Ella - Founder and Lead Director
Ella has been a dancer all her life and has performed in hundreds of shows since she appeared in Boston’s First Night in a tap performance, at the age of five. She found her first love in Hip Hop at the age of six with Jam’nastics Inc., a Cambridge-based nonprofit dedicated to teaching dance and gymnastics to youth through afterschool and summer camp programing, where she danced and choreographed throughout her elementary and high school years. Ella went on to train under many great dance educators such as Martha Gray, Mariana Harkless, Judy Dworin, Lesley Farlow, and Marsha Parrilla to name a few.
In the spring of 2013, Ella studied in Trinidad and Tobago where she trained with the Marcia Charles Dance Theatre Company. Ella returned to Trinidad for many carnival seasons, 2015-2019, performing for a range of artists including: Benjai, Voice, 5Star Akil, Olatunji, Lyrikal, Machel Montano, and Patrice Roberts. Trinidad is where her self-confidence and a love for the performing arts took off on a higher level. This evolved passion eventually led her to establish Soca Fusion LLC.
Aside from her own personal joy of training, creating, and performing, Ella loves to uplift youth through the performing arts as well. Ella has taught Hip Hop and other Afro Diasporic genres within Cambridge and Boston schools to bring joy and love into the hearts of young people. Ella strives for youth to feel confidence and determination in themselves so they can explore and feed their passions throughout their lives.
Ana - Executive Assistant
Ana has been dancing since she was three years old and continues to have a passion for the art. Through her dance career she met Ella in 2015 and since has been fortunate enough to see Soca Fusion grow from being a class to a business. With a focus on administrative work in her personal life she was able to join the Soca Fusion team as the Executive Assistant. She hopes to bring both her dance and administrative background to help Soca Fusion continue to spread joy and grow!
Makeda - Kids Fete Department Head
Makeda "Keda" Wallace was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Makeda started her training in Liturgical and African dance at the Reggie Lewis Center and continued with Hip Hop at Body by Brandy with Jay Brown Company. Makeda began dancing professionally at OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center at the age of 16 and soon joined the senior company, NIA Dance Troupe. Training in styles from Jazz, Tap, African, Hip Hop and Modern, this was the beginning of Makeda's journey with dance. With NIA Dance Troupe, she performed all over the east coast to New Orleans, and competed in competitions such as Prelude Dance Competition. She continued her education in dance at Dean College where she received her Associates in the arts with a concentration in the performing arts. While at Dean, she joined different companies such as Street Hype with Tony Tucker, Unyted Stylez Crew with Ricardo Foster, and Boston Community Dance Project lead by Sarah-Kay "Skooj". Makeda was also picked to train at the Alvin Ailey Summer Intensive in New York City. She then went on to choreograph for shows at Dean College as well as for the BDCP's "Contemporize" show in 2013. Makeda has performed her choreographed solos and spoken word pieces at fashion shows and open mic events around Boston. She has toured New England and Canada with a local company called Expressive Movement for their "In a Dancer's Mind" tour. Makeda has had the pleasure to dance for choreographers Vincent Thomas, Sylvia Soumah and with Nick Daniels' D.A.N.A. Ensemble from Philidephia and the DMV area. She was also hand picked for an industrial project at the Boston Encore Gala for world-renowned choreographers and directors Kenny Ortega and Tony Testa. Her love for fitness developed through the rigorous training she has gone through preparing for various shows, performances and competitions. She has obtained her Pilates Core Mat 1 Certification in 2019 and continues to develop her practice in Bikram and vinyasa yoga. Now having dance and fitness experience for nine years, she has taught Adults and young children at the Salvation Army Kroc Center, Brookline Public Schools and Meridian Academy. Teaching gives her the ability to give back and pass on her creative knowledge to the next with great joy and humility. Her most recent accomplishments include completing her BA degree in the performing arts at Dean College in Spring 2020.
Zanyah - Fit Fete Department Head
Zanyah is a junior dance major currently studying at Howard University and is from Boston, Massachusetts. She started dancing with OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center in Boston, Massachusetts. She is thankful for them and eager to start new beginnings withHoward University and can’t wait to see it take off .
Fiyah - Teen Pump Team
Fiyah is a 17 year old dancer born and raised in Boston. She found her love for dance at a very young age. It all started when her and her little cousin would make dances together and would do small performances for their family. From there, Fiyah would find every opportunity to involve herself with anything that had to do with dance. From summer programs to dance teams at school, Fiyah always explored different styles of dance such as ballet, tap, jazz, majorette, vogue, african, hip hop, soca, and step. She found a deeper love for the afrocentric styles, which helped to build confidence in herself and her performance. While in middle school, Fiyah met Ms.Ella, her dance teacher at the time, and was able to learn different ways of becoming a stronger and well-rounded dancer. Later on, Fiyah got introduced to Soca Fusion and immediately fell in love with it. She found joy and fun in expressing herself through Soca and is excited to be able to share that with others now.
Leshaa - Teen Pump Team
Heyy my name is Leshaa. I am guyanese and 17 years old. I have been a dancer for about 14 years now and I plan to continue as the future unfolds! Though I have trained in many genres of dance, my overall favorite would be Indian Classical and of course...Soca! Growing up my family loved listening to soca music, as it is a part of our culture, and from then on I fell in love with it. I am grateful to be a part of Soca Fusion because I have always wanted to be a part of something that related to Soca. Soca is a big part of who I am and always brings me into a universe of happiness which is something I want to share around the world.