Alumni
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JENNFIER (DAWSON) ALLAGAIER Jennifer Dawson Allgaier completed her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory at the University of California, Riverside in the winter of 2006. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance, as well as a B.A. in Dance and French Literature, from the University of California, Irvine. Dawson Allgaier’s research examines the organization of ballet at the Paris Opéra during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It foregrounds the conditions in which female dancers worked, all the while keeping the labor trends and ideologies of ballet and the French social order at play. Dawson Allgaier has worked as a dance educator, both in private studios and higher education, for the past eighteen years. She has taught various levels of ballet, jazz, modern dance, composition, and dance history at Mt. San Antonio College, Santa Ana College, Riverside Community College (Norco Campus), and Riverside Ballet Arts. She is currently on the faculty of Citrus College |
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RISELIA DUARTE BEZERRA After earning a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside, Dr. Bezerra worked in Brazil with public policy development and implementation design at municipal and federal levels. In the past nine years, she has been working with studies and evaluations in the field of development cooperation and performing advisory roles in the design and re-structuring of multi-lateral pooling mechanisms, such as Global Funds. She has been working for the World Bank, the United Nations and Ministries of Foreign Affairs of various countries, performing work in different countries, such as Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Cuba, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, and Uganda. She was a senior consultant and partner at Scanteam AS and is currently a researcher at Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, both of Oslo, Norway. |
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MELISSA BLANCO BORELLI Melissa Blanco Borelli is a Lecturer in Dance Studies at the School of the Arts, University of Surrey. Previously, she was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar in the Music and Theatre Arts department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has also taught at the University of California, Riverside, UCLA and Citrus College. She is currently working on a monograph entitled, She is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body, that traces a social dance history of Cuba through the body of the mulata and her corresponding corporeal language of hip(g)nosis. Blanco Borelli is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen (in progress), which features a variety of essays on dance in film, television, video games, commercials, and music videos. As a dancer she has performed Afro-Cuban sacred and social dance in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, London and Havana, Cuba. Her cabaret show, Mulata Madness, or a Day in the Life of an Adventurous, Sensual and Lost Woman, is based on the cabaretera aesthetic made popular in Mexican Golden Age cinema. http://www.havanabarbie.com |
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FRANCESCA CASTALDI Francesca Castaldi holds a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside, and previous degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Choreographies of African Identities (University of Illinois Press, 2006), a book that examines the trope of the African dancer as deployed on stage by the National Ballet of Senegal and raises questions about artistic creativity and exploitation, virtuosity, sexuality and reciprocity, representation and power. Castaldi has taught courses in dance studies, anthropology, women studies and African studies at the UC San Diego, UCLA, and at Occidental College. She is now an independent scholar and practitioner involved in developing innovative curriculum and pedagogy at the intersection of psychology, anthropology, somatic processing and embodied experiential thinking. She is also dedicated to supporting individuals in processing trauma through an approach that is historically aware, culturally appropriate, and somatically centered. www.focusingpathways.net photo credit: Dardo Salas |
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KUANG-YU CHENG Ph.D., 2005 kuangyu_cheng@yahoo.com Dr. Cheng returned to Taiwan in 2005 and has been working at Taipei Shi-Chien University. In addition to writing about dance, he has published three books about relationships and communications, and all of them have occupied the best-seller list for several months. |
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COLLEEN DUNAGAN As Associate Professor in the Department of Dance at California State University, Long Beach, Colleen Dunagan is the M.F.A. Coordinator and Co-Advisor, and currently serves as Assistant Chair of the Department. She is the choreographer, co-director, and co-producer of two screendances, Après (2011) and Promiscuity (2009). Dunagan has published her research in Dance Research Journal and Topoi: an International Review of Philosophy and has co-authored with Roxane Fenton two book chapters on dance and film, “Dirty Dancing: Dance, Class, and Race in the Pursuit of Womanhood” (which appears in Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli, forthcoming) and “The Beatles, the Moving Image, and Dancing Bodies” (in Movies, Moves and Music: The Sonic World of Dance Films, ed. Pauline Manley and Mark Evans, Equinox, in progress). Dunagan’s current book project analyzes the cultural history of dance-commercials (1948-2010), investigating the role of dance as a marketing tool and as a means of theorizing identity within consumer culture. She is also co-editing with Fenton a dance appreciation textbook (in progress). |
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ROXANE FENTON Upon earning a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside in 2007, Roxane Fenton was appointed lecturer at the University of Texas, Austin (2007-2008). She is currently a lecturer at California State University, Long Beach and at Santa Ana College. Fenton has co-authored with Colleen Dunagan two book chapters on dance and film, “Dirty Dancing: Dance, Class, and Race in the Pursuit of Womanhood,” which appears in Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen (ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli, forthcoming); and “The Beatles, the Moving Image, and Dancing Bodies” in Movies, Moves and Music: The Sonic World of Dance Films (ed. Pauline Manley and Mark Evans, Equinox, in progress). Fenton’s review of Judith Brin Ingeber’s (ed.) Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance (Wayne State UP, 2011) appears in the summer 2012 edition of the Journal of Jewish Identities. She is currently co-editing with Dunagan a dance appreciation textbook (in progress). |
