During her 22 years of training Jana has studied jazz, tap, hip hop, Afro – Haitian, Dunham technique, and choreography. Jana has been most influenced by Janel Tomblin – Brown, Ehud and Daynee Krauss, Susan Whipp, Alicia Pierce, and Kimberly Iniguez. In May of 2002 she completed her Bachelor’s degree in dance at San Francisco State University.

 

Jana loves working with beginning level students and preschool dancers. She is most motivated to help students discover dance and movement. Jana has been teaching through out the Bay Area since 1998. Some of her previous performance and Choreography highlights include Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theatre Group, Anything Goes, It’s a Wrap with Guggenheim Entertainment, Speaking of Dance and He Said She Said with Visual Rhythm Dance Company, Rocky Horror Show with City Lights Theatre Company, Wholeness with Bliss Dance Company, and Paramount Great America’s Celebration Parade.

In 2007 Jana founded Small Fry Dance Club. Jana has since focused on growing SFDC. Jana hopes to bring the same drive and passion to Principal Creative & Performing Arts. Her goal is to mold and develop amazing dancers through both programs.

chapetonj@smallfrydanceclub.com

Carlos is Jana’s husband and Co-Director of Small Fry Dance Club and Principal Creative & Performing Arts. Carlos has a background in Multimedia and Marketing and helps run the day to day office duties for both programs.

Before he joined Jana with Small Fry Dance Club on a full time basis, Carlos worked as a web/graphic designer, a video game artist, and eventually taught classes at Cañada College in Redwood City.

Carlos is in charge of our website, branding, and marketing efforts. He is also in charge of our sales and expanding our reach to new schools in the Bay Area and beyond. If you have any questions about marketing, partnerships, or bringing our dance classes to your school, please contact Carlos via email.

chapetonc@smallfrydanceclub.com

Sarah Artha started dancing at the age of 4, studying at Dance Pros and Verona Ballet School in New Jersey for 10 years. She spent her younger years at multiple dance classes each week — learning ballet, jazz & pointe but also assisting beginner level classes. As a teen & adult, she continued to explore different styles of dance and performing arts including musical theater, ballroom, hip hop and contemporary.

Sarah earned a Bachelor of Science in Business/Marketing from Northeastern University in 2009 and is a full time corporate meetings and event planner. In 2017-2018, she began teaching ballet part time at DanceFIT Studio in Natick, Massachusetts. Having lived in the Bay Area from 2010-2015, she recently relocated from the East Coast back to the Peninsula with her family in 2019.

As a mother to two young children, Sarah is thrilled to be part of the Small Fry Dance Club & PCPA company and share her love of dance with young students.

 

Christa’s love for dance started at the age of three when her Mom enrolled her in tap class and she never looked back. She kept dancing adding ballet, and jazz to her dance forms as well as performing in the Davis Jazz Choir and her local musical theater company (DMTC). She studied tap at the Davis Art Center under Jere and Julie Curry, Bill Strickland and Lee Harry for 8 years. While attending Palomar College she studied tap under Valerie Clark for 2 years. In 2009, She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Arts with an emphasis in child development from Sonoma State. Christa has a great combination of dance training, teaching experience, and early childhood education exposure! Her teaching experience includes Echale (Stanford University), Davis Art Center, and Gretchen Higgins Elementary School. Her favorite dance styles are tap and musical theater. Christa is passionate about teaching young dancers. Combining her love for music, dance, teaching and children is a dream come true. Christa is one of our Small Fry parents. Her daughter has been taking classes for 2 years now and her younger son also started dancing with us in 2014.

Today she is both one of our wonderful Small Fry teachers, and also the head of our Musical Theatre Department for Principal Creative & Performing Arts.

Amy has been dancing since she was 2 years old. Her favorite styles are contemporary, lyrical, jazz, ballet, and tap. At Sequoia High School in Redwood City Amy was a part of the advanced dance program and the dance team. After graduating high school, she earned her Bachelor’s in mathematics with a minor in dance at San Jose State University. While studying at SJSU Amy was also a part of the Spartan Competitive Dance Team. Dance has always been a huge part of Amy’s life, and she is very excited to be a part of the Small Fry and PCPA family.

Karen Luu is a contemporary hip hop dancer from Southern California who has moved to the San Francisco to broaden her dance styles in Modern, Jazz, and Ballet. She has danced competitively in her High Schools hip hop dance team and has been under the instruction of all San Francisco State University’s dance faculty for the past five years. Karen has choreographed for the SFSU collegiate showcase for two years in a row which allowed her pieces to be showcased at Stanford University’s Bay Area Dance Exchange. Karen has a passion for educating arts and has experience in teaching dance to children with special needs, she hopes to one day become a physical therapist for dancers. She’s currently performing with University Dance Theatre’s company and is expecting to graduate this spring with two bachelor’s degrees of Dance and Kinesiology.