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Isabel Jessica von Rittberg grew up in Wuppertal-Beyenburg, Germany, a small historical village in Western Germany. Her mother, who was born in Montana and lived in India, brought her up bilingually. From her parents she was given the gift of a dual citizenship; she spent her summers in Western Montana. The Rocky Mountains instilled in Isabel a love of nature. Isabel was also introduced to dance formally at a young age with ballet lessons, although her interest in dance took a different path as she grew older--Hip Hop. Isabel graduated with a bachelor's degree in Latin American/Iberian Studies and a French minor from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lived in Santiago de Chile during the year of 2003. While traveling in Europe during the summer of 2005, she was able to film "danse escalade" performances directed by Antoine Le Menestrel and Vincent Rebours in France. While she does not hail from a professional background in dance, the urge to convey the beauty of climbing has led her to begin the AscenDance Project: her own medium to unite three passions--climbing, dance and music.

Ryan Gaunt, aka "Skippy", originally from North Carolina, has been dedicated to climbing as a sport for over ten years. However, Ryan has always had a passion for outdoor adventures. Although a tree climber in youth, his college years taught him to obsess over rock climbing. After graduating from Brevard College in May 2001, he has been completely and unequivocally a climber. Summer and fall seasonal work as a climbing instructor in North Carolina allowed for travels to warmer drier winter climates. Aside from Thailand and Mexico, these travels were mostly to the deserts of the Southwest. For two consecutive seasons Ryan worked in Tuolumne, for Yosemite NP Search and Rescue. Having a strong passion for climbing and love for music, Ryan has been extremely devoted to participating in the development of dance-climb fusion. Ryan has developed an extremely dynamic dance style on the wall as well as on the bar structure.

Jen Colasuonno is a versatile performer, collaborator and teacher. She has performed partner balancing acrobatics, physical theater, dancing, singing, kecak, puppeteering, fire arts, aerial arts, and circus sideshow internationally - as a soloist and as part of a troupe. Jen currently lives in San Francisco and is a happy little busy bee. She is one half of the acro-silly duo Jean & Bean, a member of the vaudeville troupe MerryGoRound House, and is a puppeteer for Lunatique Fantastique. Offstage, Jen is an artist's model, a member of The Finch Mob artists collective, a freelance Event & Production Manager and teaches partner balancing acrobatics.

Sadie grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona in a family that was constantly playing in the outdoors. Whether it was rafting on the San Juan River, climbing the San Francisco Peaks, or hiking in the Grand Canyon, Sadie was always happiest when she was outside. At the age of three Sadie completed her first rock climb and hasn't stopped climbing since. She attended a performance arts high school where she discovered the joys and freedom of dance, learning techniques in modern, jazz and ballet. One night Sadie walked into her local climbing gym to find Canyon Movement Company, a local dance troupe, holding auditions for a new show they were performing on the climbing wall. From that moment on Sadie has been obsessed with the idea of combining two of her favorite passions: climbing and dance. In college she spent every spare moment of time climbing outside, dancing inside, or dreaming up new choreography for shows on the ropes in Animus City Rock Gym (located in Durango, CO). When she was not dancing or climbing she spent her time studying exercise science and working with kids with special needs. Having recently moved to the Bay Area, Sadie is incredibly excited to have found AscenDance Project and a group of people that understand the magic that can be created when combining the power and form of climbing with the beauty and grace of dance.

Born with the relentless dream of flying, very early on Laurence, aka Lolo, investigated flying, hang gliding, parachutes, climbing and could never go high enough for her heart's content. While traveling the world, San Francisco, the city by the bay called to her and that is where she finally started to dance. This new and unsuspected passion had her explore every style you could think of: from tap dancing through modern and African dances, to martial arts. Many years ago, she met Terry Sendgraff the pioneer of aerial dance who launched her onto her true addiction. Since then, she has been hanging and flying from ropes and harnesses, bungees, trapezes, fabrics, rocks, windows, ladders--you name it! In the latter years she has been assiduously studying with her mentor and friend Joanna Haigood whose teachings elevated her to the ecstatic state of mind she encounters in the air. When she's not flying, you might find her hiking the Himalayas, playing Japanese Taiko, or twirling pois. Besides her very physical passions and creative work, she is a partner and system engineer in her co-owned company Tehama Wireless, a consulting company in telecommunications engineering based in San Francisco.

Damian Cooksey grew up in the Midwest, where a scarcity of rocks did not prevent an early love of climbing. At the age of 20, Damian moved to Los Angeles and discovered Rockreation, an indoor climbing gym, where he walked in the door and set about climbing non-stop for 9 hours. His passion for climbing has taken him to many summits since. Damian is also a world-class athlete in slacklining, a sport similar to tightrope walking. His achievements include setting 3 world records for long-distance slacklining, the longest of which still stands to this day at 506 feet. Damian has won first place in the Polish Slackline Open highline competition, and second place in the trick line competition. On March 13, 2007, Damian became the first person in the world to land a front flip on the slackline. He has rigged and walked over 20 highlines including the Rossstein Spire in Germany, the Lost Arrow Spire, and across Yosemite Falls.

Benjamin Turner has performed partner acrobatics, dance, and circus in San Francisco for the past four years, and also has experience in contact improv, acrobatic stilting, and acro-yoga. He may currently be seen throughout the Bay Area as part of cartoon dance troupe Fou Fou Ha, the Merry-go-round collective, and as half of the duo Jean & Bean. In addition to stage dancing he has an interest in site-specific, interactive sculpture, and creative re-use of public space.

Andy loves to fly, spin, dance, improvise and discover flow on all sorts of apparatus including trapeze, ropes, fabrics, hoops, walls, floors and bars, and is endlessly facinated by the technical balance puzzles, mental focus and raw strength demanded by rock-climbing. The dance-climb fusion brings two of his great physical passions together into one. His movement ranges from meditative simplicity to unexpected transitions and physical humor, and draws inspiration from Laban/Bartenieff theory. He received a BA in Mathematics from UC Berkeley in 2002, and is currently a research programmer at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, Department of Music, UC Berkeley. His favorite fruit is the avocado, and his favorite programming language is Mathematica. His heros are Spiderman and Marvin the Depressed Android.