (2021), M.A. in Dance Education from New York University (2017), and B.S. in Environmental Science & Management from the University of California, Davis (2013). She is also an alum of Luna Summer Institute (2019-2020) and a subrecipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant. 

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Kitty began teaching in the independent sector while working as a scientist in 2013. She directed Ballerinas for the Environment, an environmental advocacy project that culminated in partnering with Amazon Watch to organize Dance for Yasuní at the Firehouse Art Collective in Berkeley, California (2012-2014). She later performed with Emote Dance Theater (2015) and created solo works for Project Open Box at Little Boxes Theater in San Francisco, California (2015-2016).

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While earning her M.A., Kitty was a member of NYU Steinhardt's resident educational outreach and performance company, Kaleidoscope Dancers, and taught in private studio settings, including Iris Wilson's I Dance Movement program. Her culminating research projects focused on developing ecological literacy in children through   interdisciplinary dance and environmental education. She specializes in ballet pedagogy and received her teacher training through the NYU/ABT Master's Program where she became certified in Pre-Primary through Level 5 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum (2016-2017).

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Kitty taught and developed curriculum for a variety of conservatory, private studio, community, and K-5 programs in the San Francisco Bay Area (2015-2016, 2018-2023), including the ODC/Dance Youth & Teen Program, Stapleton School of Performing Arts, San Francisco High School of the Arts (formerly Xian Yun Academy), and developed the adult ballet program at the former Studio 505 Dance & Movement Arts, directed by Stephanie Craig-Oliver (2018-2020). In June 2020, Kitty launched SAFEhouse Kids, an international bilingual movement class on Zoom in collaboration with En Avant Dance Company in Guayaquil, Ecuador. With support from the California Arts Council Local Impact Grant, this project blossomed into Bilingual Ballet at SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts where she was named the Director of Education (2022-2023). This equity initiative in San Francisco's Tenderloin District targeted local multilingual K-5 public school students and supported young artists to develop English language skills through dance. As an SFUSD biliteracy classroom teacher (2020-2022), she hosted BrainDance workshops for K-8 educators, led school-wide movement activities in collaboration with the student wellness center, substitute taught 3rd grade dance classes, and collaborated with Special Day Class staff to facilitate inclusion for students in a self-contained classroom.

 

As an artist, Kitty has presented original works for Emergence Dance Festival (2023), SAFEhouse Arts Resident Artist Workshop (2018-2020), West Wave Dance Festival (2019), Summer Performance Festival (2019), and produced an independent gallery show titled PEOPLEARENOTYOURPLAYTHINGS in Brooklyn, NY where she presented multimedia paintings and sculptures (2017). She has also collaborated with Joe Landini (San Francisco International Arts Festival 2019, Seven to the Seventh 2019) and ODC/Dance (Trolley Dances 2018,Walking Distance Dance Festival, 2019).

 

In April 2024, under the guidance of Dr. Patricia Martínez-Álvarez and Dr. Belinda Arana, Kitty had the privilege to present at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting Reconfigurations of Bilingual Special/Inclusive Education Through Speculative Design Experiments Symposium, for which she was named a co-author on the manuscript titled A Speculative Design for Inclusive Biliteracy Spaces: Respites From Oppressive Learning Practices to Make the Impossible Plausible. Additionally, Kitty co-hosted Luna Dance Institute's June 2023 Practitioner Exchange on dance and language learning, and her writing is featured in Phil Chan's The Final Bow for Yellowface.

 

Kitty is a doctoral student in the Dance Education Program at Teachers College Columbia where she is a research assistant in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education Program. Please get in touch to learn more!