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JEFF FRIEDMAN Jeff Friedman graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2003 with a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory. Friedman is the founder and senior editor of Legacy Oral History Program at the San Francisco Museum of Performance & Design, an oral history collection focusing on performing arts. Since 1994, he has directed Legacy’s summer oral history training workshop, focusing on theory, method and practice. Since graduation, Friedman was guest lecturer at Auckland University in New Zealand and, most recently as a Fulbright fellow at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt. Recent publications include chapters in Are A Hundred Objects Enough to Document the Dance? (University of Leipzig, 2010) and Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2012), and articles published in Spain, Korea, New Zealand, and the U.K. He is the recipient of eight grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a recipient of the California Council for the Arts’ choreography fellowship, and has been awarded the James V. Mink and Forrest C. Pogue awards for service to oral history communities in the Southwest and Mid-Atlantic, respectively. Friedman is Associate Professor in the Department of Dance at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Photo: Jeff Friedman in his solo work, Muscle Memory, based on LEGACY's collection (photo credit: Savage Photography) |
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MICHELLE HEFFNER HAYES (MICHELLE HEFFNER) Dr. Hayes is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance at the University of Kansas. As a graduate student at University of California, Riverside, she performed with the dance companies of Stephanie Gilliland and Susan Rose, and the flamenco company of Armando Neri. Her research offers new views on flamenco dance history and the parallels between improvisation in postmodern dance and flamenco. Publications include “Blood Wedding: Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Flamenco” (in Dancing Bodies, Living Histories: New Writings on Dance and Culture, Banff Centre Press, 2000) and “The Writing on the Wall: Reading Improvisation in Flamenco and Postmodern Dance” (in Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, Wesleyan University Press, 2003). Her first full-length book, Flamenco: Conflicting Histories of the Dance, was published in the spring of 2009 (McFarland & Co.). Hayes choreographs in contemporary dance theater and flamenco dance, and was awarded the 2009 Mid-Career Artist Fellowship in Choreography from the Kansas Arts Commission. At KU, she teaches dance history, performing arts administration, modern dance technique, improvisation and flamenco. photo credit: Katy Sutcliffe |
JILL NUNES JENSEN Dr. Jill Nunes Jensen graduated cum laude from the University of California, Irvine, with dual B.A. degrees in Dance and Political Science. She holds a M.A. in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside. At present, she instructs courses in ballet technique, dance history, appreciation, and social action in the Dance departments of Loyola Marymount University, the LEAP Program of Saint Mary’s College and the Department of Fine Arts at El Camino College. Dr. Nunes Jensen has presented papers at the Congress on Research in Dance, Society of Dance History Scholars, and Popular Culture Association conferences, as well as contributed to the formation of Dance Under Construction—a graduate student dance studies conference reconstituted at UCLA in 1998. Additionally, she has lectured at UC Irvine and given a pre-performance talk for the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago’s visit to the Music Center of Los Angeles. Currently she serves on the Executive Board of the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) as the Corresponding Secretary. Her research on Alonzo King LINES Ballet has been published in Jennifer Fisher and Anthony Shay’s When Men Dance (Oxford University Press, 2009), Dance Chronicle and Theatre Survey. Dr. Nunes Jensen is currently developing a book-length manuscript on King and the company. |
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HYUNJUNG KIM Hyunjung Kim is a lecturer in the department of Dance at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. She holds a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside and a B.A. and M.A. in Dance from Ewha Women’s University. Kim is a recipient of a Phi Beta Kappa international scholarship, a UCR Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant, Gluck fellowships, and grants from the National Research Foundation of Korea. She has presented her research at various conferences, including those sponsored by the Congress on Research in Dance, the Centre National de la Danse, and Women’s Worlds: International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women. Her fields of specialization include contemporary Korean dance, colonial and postcolonial discourses, modernity, nationalism, gender, and globalization. Kim has published articles in Dance Chronicle and Discourses in Dance, and in publications of The Korean Society of Dance and The Korean Society for Dance Studies. |
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LIZBETH LANGSTON Lizbeth received her M.A. through the Intercampus Program in Dance History based at the University of California, Riverside. She also received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (with an interdisciplinary emphasis in Dance) from UCR. Her favorite research & dancing interests are in 16th and early 17th century dance & theatre as well as in contemporary social dance communities. From 2000 to 2006, she was Corresponding Secretary for the Society for Dance History Scholars. Langston is active in the Southern California contradance, gay-lesbian square dance, and vintage dance communities. She is currently the Head of Information Services and Science Serials Bibliographer at the UCR Science Library. |
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YATIN LIN Yatin Lin is Assistant Professor at the School of Dance, Taipei National University of the Arts. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside in 2004, researching on Cloud Gate Dance Theatre. Her areas of interest lie in cultural studies of contemporary dance from Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. Previous editor of the Performing Arts Review and the Taiwan Dance Research Journal, Lin presented papers at international conferences while her writings have been published in the Routledge Dance Studies Reader (UK, 2010, 2nd Ed.), Danses et identites (France: Centre National de la Danse, 2009), Arts Review (Taiwan, 2008), Dialogues in Dance Discourse (Malaysia, 2007), Pina Bausch (Taiwan, 2007), Cloud Gate and Me (China, 2002), Dance Studies and Taiwan (Taiwan, 2001), and the International Dictionary of Modern Dance (USA, 1998), among others. Her article, “Roots and Routes of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s Nine Songs,” is included in a forthcoming anthology by Routledge Press (2012). She currently leads a project funded by the National Science Council analyzing dance festivals and cultural tourism in the Asia-Pacific region. Former Secretary General of the Dance Research Society Taiwan, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Society of Dance History Scholars (USA). |
