TDPS - Key Persons
Adriane Fang is a dancer, teacher and choreographer with a keen interest in multi-disciplinary collaboration. She was a member of the internationally renowned dance company, Doug Varone and Dancers, from 1996-2006 and has worked with several other choreographers including Colleen Thomas, Wally Cardona, Elizabeth Shea, Bill Young, Christopher K. Morgan and Nancy Bannon.
Amith Chandrashaker is a lighting designer for theater, dance, opera, television, concerts and events. His work has been seen off-Broadway, at major regional theaters, Houston Grand Opera, The Joyce Theater, CNN, NBC, and on Virgin Cruise Ships. He has also worked internationally at The National Dance Co. of Wales, Staatstheater Nuremberg, Aalto Theater Essen, Lyon Opera Ballet, and the Royal New Zealand Ballet. He sits on the executive board of his union, United Scenic Artists Local 829. Prior to coming to University of Maryland, he was an adjunct professor at Pace University and New York University's graduate program, Design for Stage and Film. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts and a Masters of Fine Arts from New York University's Design for Stage and Film.
Amongst the nearly 70 Broadways shows Brian designed are, this past season's Blackbird directed by Joe Mantello, starring Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams. Other Broadway highlights include, A Fish In The Dark written by and starring Larry David, Death of a Salesman directed by Mike Nichols starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Raisin in the Sun starring Denzel Washington, For the MET Opera Brian designed Enchanted Island, Dr. Atomic et al. He also designed, Sucker Punch at the Studio in DC and The Maryland Opera Studio's Miss Havisham's Fire and Postcards from Morocco. He designed The Book of Mormon and received his fifth Tony Award for Best Lighting.
As a director, Brian directed last season's Between Riverside and Crazy at Studio Theater in DC; he co-directed Spring Awakening The Musical with Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig at The Clarice for TDPS, and a production of Proof at Theater Three in New York.
Carla Della Gatta is a theatre historian and performance theorist who examines ethnic and bilingual theatre through dramaturgy and aurality. She built and maintains the only archive of Latinx theatrical adaptation, LatinxShakespeares.Org. She is the author of Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (Michigan, 2023) and co-editor of Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh UP, 2021). Her work has been published in collections as well as in journals such as Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Studies, Bulletin of the Comediantes, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Theatre Journal. In 2018, she received a Woodrow Wilson (now Citizens and Scholars) Career Enhancement Fellowship. She received the J Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize from the Shakespeare Association of America, and she has received fellowships and awards from the Folger Shakespeare Library, ASTR, the New York Public Library, and more.
Della Gatta collaborated with the UCLA Comedia in Translation and Performance Working Group to translate Ana Caro's The Courage to Right a Woman's Wrongs in 2019 (Juan de la Cuesta Press, 2021). Della Gatta was an academic advisor for the Public Humanities Initiative at The Public Theater in 2019. Her public scholarship can be found online in podcasts, essays, program notes, interviews, and panel conversations with HowlRound, Shakespeare Center Los Angeles, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Classic Stage Company, Shakespeare St. Louis, the Folger Shakespeare Library, The Sol Project, and Victory Gardens Theater.
She is on the Steering Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons, and she is the Digital Humanities Editor for The Fornés Institute. She serves on the editorial boards of Shakespeare Survey and for the Arden series on Shakespeare and Social Justice. Della Gatta served on the Governing Council for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) from 2019-21, and she has served on awards committees for the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) and the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR).
