Topia Arts Center was founded by two renowned artists, Nana Simopoulos and Caryn Heilman. Their individual bios are located below.

NANA SIMOPOULOS

Founder, Musical Director, is a composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist whose most recent release, Daughters Of The Sun, hit #1 on the New World Music radio charts. Based in New York City, she leads an international all-star musical ensemble. World Music of Nana has performed widely in major venues around the world including Montreux and appears on their compilation CD Live at the B&W Montreux Music Festival, Vol. II.

She has composed many commissions for theater, dance and films over the past 20 years. She has several acclaimed albums of original music with the participation of world renowned artists; After The Moon, Pandora’s Blues, Wings and Air, Still Waters and Gaia’s Dream. Guest appearances include concerts with Oscar winner Tan Dun as a soloist on sitar in Marco Polo with the New York City Opera and the RAI Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy. She performed at Symphony Space in the Wall to Wall Joni Mitchell event and at the Kennedy Center for the Women in Jazz Series. She has written numerous commissions for films and dance companies, for festivals, and for choreographers such as Peter Pucci for Pucci Plus Dancers and the Joffrey Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theater, American Dance Festival, Ballet Hispanico, and LiquidBody.

She has conducted and performed her original music with ensembles at the Joyce Theatre, on Broadway, at the American Dance Festival and at Jacob’s Pillow. She has written music for opera diva Lauren Flanigan and performed with her at the Met and Symphony Space. Simopoulos also wrote the music for the TONY award winning Acting Company’s adaptation of American Dreams, Lost and Found.

She is also a faculty member at the New York City School of Visual Arts where she teaches Music and Sound for Film and an Adjunct Professor at New York University where she teaches the Business of Music. She has taught at the New School University and at MCLA. Her mother was one of the founders of the theater, Center Stage in Baltimore, MD in the 1960s.

CARYN HEILMAN

Founder, Artistic Director, is the Artistic Director of LiquidBody media, movement and dance, a nonprofit performing arts and educational organization she founded after performing with the internationally recognized Paul Taylor Dance Company for ten years. Ms. Heilman founded LiquidBody to explore movement from new fluid perspectives. She is experimenting with new forms of audience interactive performance formats and community-building around movement based on her vast experience with audiences in the United States and abroad.

She has performed as a soloist in more than 50 countries at such venues as Paris Opera Garnier, New York City Center, Kennedy Center and London’s Sadler’s Wells. With Taylor, she represented the United States as a cultural ambassador in Japan, China, India, Egypt, Greece, Russia, Turkey and Hungary.

She is featured in the Oscar nominated documentary film Dancemaker; and worked on Emmy-award-winning Speaking in Tongues. Her concert and educational commissions include choreography for Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth, the Mad Woman of the Woods theater production of Scrambled Eggs, for animation by Doros Motion and by the Puffin Foundation to commemorate the opening of the environmental art park, Teaneck Creek.

She was the choreographic consultant for Julianne Moore in Revolution Studio’s film The Forgotten. Ms. Heilman has been a guest artist in-residence choreographing and teaching master classes and workshops around the world at schools and universities including University of California at Irvine, Beijing Dance Academy, Smith College, Princeton University, Hollins University, Texas Christian University.

Her LiquidBody movement classes are popular at community centers and spas. She has an MFA in Dance and Technology and a BFA in Modern Dance and was awarded a Graduate Assistantship in Choreography for Television and Film, as well as scholarships to the American Dance Festival and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, among others.