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JULIET McMAINS Juliet McMains is active as a performer, choreographer, researcher, writer and teacher of dance, focusing on social dance practices (ballroom, salsa, swing, tango) and their theatrical expressions. Her first book, Glamour Addiction: Inside the American Ballroom Dance Industry (Wesleyan University Press, 2006), won the Congress on Research in Dance 2008 Outstanding Publication Award. Dr. McMains is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington where she teaches in the Dance Program. |
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JANET O’SHEA Janet O’Shea is an Associate Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She has previously held positions as a reader in Dance Studies, Middlesex University (UK) and a lecturer in Dance Studies, University of Surrey (UK). O’Shea is the author of At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage (Wesleyan University Press, 2007). She is the co-editor of the Roultedge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd edition (2010) and of the Routledge Online Encyclopedia of Modernism (Dance Component) (2012), an online encyclopedia of dance modernism. Her chapter, “Marketing the Local: the Festival of India and Dance Umbrella”, appears in Choreography and Institution (Hardt, Yvonne and Stern, Martin; 2011). |
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DANIELLE ROBINSON Danielle Robinson is currently an Associate Professor of Dance at York University, Toronto. Her scholarly work on the intercultural movement of African Diasporic popular dances has been published in Dance Theatre Journal (UK), Dance Research Journal (USA), Dance Chronicle (USA), Dance Research (UK), and Research in Dance Education (UK). Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) and the Leverhulme Trust (UK). In 2011-12, she is a Visiting Fellow at Chichester University (UK). |
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ANTHONY SHAY Dr. Anthony Shay is a choreographer who has produced over 200 choreographies of traditional and world dance for more than 50 years. He is also the founding Artistic Director of AVAZ International Dance Theatre (founded 1977) and an associate professor of Dance and Cultural Studies at Pomona College, Claremont, CA. Shay holds a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside, and he also earned M.A. degrees in anthropology and folklore and mythology from California State University, Los Angeles and from UCLA. He is the author of the books, Choreophobia: Solo Improvised Dance in the Iranian World (Mazda Publishers 1999), Choreographic Politics (2002), Choreographing Identities: Dance, Ethnicity, and Festival in North America (MacFarland & Company 2006), for which he received a coveted 2003 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Shay is a co-editor and contributor (with Barbara Sellers-Young) of Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy (Mazda Publishers, 2005); and, with Jennifer Fisher, co-editor of When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders (Oxford University Press). He is currently editing the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity. Shay has published numerous articles in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Dance, the Journal of Iranian Studies, Dance Research Journal, the Journal of Visual Anthropology, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Mahour Musical Quarterly (in Persian), and the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre. In 1998, he received the highest award for choreography in California, the James Irvine Foundation Fellowship Award. In 1999, he received the Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles Lester Horton award for Outstanding Achievement for the Staging of Traditional Dance. In 2000, the California Arts Council awarded him a choreographic fellowship. He is a five-time recipient of choreographic fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001, Shay received the second-phase James Irvine Foundation Fellowship in Dance to create a new choreography “Nights in the Alhambra,” based on the research he conducted with funding from the James Irvine Choreographic fellowship. Shay received the 2002 “Outstanding Dance Publication” award from the Congress on Research in Dance for his second book, Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power (Wesleyan University Press), which was also singled out by the Kurt Weil Foundation for Honorable Mention. Dr. Shay received the prestigious California Arts Council Lifetime Achievement Award for his “Immeasurable Contributions to Dance” in 2001. He received a James Irvine Foundation Choreographic Fellow award during the first round in 1998 and a phase II Irvine Fellowship in 2001. He has recently been awarded the prestigious Social Science Research Council Fellowship to conduct research in the Middle East. |
ADRIENNE STROIK Dr. Adrienne Stroik received a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside in 2007 and a B.A. in Theatre Arts: Dance from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point in 2000. Her research focuses on staged performers and fairgoers at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. She examines ways that movement presented inside and locomotion through the fairgrounds produced bodies and cultural meanings linked to issues of imperial expansion, cultural ranking, identity politics, city planning, and consumer society. Stroik has presented her research at conferences hosted by the Society of Dance History Scholars and Dance Under Construction. She is currently a faculty member of Mt. San Jacinto College, Menifee Valley Campus, where she has taught courses including dance history, dance appreciation, jazz technique, modern technique, and conditioning and alignment. She has also directed the course, Dances of the World, and has choreographed for the College’s Dance program concert. Stroik has previously taught at Mt. San Jacinto College, San Jacinto Campus; the University of California, Long Beach; UC Riverside; and for the Osher program through the UCR Extension program. |
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PREMALATHA THIAGRAJAN Premalatha Thiagarajan received her Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside in Summer 2012. She was offered a Fellowship by the government of Malaysia to pursue her doctoral studies in UCR. She also holds a Masters degree in Performing Arts (Dance), which she received from the University of Malaya in 2007. While pursuing her doctoral studies at UCR, she was awarded the Gluck Fellowship for two consecutive years (2010/2011 and 2011/2012). Thiagarajan is currently employed as a lecturer at the dance department of the Cultural Centre in the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Thiagarajan’s research interest focuses on Indian dance forms in Malaysia. Her Ph.D. dissertation examines minority Indian dance practices (classical and contemporary) in Malaysia in relation to issues such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and globalization. Over the years of her graduate studies, she has published several journal articles and presented conference papers on this topic. Her latest publication is a chapter entitled “Bharata Natyam in Malaysia” in the book Sharing Identities (Routledge Publication). Thiagarajan is trained in Bharata Natyam and Odissi. As the artistic director of her Malaysia based dance company, Premalayaa Performing Arts, she has staged numerous Bharata Natyam dance productions in Malaysia as well as performed in India and the U.S.A. She has also conducted lecture-demonstrations, and dance workshops, and has actively involved in Malaysian dance festivals both as a working committee and participant over the past one decade. |