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Associate Professor
- Author / Lead
Crystal U. Davis is a dancer, movement analyst, and critical race theorist whose work has been renowned by an eclectic community of adjudicators and audiences from Donald McKayle to the royal family of Jodhpur, India. As a performer her work spans an array of genres from modern dance companies including Notes in Motion to East Indian dance companies including Nayikas Dance Theater Company to her own postmodern choreography at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and Dance New Amsterdam. She has performed both her post-modern works and classical and folk forms of India across the country and abroad. Her creative work centers around the incongruities present between our daily behaviors and belief systems. She has conducted ethnographic research in Rajasthan, India on the relationship between religious beliefs and both creative and pedestrian movement. Her current research explores implicit bias in dance through a critical theory lens and how identity politics of privilege manifests in the body. Some of her recent publications include "Tendus and Tenancy: Black Dancers and the White Landscape of Dance Education" in the Palgrave Handbook of Race and Arts in Education and "Laying New Ground: Uprooting White Privilege and Planting Seeds of Equity and Inclusion" in Dance Education and Responsible Citizenship: Promoting Civic Engagement through Effective Dance Pedagogies, and her book Dance and Belonging: Implicit Bias and Inclusion in Dance Education (2022).
She served as grant panelist for the South Carolina Arts Council and as board member for the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. Ms. Davis also founded a movement consulting company called Movement Artistry Project (M.A.P.) where she has worked in a variety of settings as a teacher, performer, and consultant. Her awards include Emory University's Pioneer Award and the Texas Woman's University's Kitty McGhee Honor for Outstanding Achievement. Ms. Davis has authored a chapter in the book, Confronting Critical Equity and Inclusion Incidents on Campus: Lessons Learned and Emerging Practices. She has contributed her expertise in dance, education, and somatic movement to the Lincoln Center Institute, the National Association of Independent Schools, and the National Dance Education Organization. Ms. Davis earned her B.A. in Religious Studies with a minor in Dance from Emory University, her M.F.A. in Dance from Texas Woman's University, her Masters in Performance Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and her Laban-Bartenieff Movement Analysis certification from Integrated Movement Studies.
Associate Professor Crystal U. Davis was nominated by Dean Stephanie Shonekan for a 7-month collaborative program out of the Vice President for Research, Gregory F. Ball, designed to equip research leaders at UMD with the skills and resources needed to communicate about my research findings and expertise to general audiences and key stakeholders.
Crystal Davis received "Breaking the M.O.L.D." initiative Professional Development Award 2023.
Associate Professor Crystal Davis received the Outstanding Leadership in Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award 2023 from the National Dance Education Organization.
Assistant Professor Crystal U. Davis received the Executive Director's Award for Service to the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). The awardee is chosen by the NDEO Executive Director to honor a deserving member who has shown excellent service to the field of dance education and to NDEO.
Professor Conway's work on the Chicago Shakespeare Festival's production of The Tempest among others, led to his selection as a featured designer by The United States Institute for Theatre Design and Technology to represent the United States at The 2019 Prague Quadrennial.
James M. Harding is an internationally known scholar whose work focuses on political activism and the arts, the history of experimental theatre, theatre in the 1960s, post 9/11 theatre and performance, the intersection of surveillance and performance, and on performance studies more generally. His most recent monograph is entitled Performance, Transparency and the Cultures of Surveillance (Michigan, 2018). He is the author of three previous monographs: The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance (Michigan, 2013), Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists and the American Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2010), and Adorno and "A Writing of the Ruins": Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture (SUNY, 1997). He has co-edited five anthologies, the most recent of which is entitled The Sixties, Center Stage: Mainstream and Popular Performances in a Turbulent Decade (Michigan, 2017). His articles have appeared in Performing Arts Journal, TDR, Performance International, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, and PMLA as well as in numerous anthologies. In 2017, Harding received the year's "Outstand Article Award" from American Theatre in Higher Education for his article "Incendiary Acts and Apocryphal Avant-Gardes: Thích Quảng Ðức, Self-Immolation, and Buddhist Spiritual Vanguardism" (PAJ, 2017). During the 2016-2017 academic year, he was a research fellow at the Freie Universität, Berlin's International Research Center / "Interweaving Performance Cultures" working on a new monograph tentatively entitled, Performance Beyond the Pale: Radical Acts and Bodies in Extremis.
