Simeon Van Izquierdo was fresh out of high school and checking out the Santa Rosa Junior College campus in the summer of 2012 when he heard music blasting from the second floor of Tauzer Gym. What he saw there hooked him and hasn’t let go since.

“I walked up the stairs and I peeked through the door and I saw this really cool dude just killing it,” he said.

Van Izquierdo had witnessed a cypher, a hip-hop tradition where a group of dancers form a circle and take turns going into the middle to express themselves through dance. He described the dancer’s movements as something completely different from modern hip-hop. Rather than classic footwork and movements, the dancing involved elements of other styles of street dance.

“This guy was coming up with the craziest stuff and I was like, ‘I want to do that too!’” he said.

However, Van Izquierdo comes from a large family, six brothers and two sisters, and none of them took dance seriously. His brothers, specifically, were more into sports. “When they found out I was the eighth child in the family who wanted to go into dance they were like, ‘No, that’s so lame.’” he said.

Van Izquierdo was motivated to prove them wrong. After 12 years as part of SRJC’s dance classes he hasn’t swayed his siblings’ opinions, but his life has significantly improved because of the dance program.

“Dancing led me in many different directions,” he said. “I’ve had some very successful opportunities and experiences from the simplest things of wearing a costume and dancing on stage.”

One such direction was the opportunity to make a name for himself with cosplay. In 2018, Van Izquierdo built a social media presence making videos while cosplaying as Deadpool. The general focus of his videos is not solely on dancing, but that is what kicked off his fame and is one of the things he is known for.

Van Izquierdo recalled his first viral video from 2018 where he and another dancer dressed as Spider-Man danced together at a Cinco de Mayo festival in Roseland. Many of his videos have guest-starred Spider-Man, including one where they taught a dance choreography class in costume.

On Instagram he has over 134,000 followers, with his most viewed reel amassing around 3.1 million views. He is much bigger on TikTok, however, having received 5.8 million followers with his most viewed video having been watched over 15.5 million times.

In 2023, Van Izquierdo stopped posting on social media, but he has since begun making plans and adjustments to his daily life to start again. Not just because he misses it, but also to make people smile and laugh.

Becoming a cosplay actor and social media figure is not the only improvement to Van Izquierdo’s life that being a part of the dance program has led to.

Further achievements include graduating in 2020 with an associate degree in dance and marrying Carmen Izquierdo, who he met in the program, in 2022.

“It makes me very happy; so much has happened and so many doors have opened,” he said in reference to the program. “I can say wholeheartedly, it was the best decision I’ve made.”

Van Izquierdo’s health has benefited from the program as well. Before dancing he was uncoordinated, flimsy and skinny, but after the dance program, he’s much more athletic.

Beyond physical improvements, Van Izquierdo has also found emotional benefits, not only from dancing, but also from being a part of the program.

“Everyone’s going through something in life, and I think dance is an escape route for that,” he said, adding that dance has allowed him to forget the current moment, look inward and face the issues weighing him down. “You can just be your genuine self and find different routes of just getting yourself to be happy.”

The program was so tight-knit that his wife and best friends he met in the program plan to remain together when pursuing further education in Southern California. “It gave us a chance to just open up, which led us to forming such a strong family bond that made us want to live together and trust each other,” Van Izquierdo said.

He is just one of a great variety of students with all kinds of different backgrounds and stories who have gone through SRJC’s dance program. However, the attention the program receives pales in comparison to that of behemoths such as SRJC’s Athletics or Theatre Arts programs.

Despite garnering less attention, the program has come far. “I would consider our program quite the Cinderella
story actually,” said dance coordinator and sole full-time faculty member Casandra Hillman.

The Past

The program began as no more than a series of classes that were a part of the Kinesiology department, which was then known as P.E.

SRJC hired Marjorie Shultz in 1970 to teach gymnastics and she eventually branched into dance classes. By 1981, dance classes finally found an identity outside of general P.E., complete with certificates offered by the college. However, it was not yet its own program.

Throughout Shultz’s tenure as full-time faculty, the Theatre department put on dance performances separate from the P.E. department every fall. Susan Matthies quickly became the director of these shows after her arrival in 1984.

In the mid ‘90s, a series of meetings between the chairs of both departments, the dean of P.E. and officials involved with the dance performances made arrangements for spring dance performances to be co-sponsored by both departments. These arrangements still exist today, with fall performances reintroduced and now solely run by the dance program.

After 27 years, Shultz retired in 1997. Debbe-Ann Medina, who came to the program as a part-time instructor in 1980, applied for a full-time faculty role.

With classes and overall leadership under Medina’s jurisdiction and the performances led by Matthies and Lara Branen, SRJC’s dance track fully evolved into its own program. In Fall 2003, the college finally introduced its associate degree in dance. “Debbe-Ann would be the first to say that shaping the dance program was a team effort,” Branen said.

