We believe that working together is better than working alone.
We are inspired by the incredible team we call Collaborators:

Zoran Prodanovic
(Dance Film Partner)

Zoran has loved movies ever since he was a kid, never realizing that he could make a living out of it until stumbling upon the special features of a dvd and discovering how movies were made. Zoran was immediately obsessed and has been a filmmaker and storyteller ever since. He moved to NYC in 2012 from Australia, never having set sight on NYC before and has completely loved it ever since. He has been a long-standing collaborator of Ballaro Dance since December of 2018. You can usually find him at your local movie theater.

Joshua Cozzo
(Photography Partner)

Joshua has been walking the line between photography and education for over a decade. A self-taught visual storyteller, Joshua has been an educator in the New York City Public Schools since 2017 where he has taught photography courses to underserved student populations throughout the City. Now, he has launched his own organization called Memento Academy, inspired by the students he has taught over the years, to bring his programs to students in communities around the country. In his spare time, you can find him over in Iceland working on a soon-to-be-released documentary film or walking around the streets of New York with his camera.

Whitney Jacobs
(Dance Education Partner)

Whitney is a dedicated dance educator, choreographer, physical education teacher, and athletic coach based in New Jersey. She earned a B.F.A. in Dance from Ohio University (2005) and an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2013). Jacobs’s performance career includes national and international tours with Azaguno, a contemporary West African dance company, as well as work with the Contemporary Dance Theater of Cincinnati and independent artists in NYC. Since 2007, her choreography has been presented at venues such as the 14th Street Y, Joyce Soho, and Triskelion Arts, among others. In 2010, she co-received the NYFA BUILD Stability grant and in 2016, she founded Jacobs Dance Collective, an organization creating vibrant contemporary dance works. With 17 years of experience teaching dance, physical education, and coaching soccer, Jacobs has worked at The Trevor Day School and The Brearley School in NYC. Currently, she is a full-time faculty member at Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, where she teaches dance and physical education to Primary School students (PreK-5). Jacobs’s teaching philosophy centers on fostering joy, creating inclusive spaces, and holding high standards for herself and her students, nurturing both artistic and personal growth.

John Carroll, Composer
(Repertory Collaborator, Goddess)

John (they/them) is a composer currently based in New York, New York. He has earned degrees in Music Performance from SUNY Schenectady County Community College in 2017, Music Composition at SUNY Fredonia in 2020 while studying under Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Musical Theater Writing at New York University in 2022. They have been music director and composer for the Fredonia Theatre Department’s productions of The Grapes of Wrath and Silent Sky, and was composer in residence at Avaloch Institute of the Arts where they developed their micro-opera, "Troubleshooting". In 2023, John Carroll was accepted into the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, where they began work on their first full-length show, “Orlando”, a musical adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name. In their spare time, John enjoys boxing and dancing.

Hippocrates Cheng
(Repertory Collaborator, Fever Dream)

Dr. Hippocrates Cheng 鄭靖楠 is a composer, theorist, ethnomusicologist from Hong Kong. He is currently an assistant professor of music theory and composition and an affiliated faculty of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University. In 2024, he completed his Doctor of Music Composition with a minor in ethnomusicology at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. As a composer, he writes contemporary classical music, new music for Asian instruments, and Jazz. As a researcher, he researches the music of Hong Kong composer Doming Lam, East Asian and Southeast Asian music, piano rolls and player piano in early Jazz history and Braille music notation. He has given guest lectures, masterclasses and performances in the United States, Canada, Austria, Germany, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.