The Company

MACKENZIE ALLEN

Mackenzie began dancing at Metropolitan Ballet Theatre in Rockville, MD when she was five years old. She trained at The Washington School of Ballet during high school and attended summer intensives at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Ballet Austin, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, America Ballet Theatre, and Kaatsbaan Extreme Ballet. She attended Indiana University where she trained with Kyra Nichols, Carla Korbes, Violette Verdy, and Michael Vernon while earning her B.S. in Ballet and B.S. in Accounting. She danced with Island Moving Company in Newport, RI before moving to New York City to freelance and work with a variety of companies including Brooklyn Ballet, Thomas Ortiz Dance, Neville Dance Theatre, and Quixotic Cirque Nouveau. This marks her first performance with Felice Lesser Dance Theater.

Zoé Badovinac

Zoé Badovinac is a British actor. FLDT’s Trap Ist (2022) was her first professional stage role, having come via voice-acting and narration in audio-drama and audiobook productions.

She is known as the voice of Jasnah Kholin in the ongoing GraphicAudio dramatizations of Brandon Sanderson’s “The Stormlight Archive.”  Zoé has the neuro-muscular mobility condition, Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), and her involvement in Trap Ist was a unique creative and artistic collaboration, with director Felice Lesser integrating her characteristic modes of movement into an authentic portrait of an aging and increasingly physically frail choreographer.

JUSTICE JACKSON

Justice Jackson was born and raised in Houston, TX, and studied at Sam Houston State University, where he received his BFA in Dance. Justice performed in Aida at the Houston Grand Opera, as a Guest Artist with NobleMotion Dance, and in the Dance Gallery Festival in New York. He will be graduating from the Ailey School in 2025. I AM A DANCER 2020 marks his debut with Felice Lesser Dance Theater.

Amina Konaté

Amina Konaté is from La Rochelle, France, where she began dancing at the age of 5. She studied at the Conservatoire of Music and Dance of La Rochelle. After she graduated from high school in 2019, Amina joined the Rudra Béjart School, in Switzerland. Two years later, she headed to New York, to attend the Ailey School. She danced in Philadelphia as a Philadanco 2 (D/2) member, as well as in Brooklyn, with Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet. Amina has performed works by Maurice Béjart, Julio Arozarena, Tancredo Tavarez, Janice Rosario, Christopher Huggins, Jeroboam Bozeman and Jamel Gaines. She joined FLDT in 2022, performing one of the leading roles in the premiere of the company’s Trap Ist.

ANDREA KRON

Andrea Kron is a graduate of The Ailey School in New York City and a Stage Directors and Choreographers Associate Member. Her performing credits include Hercules on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theater, Radio City Music Hall, Helen Hayes Theater, Regional Theatre, various Nutcrackers (where, as a Guest Artist, she performed the “Arabian” dance), as well as in movies and print. She has taught ballet, Horton technique, theater dance, and anatomy and injury prevention  at Broadway Dance Center, Steps on Broadway, Marymount Manhattan College, and at numerous festivals up and down the east coast. She first worked with Felice Lesser Dance Theater in June 2024, at NYC’s WEST FEST.

KRISTIN LICATA

Kristin received her BFA from the Fordham University/Alvin Ailey Program. She currently is a freelance dancer in NYC with Ariel Rivka Dance, Covenant Ballet Theater, Matthew Westerby Company, and Valerie Green/Dance Entropy. She has also danced with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company II, Regina Nejman and Company, Tamara Saari Dance, Yuka Kawazu/Danse En L'air, Vabang!, and Vox Luminere. In addition to performing, Kristin is the Associate Artistic Director of Matthew Westerby Company, Artistic Advisor for CBT-2, and an ABT® certified teacher.

The original production of I AM A DANCER (premiered at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2006) was begun during FLDT’s FAR residency in 2005, and centered around the lives of two dancers, one of whom was Kristin. Therefore FLDT is especially pleased that she is here twenty years later to participate in its “bookend” piece, I AM A DANCER 2020. A leading member of our company for many years, Kristin created roles in 2BZ4U (including the tour-de-force solo, “can u hear me now?”), the LPAC production of Funding the Arts, Magic Forest Dances, and taught master classes and performed in FLDT’s programs at UCONN/Stamford Campus.

STEPHANIE (LYON) ALBANESE

Stephanie received her training at the School of American Ballet. She danced with Wilhemina Frankfurt and Frank Ohman of New York City Ballet, and worked with Igal Perry, Jane Persh and Mary Miller. She also performed in cabarets in Las Vegas and Paris. She joined Felice Lesser Dance Theater in 1989, and her repertoire with the company included leading roles in The Sirens’ Song, Cleopatra (which featured her remarkable solo to Nicolas Roussakis’ Things Ended), and the full-length Running Backwards on the Treadmill. In 1999 she spent the better part of a year traveling around NYC with Felice Lesser, through subways and parks, while Lesser filmed her for the leading role in the 2000 work, New York, NY. Backstage’s Lisa Jo Sagolla wrote about that work “…The climactic angst-ridden solo--the protagonist’s battle with death, laudably danced by Stephanie Lyon--is yet another of the evening’s highlights, pitting one body’s anguished movements against an austere moving picture of bare tree branches. Superbly dramatic performances by Lyon and Jorge Cardenas enhance their “Chance Encounter” pas de deux, the work’s choreographic peak...” Stephanie currently lives in Providence, R.I. with her husband, where she now works in childcare, and teaches ballet.

HELOISE PONSONNET

Héloïse is a French dancer from Lyon based in New York. She started her dance training in ballet, studying at Rosella Hightower’s school in Cannes, and later at the National Dance School of Marseille. She pursued her training at Iwanson International Dance School in Munich, Germany, where she explored different contemporary practices. Héloïse moved to New York in 2020, graduating from the Certificate program at Peridance Center in 2022, then dancing as a trainee with Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. She also performed with Tabula Rasa Dance Theater, Nuevo Tango Ballet, WDTanztheater and MorDance, performing works by Andrea Miller, Morgan McEwen, Mark Bankin, Doug Varone, Paul Taylor, Sagí Amir Gross, and Mizuho Kappa. This marks her debut performance with Felice Lesser Dance Theater.