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FREYA VASS-RHEE Freya Vass-Rhee completed a PhD in Dance History and Theory at the University of California, Riverside in 2011 with the dissertation Audio-Visual Stress: Cognitive Approaches to the Perceptual Performativity of William Forsythe and Ensemble. Her primary research interests are in cognitive dance studies, arts-sciences interdisciplinarity, visuo-sonority in dance, and dance dramaturgy. After a 16-year career as dancer, ballet master, choreographic assistant and choreographer, she completed a BA in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Between 2002 and 2005, she instructed at the University of California, Riverside and St. Mary's College of California. She has worked as Dramaturg and Production Assistant with The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt since 2006, as well as as a freelance dramaturg. Since 2008, she has been an instructor at the University of Music and Performing Arts (Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst) in Frankfurt am Main, where she teaches cognitive dance studies and dance dramaturgies in the MA Program in Contemporary Dance Pedagogy. Dr. Vass-Rhee is a participant in the interdisciplinary research group Dance Engaging Science Workshops, under the auspices of The Forsythe Company's Motion Bank project, and is currently collaborating with cognitive scientists on experimental dance research designs. She has published articles in Dance Chronicle and several anthologies. |
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CARLA STALLING WALTER Carla Stalling (Huntington) Walter completed her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory in 2004, and is currently an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. Carla has held positions as Assistant and Associate Professor at Missouri Southern State University (Joplin, Missouri, 2003—2009) and was an Invited Professor at the Universite de Savoie, Institute of Management (Annecy, France, 2010). She is the author of Black Social Dance in Television Advertising; An Analytical History (McFarland Publishers, Inc., 2011), and her most recent article, “Moving (Euro American) Consumers in Mysterious Ways with African American Social Dance in Commercials,” appears in the journal, Consumption, Markets & Culture (in press). Carla’s current research examines the role of dance in persuasion communication and branding. www.carlastallinghuntington.com |
YUTIAN WONG Yutian Wong earned her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside in 2001. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Music and Dance at San Francisco State University where she directs the Dance Program. She is the author of Choreographing Asian America (Wesleyan University Press, 2010). |
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CAROL ABIZAID Carol Abizaid earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Experimental Choreography from the University of California, Riverside in 2010. In 2011, she presented her choreography, Landing on my Feet In Bits, In PieCes: Memories of War Zones, in Cape Town, South Africa. Abizaid is currently pursuing a Master of Arts degree at New York University in the department of Trauma and Violence Transdisciplinary Studies, where she is researching Ron Athey's performance and creation, "Self-Obliteration: Ecstatic." http://re-memberingsdanceproject.org photo credit: Rachel Holdt |
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RUTH BARNES Ruth Barnes completed a M.F.A. in Dance (Experimental Choreography) at the University of California, Riverside 2004. An internationally known choreographer, performer and dance educator, Barnes taught at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York before moving to France in the mid-1980s, and then back to the U.S. in 2000. The first American choreographer to benefit from a Fulbright Fellowship to work in the United Kingdom (1974-1975), she has toured worldwide as a soloist and created works for professional companies and with independent performers in the U.S. and in Europe. Immediately after graduating from UCR, Barnes taught for a year at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She then joined the faculty of Missouri State University, where she is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Dance B.F.A. Program. At Missouri State University, she has created several mixed media works, some in collaboration with artist Vonda Yarberry. Barnes has received a 2008 Missouri State University Summer Faculty Fellowship, paired with a three-month residency at Dance Base, Edinburgh, for the creation of a solo, In the Garden: Out of Sight, and Homing/In, a duet with live-feed video and aerial work, and. Both pieces appeared on Dance Base’s 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe programming. In 2009, Barnes directed actor/writer Sheila Gordon in Folding House, a one-woman show that received a FronteraFest (Austin, TX) "Best of Fest" award. |
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MELANIE KLOETZEL Melanie Kloetzel is the artistic director of kloetzel & co., which she founded in New York in 1997 and which has traveled with her across the U.S. and now into Canada. The company has performed in New York City at such venues as Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center, and Movement Research at the Judson Church, and has been presented elsewhere in the U.S. (The Flea, the Painted Bride Art Center, the University of Victoria, the California Museum of Photography, and at On the Boards), Canada, and in other international venues. Kloetzel has been fortunate to receive competitively awarded grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, the Movement Research Exchange program, the Pocatello Arts Council. While pursuing her M.F.A. in Dance (Experimental Choreography) at the University of California, Riverside, Kloetzel received a Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship Award. Kloetzel’s anthology, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces (2009), co-edited with Carolyn Pavlik, is in its third printing from the University of Florida Press; other publications include articles in New Theatre Quarterly, EnterText, and In Dance. Before accepting her current position as an Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Calgary, Kloetzel directed the Dance Program at Idaho State University for three years. http://www.kloetzelandco.com photo credit: Lynda McLennan |