Medina remained the sole full-time faculty member until her retirement in 2016. Hillman joined the faculty and took the reins. Matthies retired around that time as well and Branen continues to teach Dance History, now online.

Hillman took the reins one year prior to the start of a series of complications for the program, starting with the 2017 Tubbs Fire followed by more wildfires.

The wildfires preceded the COVID-19 pandemic, which was then followed by the start of a renovation on Tauzer Gym, forcing the dance program to relocate to the portable buildings of Analy Village. However, these complications have not stopped the program from finding success.

In 2017, Hillman began taking students to the annual American College Dance Festival, a regional conference hosted by different colleges. In Spring 2018, the dancers performed a piece called “Wigs and Tarts” choreographed by Associate Dance Instructor Tanya Knippelmeir.

“It was a renaissance meets jazz meets comedy meets ballet piece,” Hillman said. The piece earned the program recognition from the American College Dance Association and a high honor at the conference: an invitation to perform the piece at the final Gala event.

In 2022, a different piece earned them national recognition and they performed at a national conference.

The Faculty

Matt Markovich, dean of Kinesiology, Athletics and Dance, believes the historical success of the dance program is thanks to the dance faculty themselves.

“These professionals have been here for many, many years before I was here, and they’ve been here ever since,” he said. “It’s really led to a strong dance program that has been consistent and provides students multiple avenues.”

Markovich went on to praise how flexible and accommodating the instructors have been in their efforts to help the students succeed.

“A lot of us dance teachers over at SRJC have yet another job at another place, a studio, or another high school, or things like that,” said Lea Poisson, one such instructor hired in Fall 2006 who also teaches for the ArtQuest program at Santa Rosa High School.

Jolene Johnson, another associate dance instructor hired in 2023, also teaches at the Movement Lab dance studio and is the dance director at Analy High School in Sebastopol.

The Students

Much like Poisson, and a number of other faculty members, Johnson went through SRJC’s dance program as a student. The variety and diversity of which was, and still is, staggering.

“The cultural difference in our program is so vast and interesting. I think that’s what makes it so approachable,” Hillman said. “There’s gonna be someone that looks like you in one of my classes.”

Johnson has seen this variety as well but drew attention to the myriad skill and experience levels she sees in her classes. A sentiment that many instructors have echoed. Poisson said the age of her students range from high schoolers to those in their 70s.

“It’s all kinds of people who are there. People have danced for years and years, people who have never danced, people who are just like, finding their comfort zone,” said Rosalie Schroeder, a current student who has been a part of the program since she started at SRJC in Fall 2018.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Schroeder left the program for a year, but came back. The number of enrolled students, however, has not.

“We had like 1,500 students a semester. There’s probably about 400 right now,” Medina said. “It’s been very discouraging to watch, for myself who’s worked so hard, and knowing how it could be such a good program.”

Medina cited COVID-19 as a contributing factor to the decline, but noted that it was primarily due to space, or rather a lack thereof. The lack of opportunities was exacerbated by the dance program’s relocation to the smaller, more compact space in Analy Village.

However, students have started trickling back in.

“I think like anything else, it ebbs and flows,” said Tamara Grose, an Associate Dance Instructor who teaches ballet. “It can follow a trend. You see the incline of classes when there’s some trendy thing going on with hip-hop or any kind of dance competition.”

The Future

Johnson noted that the primary difference between her time as a student versus her time as an instructor was the influence of the leadership at the time.

“With a new full-time faculty you get new direction and new energy,” she said. “So I think the energy has just
shifted. We’re still finding our place.”

There is logic to her assessment. The aforementioned complications due to wildfires, pandemic and relocation have interfered with finding stability.

Regardless, Johnson expressed interest in seeing where the program will go. And it seems that the program will only go higher, both figuratively and literally. Markovich described the plans for the dance program once construction on Tauzer Gym is complete.

“The whole upstairs is going to be the dance program,” he said. Markovich also explained the plans for the second floor, describing an upgrade from one to two dance studios, each studio’s floor made from a different material to allow for a variety of dance styles, a place for students to hang out and faculty offices directly connected to the studios.

Hillman has a vision for the future in this new space as well, describing it as a catalyst for growth, innovation and increased visibility for the college’s dance program which will offer students more opportunities to develop their creativity and career path.

The new, expanded space will introduce state-of-the-art facilities dedicated toward research and innovation that will hopefully attract a broader range of students. Hillman hopes for the addition of more performance opportunities as well as a space for a larger number of guest artists alongside collaborations with professional dance companies and local studios.

However, according to Markovich, construction on Tauzer will not be complete until 2026, so these goals are still quite a ways off. Regardless, current and former students such as Van Izquierdo see how bright the present state of the program is while also acknowledging the shortcomings which Hillman’s vision will try to solve.

“I think the dance program in general is a very, very strong program. Unfortunately, it’s not really popular at the SRJC in terms of the peers really knowing much about it,” Van Izquierdo said.