About Us

Golden City Dance Collective

Golden City Dance Collective is a worker-owned performing arts studio. This means we don’t have a boss or owner at the top making all of the major studio decisions and taking the profit or biggest salary for themself. Instead, we use things like elected committees and community town halls to organize democratically, with clear processes for how workers can create and vote on proposals for how the studio should be run. Our goal is transparency, equitability, and democratic ownership.

We have a number of team's that help us keep Golden City Dance Collective running! You'll see our Dance Team on the floor teaching lessons and group classes, you'll chat with our Host Team when you arrive for lessons and group classes, and you'll hear from our Ghost Team when you schedule lessons, receive our monthly newsletter, or check out our socials.

You can get to know more of our team members below!

Meet The Dance Team

Michael Iafolla

Mike has been obsessed with music and dance for as long as he can remember. Music is a deep and natural language to the heart, and humans have been whirling around the campfire together to a shared heartbeat since day one. Whether playful or meditative, sexy or sad, improvised or choreographed, dance is feeling, and partner dance lets you connect to yourself and your partner and music like nothing else.

Mike is a born teacher and chronic philosopher who writes adventure fantasy when he's too sore to dance. He began partner dancing in his early teens and danced competitively as the top leader on my university ballroom team. Mike has professionally taught and competed since 2017. Growing up around Washington, DC (where he first became obsessed with tango after seeing it at the Argentine Embassy), Mike moved to San Francisco for school to pursue dancing and writing full-time. He currently lives in El Cerrito with his lovely wife, Teresa, and two cats who don't seem to mind the loud music anymore.

You'll find Mike on the dance floor working on his mastery of technique and choreography for American and International Ballroom, Argentine Tango, West Coast Swing, and more.

Eli Lopez

A San Francisco native, Eli has been dancing/teaching for a decade. Eli taught his first class at the age of 17 while in college and has studied many forms of dance starting with urban, which includes poppin', locking, wacking, krump, and learned a lot from competitions and getting to know several really amazing dancers in the hip hop community.

While in college, Eli originally studied to be a school teacher, however his love of dance took over. He studied contemporary and composition in tandem with his college education and eventually took a leap of faith and learned how to partner dance with the help of his uncle and other professional friends. With their help, Eli started competing at the professional level and has now performed all over the United States.

Eli is always willing to be a student of dance and to learn from as many different teachers as possible to be the best educator he can be for the art form. Eli loves being able to give back to the community that gave him such an amazing opportunity.

You'll find Eli on the dance floor working on his mastery of technique and choreography for Salsa, Bachata, West Coast Swing, American and International Ballroom, and more.

Natalia Fernández

Born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico in May 15,1991; Natalia began dancing at a very young age at Next Dance studios. At the age of 14, she was advised to audition for the Nutcracker and was casted the role of soldier and Russian dancer at Balleteatro Nacional de Puerto Rico former ballet company of Puerto Rico. She then continued her dance training at the BNPR conservatory school until she was promoted to the company where she performed as part of the corps de ballet on ballets such as: Nutcracker, Giselle, La Bayadere, Sylvia, Tributo a Rafael Hernandez. Natalia has had the opportunity to learn from Joaquin Benegas, Silvia Marichal, Maria Carrera, Laura Valentin, Lara Berrios, Daniel Ramírez “Saez, Lourdes Ortega and many others.

In the Bay Area, Natalia was able to create the ballet program for the Mission YMCA (2016-2020). Natalia is a certified personal trainer and owner of her own personal training business NRFitness.

You'll find Natalia on the dance floor working on her mastery of technique and choreography for Ballet.

Emily O'Neal

Movement has always been Emily's primary form of creative expression, from choreographing Christmas songs with her cousins to performing in The Nutcracker during the holidays. Emily's formal dance training began with ballet, which laid the foundation for her studies in contemporary, jazz, and modern dance. Emily continued her dance education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo while pursuing a degree in Computer Science. During college, she discovered a passion for ballroom dance and competed as part of the university's dance team.

After relocating to San Francisco for her career, Emily continued to deepen her dance training, focusing primarily on ballroom and social dances. Emily is thrilled to be teaching once again, as she firmly believe that teaching is one of the most powerful ways to learn and grow.

You'll find Emily on the dance floor working on her mastery of technique and choreography for ballroom and social dances.