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KENDALL LOYER Kendall Loyer is a dancer, dancemaker, teacher, photographer, and writer. Loyer graduated in the Spring of 2012 with her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Riverside, and holds her Bachelor of Art degree from Columbia College Chicago. She was twice the recipient of a Gluck Fellowship of the Arts, and was also awarded the Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant from the Center for Ideas and Society at UCR. Her work has been produced at many venues around the Chicago area, as well as in independent performance spaces in California, Ohio and Idaho. Currently she is teaching workshops and classes in modern, pointe, ballet, improvisation, and dancemaking. She is also working on many new experiments in writing, photography and dancemaking, exploring the fragments and ruptures of memory and the im/permanence of space/place. photo credit: Aliya Jafar |
JULIE MAYO Julie Mayo is a teacher, performer and director of Dim Sum Dance, a platform for her sustained investigation of performance-making. Her practice-based research is concerned with the epistemology of dance/movement generating questions that facilitate experiences for audience and performers alike, rather than pointing to singular interpretations or pre-determined “readings” of any given dance. Her current interests are concerned with probing the form of dance, its multiple affects, the fluidity of its meaning-making and asking what kinds of knowledges making engenders. With a particular focus on the torrent of thought, sensation, action, repose, language and sound that make up being in the world her works focus on juxtaposition of these elements, exploring the tension between the inherent artifice of a theatricalized space and felt experience. Mayo has had the pleasure of guest teaching at many universities across the U.S. and has had her work commissioned by universities and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Mayo is a Skinner Releasing teacher, a Gluck Foundation for the Arts Fellow, a curatorial Artistic Associate of Links Hall (Chicago) and is a 2010 recipient of a Travel Grant from the Body, Performance & Performance (byped) Research Platform at the University of California, Riverside. www.dimsumdance.org |
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ANN E. MAZZOCCA Ann Mazzocca is Assistant Professor of Dance in the Theater and Dance Department at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia (www.cnu.edu/theatercnu/). Mazzocca is helping to develop the new dance program at CNU by teaching Afro-Caribbean (Haitian and Cuban) folkloric dance, developing a postmodern dance curriculum, and teaching a course in African Diaspora dance history as part of CNU’s Liberal Learning Core Curriculum. Mazzocca’s creative work explores Haitian folkloric dance through Western contemporary dance methods. Mazzocca also holds a B.A. from Amherst College, (1996) and an M.A. from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures (2001). |
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SUE ROGINSKI Sue Roginski graduated from University of California, Riverside in 2007 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance (Experimental Choreography). She is a teacher, choreographer, and performer who has produced her own work as well as performances to benefit Project Inform, Breast Cancer Action, and Women’s Cancer Resource Center. In the past few years, Sue has had the opportunity to share work at Anatomy Riot (Los Angeles), Highways Performance Space (Santa Monica), Unknown Theater (Los Angeles), AB Miller High School (Fontana), Society of Dance History Scholars (conferences 2008 and 2009), The Haven Café and Gallery (Banning), Back to the Grind (Riverside), and Heritage High School (Romoland). Sue teaches at Mt. San Jacinto College, Norco College, and Riverside City College. In March 2011, she presented choreography at the Culver Center of the Arts (Riverside) through generous support of the UCR Dance Department’s Body, Performance & Dance (byped) Research Platform. Sue has been dancing with Susan Rose and Dancers for the past six years and recently traveled to New York City and Boston with the ensemble. In the spring of 2010, she embarked on the collaborative creation, P.L.A.C.E. Performance Co-op, with friend and colleague Julie Freeman. www.facebook.com/PLACEPerformance |
HANNAH SCHWADRON Hannah Schwadron is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where she completed a M.F.A. in Experimental Choreography in 2009. Her choreographic and scholarly interests focus on Jewish female performance and the embodied aesthetics that personify and especially parody relationships to race, class, gender, self and body. Before coming to graduate school at UCR, Hannah taught World Cultures, World Literature and Drama at Saint Elizabeth High School in Oakland, CA, where she orchestrated an after school performing arts program focused on dance, theater and stage design. At UCR, she has continued to develop as an arts educator, teaching modern dance technique and composition as a departmental TA and a Gluck Fellow for the last three years. Hannah currently assists the direction of the Gluck Dance Touring Ensemble of undergraduate students of dance, which represents one of the Dance department’s most significant outreach efforts. She currently studies and performs dance improvisation with Susan Rose and Dancers and teaches yoga in downtown Riverside. |
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CRYSTAL SEPÚLVEDA Crystal Sepúlveda is a choreographer, dancer, and educator residing in Riverside, CA. She completed her M.F.A in Experimental Choreography from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and has a B.A. in Dance from Florida International University. She was awarded an M.F.A. Student Fellowship (June 2011) and was a three time recipient of the Gluck Program for the Arts Fellowship. Sepúlveda’s choreographic work, which derives from a practice of improvisation and collaboration, was performed at the CUNY Graduate Center Department of Music for the Music and Space conference in New York, NY (April 28, 2012); Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA for Working Titles: Latino/a Arts Now! (June 24, 2011); and at Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts in Riverside, CA, where Sepúlveda and collaborators (electronic musician/composer no.e Parker and Guilherme Bertissolo and dancer/choreographer Lia Sfoggia) curated Performance as Process: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration during their month long Culver Center Residency (February 1 - March 1, 2012). Sepúlveda has been invited to perform in the works of other artists. She was the first soloist to take on the work Globotìca, a solo created by choreographer Minerva Tapia, which premiered at the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Mexico (April 2010). Most recently, she performed in Stars of Juarez: Cuca and Eva (November 2, 2012), a dance-poem collaboration with California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera and choreographer Hannah Schwadron at UCR. |
