The Team
Founders: Nagesh Mahanthappa and Valentine Talland. Photo by Vanessa Leroy
Board of
Directors
Nagesh Mahanthappa
Co-founder and Treasurer/Clerk, is an accomplished biotechnology executive with a strong commitment to the Boston-area performing arts community. He brings seven years of experience as a Board Director of Global Arts Live (four years as President), Greater Boston’s leading presenter of international music and contemporary dance.
Valentine
Talland
Co-founder and President, has a long career in Boston’s arts organizations as an art conservator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and serving in governance and advisory roles at ArtsEmerson, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, New England Center for Circus Arts, José Mateo Ballet Theatre.
Cheri Opperman. Photo by Jeffrey Filiault
Cheri Opperman
Grants Manager, Dance, New England Foundation for the Arts. Cheri has a long career as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, mentor, and was a co-founder of the Green Street Studios.
Nassib El-Husseini
Nassib El-Husseini
CEO, The 7 Fingers, the arts collective contemporary circus company based in Montreal. Nassib is the author of l’Occidente Imginaire, and has worked with numerous Canadian and International governmental and nongovernmental agencies. He is President of the Board of Directors of the International Exchange for the Performing Arts (CINARS).
Ana Masacote. Photo by Roberto Matteo
Ana Masacote
Founder, Dance to Power, an online Afro-Latin dance academy startup. Ana is an award-winning Afro-Latin dance specialist, and former partner of the internationally renowned Masacote Entertainment. She advocates or gender and LGBTQ inclusivity in the Afro-Latin dance scene and racial equity in the arts.
Marlon Forrester
Artist and educator in Boston, MA, recipient of the 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize with work in the collection of the ICA/Boston and national and international exhibitions, Marlon has a B.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art. Current work explores rites and rituals within the game of basketball and life through drawings, paintings, performance and large-scale installation.
“As artists continue to lose artistic spaces in the city of Boston, access to centers like MACS that are designed with the artist in mind have become an ever pressing need.”
— Ana Masacote, Founder, Dance to Power
Advisory Circle
Leah Abel
Executive Director, Circus Up
Maure Auronson
Executive Director, Global Arts Live
Ruth Birnberg
Director, Next Steps for Boston Dance,
The Boston Foundation
Peter DiMuro
Executive Artistic Director, Dance Complex
Andrea Blesso
Director of Dance, Boston Center for the Arts
Debra Cash
Executive Director, Boston Dance Alliance
David Dower
Executive Producer of the US Operations, The 7 Fingers
David Howse
Executive Director, ArtsEmerson
Georgia Lyman
Independent Curator and Producer of Performing Arts
Serenity Smith Forchion
Producing Director and Co-Founder, New England Center for Circus Arts