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ROSIE TRUMP Rosie Trump is a dance choreographer, filmmaker, performer, educator and the artistic director of Rosie Trump | With or Without Dance. Trump holds a M.F.A. in Dance (Experimental Choreography) from the University of California, Riverside and a B.A. in Dance from Slippery Rock University. She is a three-time recipient of the Gluck Fellowship of the Arts at UCR and is a recipient of the Special Initiatives Grant from the Houston Arts Alliance. Trump’s choreography has recently been presented at the Big Range Dance Festival and the Houston Fringe Festival, where she received an “Audience Favorite” award. Her teaching credits include Seton Hill University and Mt. San Jacinto College. Currently, she is the Dance Program Director at Rice University and the Artistic Director of the Rice Dance Theatre. Trump is the founder and curator of the Third Coast Dance Film Festival. http://www.rosietrump.org photo credit: Amanda Nokleby |
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SHAWN WOMACK Shawn Womack began her tenure at Colorado College in September 2011 as an Associate Professor and as the chair of the Drama and Dance Department after serving on the Grinnell College faculty for eight years. She has also taught as a guest artist at numerous colleges and universities including the Ohio State University, Iowa State University, University of Cincinnati and Ohio University. Prior to teaching at Grinnell, Shawn received her M.F.A. in Choreography from University of California, Riverside. She came to UCR’s dance program after an active career as a choreographer and director of Shawn Womack Dance Projects, a Cincinnati-based contemporary dance and performance company that performed throughout the United States and in the former Soviet Union. Womack’s choreography for the company was recognized with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council as well as the 1996 Ohio Governor’s award in the category of performing arts. Recent choreographic investigations interlace narrative with ethnographic and historical research to delve into issues of memory, place, and identity. Her most recent work, Camouflage, performed in its first installation in June 2011 at Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center for the Arts, incorporates video and site explorations to probe the uneasy relationship between aging, feminism and dance. The four women performers identities are both concealed and revealed in the interplay between video imagery with live action. In the past eight years, Womack’s work has also been produced at Bryant College, Iowa State University, Des Moines Playhouse, University of California, Los Angeles, Minneapolis’ Southern Theatre, San Diego’s Sushi, and University of California, Riverside. Photo credit: Jason Hatcher. |
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| In 1982, the University of California, Riverside participated in the founding and conduct of the Intercampus M.A. program in Dance History. Admissions to this program concluded when the University of California, Riverside, Department of Dance inaugurated a Ph.D program in Dance History and Theory in 1993. Some students who gained admission to the Ph.D. program in Critical Dance Studies, after advisement and with the approval of the faculty committee, elected to pursue an M.A. degree in Critical Dance Studies. | |
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JENNIFER ROBBINS Jennifer Robbins received her M.A. in Dance History in December 1991. After teaching dance history at Cal State L.A., she moved to Seattle in 1992, where she was dance editor for the theater publication Northwest on Stage. In 1996, she received a Master of Librarianship degree from the University of Washington, and she has worked at Microsoft for the past nine years in various capacities, including media archivist and market researcher. |
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PAIGE WHITLEY-BAUGUESS Baroque dance soloist Paige Whitley-Bauguess interprets, recreates, and performs Baroque theatre dance in venues all over the world both as a soloist and with her dance partner Thomas Baird. Highlights include repeat concerts with the Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra of Vancouver, the reconstruction of the courtly entertainment Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos in Tokyo and Shizuoka, Japan, and Bailles e Danzas, a program created especially for performances with Chatham Baroque. A recent review in The Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC) described a performance by the duo as "...a window on the past...like being caught in a musical and theatrical time warp that reached my eyes and ears as a soft-focus vision of a quite spectacular moment in the history of western performance art." Paige is a frequent guest director and choreographer for the Opera Theatre Department at East Carolina University where she directed Mozart’s Il re pastore in 2006 and Handel’s Acis et Galatea in 2004. In February 2006 she served as Guest Director and Choreographer at the Peabody Conservatory of Pastorale & Masque - Miniature Masterpieces from the Dawn of Opera. |
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TOBY BRUNO Toby Bruno is a training consultant based in Jersey City, NJ. Before working independently, he was Training Manager on Schering-Plough Helpdesk at C3i, Inc. There he launched a technical certification program to ensure training was adequately measured against job performance. He has also coordinated the implementation of management and leadership training programs at MetLife. While earning a B.A in Dance from the University of California, Riverside, he produced sixteen stage works and earned a fellowship to produce a dance video. In addition, Bruno has an M.A. in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix and a certificate in Training and Organizational Development from New York University. He is a member of American Society for Training and Development and International Society for Performance Improvement. |
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JILL CHADROFF Jill E. Chadroff is a choreographer, performer, dance historian and educator. Several years of intensive training at the University of California, Riverside formed the base of her career, which as been shaped and influenced by many extraordinary people, including Linda Tomko, Susan Rose, Susan Foster, Stephanie Gilliland, Stanley Holden, Serge Bennathan, and Ohad Naharin. Chadroff received her B.A. in Dance in 1997, where she was among the first of those granted the Maxwell H. Gluck Dance Fellowship. In 2001, she received her M.A. in Dance History from York University in Toronto, Canada, focusing her research on the reconstruction of early eighteenth-century French court and theatre dances. Her contemporary dance work is based on the techniques of improvisation, with an emphasis on making connections between disparate elements. She maintains a strong interest in site-specific choreography, utilizing movement to explore the relationship between public life and artistic expression. Photo: Jill Chadroff in Five Minute Piece (photo credit: Robert Salas, 2005) |
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MIKI DUN Miki Dun graduated with Honors while majoring in Dance at the University of California, Riverside with a Chancellor’s Performance Scholarship in Dance. Miki currently completed a two-year tour, traveling around the United States, with the live stage shows “Sesame Street Live” and “Dragon Tales Live” under VEE Corporation. She is also a member of Satori Daiko, a Japanese drumming ensemble. With Satori, Miki united tap and taiko in performances at the Ford Theatre and the Japan American Theatre. Some of Miki’s film and television credits include: “187” starring Samuel L. Jackson, “Gilmore Girls,” “Seventh Heaven,” and the “O.C.” In addition, Miki is pursuing the art of teaching dance at the University of Redlands, Riverside Community College, Village Dance Arts, and Borgata Music House among others. |
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KRISTI HAMELIN With a goal of dance education, Kristi Hamelin (Kooyenga) earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Dance from the University of California, Riverside. In addition, Hamelin has studied with the Village Center for the Arts in Palm Springs, The College of the Desert, Barat College in Chicago, and Ballet Pacifica in Irvine. She has enjoyed performing in numerous musical theater productions including Will Rogers Follies, Mame, Cabaret and in 2005, Sweet Charity. Hamelin is dedicated to sharing dance and the performing arts with the community and has been teaching and choreographing throughout the Palm Springs and Orange County areas for over 15 years. |
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KELLI KING Kelli King holds a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Riverside and an M.F.A. in Dance from UC Irvine. She has been on faculty at Riverside Community College, Mt. San Jacinto College, Idyllwild Arts Academy and San Bernardino Valley College. King performed with California Ballet Company before investigating other movement disciplines. While living in Boston, King was a member of the Boston Dance Collective and Danceworks, performing, touring and teaching on both coastlines extensively. She also studied with butoh master Ushio Amagatsu, performing with Japanese dance/theater company Sankai Juku in a project at Jacob’s Pillow. She has since returned to The Pillow twice with Susan Rose and Dancers. Kelli has been a member of Rose’s company since 1987. She is currently working on her teaching certificate at the Iyengar Yoga Teacher Training Program. |
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CAROL LANE B.A., 1998 ywinl@yahoo.com Carol Lane (Tokuhara) graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 1998. While at UCR, she worked for the City of Fontana as a dance instructor in hip hop and jazz. She lived in Fontana after graduation and worked at various dance studios teaching ballet. She plans to open a dance studio and work as a dance teacher. |
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ERIC LORICO Eric Lorico began his dance training under the mentorship of Susan Rose and Wendy Rogers at the University of California, Riverside, where he received undergraduate degrees in Dance and Business Administration. He was a member of Susan Rose and Dancers for six years, and has actively worked with Wendy Rogers on several projects. In 2005, he performed with Rogers in the Trolley Dances Project in conjunction with San Diego Dance Theatre. Since then, he established DanceParadigm along with John Medina. Together, they have created Spring Back/Fall Forward, which debuted in San Diego in January 2006. Spring Back/Fall Forward is also currently being produced into a dance-for-the-camera film. Lorico and Medina also re-constructed their 1998 tango duet, TangQled Roots…silent Q, to be shown at Joyce SoHo, the Berkshire Fringe, and Celebrate Dance Festival in San Diego in summer of 2006. Currently, Lorico is working for the University of Southern California’s Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles as a Financial Analyst. |
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SONDRA LORING Sondra Loring received a B.A. in Dance with Honors the University of California, Riverside in 1982. Loring has been dancing in New York City since then, and received a 1996 Dance and Performance Award (BESSIE) for her work as an improviser, writer, teacher and performer, specifically with David Rousseve and Neil Greenberg. Her own work has been produced in NYC, elsewhere in the United States, Mexico and Venezuela. Loring received the prestigious Meet the Composer commission, along with a grant from the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, for her piece, ElPuente/The Bridge. She has also received grants from the Jerome Foundation, NEA, the Manhattan Cultural Commission, and the James E. Robison Foundation for her choreography. She co-founded the annual Improvisation Festival/ New York, a two-week program of workshops, classes, jams, and performances by improvisors from New York, the United States, Europe, and Canada. She also founded and edited JUICE, an underground dance journal, from 1991 to 1997. |
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JOHN MEDINA John Medina received his B.A. in Dance, with a minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Studies, from the University of California, Riverside in 1999. In 1997, he received a scholarship to study dance at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, where he was immersed in the repertory of Ted Shawn and Alvin Ailey. He was a member of Susan Rose and Dancers for six years, and was a part of Wendy Rogers’ MAKESHIFT dancing for five years. He has performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Riverside, New York, Massachusetts, and Mexico. In 2003, John received his J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law, and has since worked with the Legal Action Center and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City and with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. In 2005, he returned to California to serve as the Program Coordinator for UCR’s Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts. Since his return to the west coast, Medina has performed with Wendy Rogers in the San Diego Trolley Dances, re-inspiring him to create dances with Eric Lorico and to create DanceParadigm as the vehicle to present their work. DanceParadigm has since performed at Sushi’s New Wave in San Diego, Joyce SoHo Presents in New York, the Berkshire Fringe in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Celebrate Dance Festival in San Diego. Photo: John Medina in Task Force (photo credit: Steve Walag) |
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PAULA NAGGI Paula Naggi (Paula Naggi-Liniger) graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 1977 with highest honors with a B.A. in Dance. She was the recipient of a Chancellor's Undergraduate Fellowship Award and had the distinction of working with the late Dr. Christena Schlundt as a research assistant. Naggi later earned her Master’s degree in Theater with concentrations in Dance History and Choreography from Cal State Fullerton (1987). Naggi has taught at several area colleges and universities, including the University of Redlands, where she was the Dance Coordinator for five years; Riverside Community College; and UCR, as a guest lecturer in Jazz Dance. Since 1993, she has been on the faculty at Mt. San Jacinto College. Naggi was also a contributing choreographer and performer with Dance Theatre West, a collective of dance artists based in Huntington Beach, and was a guest artist performing with several other area companies including Eyes Wide Open Dance Theatre and the Urban Sprawl Dance Artists (now both dark). She has directed and produced invitational concerts and choreographed many musical productions, including Into the Woods, Oklahoma!, Kiss Me, Kate, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Fantastics, to name a few. Naggi has also served as a member of the Peer Review Panel for the Riverside Arts Council, reading grant applications and allocating funds. |
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CORY NAKASUE Cory Nakasue is an interdisciplinary artist and co-artistic director of SPINE, which has produced live theatre and film in North America and Europe since 1999. Nakasue also serves as the company’s acting Executive Director and is a management consultant for arts organizations nationwide, including Murray Spalding Movement Arts, Synthesis Dance Project, and Innerlandscapes Dance Theatre. Nakasue got her start in dance working with Los Angeles-based artists Stephanie Gilliland and Rebecca Bobele, and quickly started producing her own independent choreography, which received much attention for its unique use of physical narrative. The Los Angeles Times has called her choreography “surgically skillful work that packs an emotional wallop.” Trained formally as an actor and director, Nakasue was inspired to incorporate original text with original choreography, which lead to the creation of SPINE UK in 1998, and the creation of The Ring (1999) and What I’m Taking from John (2000). Both pieces received London arts grants, toured internationally, and were invited for U.S. revivals. She continues work as a performer, collaborator and teaching artist with SPINE, which, in its new incarnation includes work with technological media. Nakasue has completed two experimental films, which have been screened most recently at the Millennium Film Workshop and the Independent Filmmakers and Musicians Festival in New York City. |
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CYNTHIA QUINN Cynthia Quinn, Associate Director of MOMIX, grew up in Southern California. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Riverside and continued there as an Associate in Dance for five years. In 1988 she received the University Alumni Association’s “Outstanding Young Graduate Award.” As a member of Pilobolus, she performed on Broadway and throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Israel and Japan. She collaborated on the choreography of Day Two, Elegy for the Moment, Mirage, What Grows in Huygens Window and Stabat Mater. Quinn began performing with MOMIX in 1983 and has since toured throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, South America and Japan. She has also appeared as a guest artist with the Ballet Theatre Francaise de Nancy, the Berlin Opera Ballet and the Munich State Opera, as well as international galas in Italy, France and Japan. She has assisted Moses Pendleton in the choreography of Pulcinella for the Ballet Nancy in France; Tutuguri for the Berlin Opera Ballet; Platee for the Spoleto Festival USA; Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel in New York; AccorDION for the Zurich-Vorbuhne Theatre; and Carmen for the Munich State Opera. Quinn made her film debut as “Bluey” (a role she shared with Karl Baumann) in FX2. She was a featured performer in the Emmy Award winning “Pictures at an Exhibition” with the Montreal Symphony and has also appeared in a 3D IMAX film. She has since appeared in numerous television programs and music videos. Quinn was recently featured with RuPaul and k.d. lang for M.A.C. Cosmetics’ “Fashion Cares” benefits in Toronto and Vancouver. Quinn is co-choreographer of “White Widow” which is featured prominently in the new Robert Altman film, The Company, and appeared in the film, “First Born,” with Elisabeth Shue. Quinn is a board member of the Nutmeg Conservatory in Torrington, Connecticut and is on the advisory board of the Susan B. Anthony Project. |
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KRISTEN REVIER Kristen Revier received a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Riverside in 1996. She continued her dance studies at California Institute of the Arts (1996-1997). In 1998, she performed with Jill Chadroff at Museum of Contemporary Art Downtown Los Angeles in the Sense and Sensuality Exhibition. In 2003, Revier received her Master’s degree in Choreography with Performing Arts from Middlesex University, London. In London, she co-founded SPINE, a performance collective, along with fellow UCR alumni Cory Nakasue and Gerardo Romero, and with Cal Arts alumnus Brent Felker. They collaborated on projects including The Ring, performed in Resolution! (London, 2001) and in the Marató Festival (Barcelona, 2001). She founded Sweet Nobody, a dance theatre company, in London, and in 2003, she relocated the company from London to the San Diego area. The first project for the company, “Pseudo Insanity Challenge,” was presented at Hoxton Hall in London (2002). In San Diego, Sweet Nobody produces primarily solo work that has been presented at Mix Up Project (2004, 2005), and at the Celebrate Dance Festival (2005). She has performed with San Diego dance companies Dunn Razo Dance, Kimberly Gregg, and most recently with Lower Left at Bravo San Diego (2005). |
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MARIA PAOLA REYES Paola Reyes received a B.A in Dance and in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Riverside in 2005. Reyes was born in Irapuato, Guanajuato (México) and moved to Ventura County in 1989. In 2003, she graduated from Moorpark College with an Associate of Arts degree in Dance and Liberal Arts. She has choreographed and performed in many dance styles including jazz, modern, ballroom, salsa, ballet, tap, hip-hop, and performed in musicals such as West Side Story and Wild On Broadway at Moorpark College. |
MELINDA SHANER Melinda received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance, with a minor in Physical Education, from the University of California, Riverside in 1976, and then owned and operated a dance studio business, Conservatory of Dance, and a dancewear store, Studio II Dancewear, in Yucaipa, California. She also holds a lifetime Community College teaching credential in Dance and has taught for the San Bernardino Community College system. In July 2006, she sold her businesses and moved to New Mexico where re-opened a dance studio/performing group and dancewear store in January 2007. |
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GAY WAYLAND After graduating with a B.A. in Dance, Gay Wayland went on to receive an R.N. and an M.B.A. She currently lives in Encinitas, California. She is a member of a halau (hula school), and occasionally takes tap and ballet at the local community college. |
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The Department of Dance is very proud of its alumni. If you are an alumnus, please update the Department on your current work, latest news, and contact information. Images are also welcome. Your information will be added to our growing list of alumni information. |
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