Harding is proud to be a Maryland alumnus, having completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1991 at College Park. Before joining the faculty at Maryland, he was Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK, was twice a Visiting Professor at the Insitut für Theaterwissenschaft at the Freie Universität, Berlin, and was Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA.
James M. Harding revisits iconic sites of early 20th-century performance to examine how European avant-gardists attempted-unsuccessfully-to employ that discourse as a strategy for enforcing uniformity among a politically and culturally diverse group of artists. He then takes aim at historical and aesthetic categories that have promoted a restrictive history and theory of the avant-garde and narrow readings of avant-garde performance. Harding reveals the Eurocentric undercurrents that underlie these categories and urges a consideration of the global political dimensions of avant-garde gestures. His book will interest scholars of theater and performance, art history, and literary studies, as well as those interested in the relation of art to politics in various historical periods and cultures.
Kendra Portier is a teacher, performer, and choreographer. Born at home in Ohio, Portier has facilitated and promoted dance across the globe from San Diego to Salzburg, Dushanbe to Athens (Greece, Georgia, and Ohio). She has cultivated a celebrated approach to dance training, garnering her an extensive teaching roster consisting of dance programs, festivals, choreographic commissions, and ongoing collaborations worldwide. Her choreographic research draws from her visual arts practice and primarily culminates in performances with BAND/portier - the project-based dance collective she directs. BAND/portier has been supported nationally though awards and presenting venues, such as the Harkness Choreographer in Residence, Bates Dance Festival, The Wanda M. Nettl Prize for Choreography, DanceNow, Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, Gowanus Arts+Production, New York University's Tisch Summer Dance, Lion's Jaw Festival, New Dialect, and the Field Center. Her current body of work is a study of Color: Burnish #08 (2019), Elegy for Mary (2020), untitled vital glacier (2021), and red dirt glitter (in-process, 2024 premiere). Additional recent works include a multi-modal Pantone variations project with choreographies such as …And with this lies the need to be together (2023), a digital work-it taught me to hold onto me (2022), and goldfinch-a decolonizing ballet study with TDPS students.
Her formative dance experience began with BalletMet (OH), a ballet company with whom she trained and performed. From classical and contemporary to experimental dance-theater and improvisational performance, Portier has worked with an array of artists in project-based works and companies, such as David Dorfman Dance, Janessa Clark's COMMUNION, and Jasmine Hearn's Salt and Spirit. Attracted to the creative and physical demands of collaborating in diverse processes, she is currently working in All Together Now, a trisection choreography directed by Annie-B Parsons, Donna Uchizono, and Tendayi Kuumba, as well as in improvisation practice and research directed by Jungwoong Kim.
Portier holds a BFA in Dance with Honors from the Ohio State University and an MFA in Dance with a specialization in Design from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Initially joining the UMD faculty as Artist in Residence, Portier is an Assistant Professor in TDPS the Maya Brin Endowed Professor in Dance.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Voice and Acting Within the School
Lisa Nathans is an Associate Professor of Voice and Acting within the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland. She is a certified Colaianni Speech Practitioner and a Designated Linklater Voice Instructor. Lisa received her MFA in Voice Studies through London's Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has taught previously for CalArts/California Institute of the Arts, Stella Adler Academy (Los Angeles), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (England), Royal Welsh College (Wales), Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (England), University of Washington: Professional Actor Training Program (MFA), and the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater Program (BFA). Her graduate dissertation, Hearing Voice/Feeling Speech, investigated diverse strategies for teaching phonetics to conservatoire acting students. Lisa is a professional voice and dialect director and coach. She is also an active member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.
Education / Training:
M.F.A. in Voice Studies, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, 2015
B.F.A. in Theater Arts: Acting, Boston University, 2008
Professional Affiliations:
Board Member and Board Liaison for Publications, international Voice and Speech Trainer's Association, 2020 to present
Designated Linklater Voice Teacher, 2014
Certified Joy of Phonetics and Accents Speech Practitioner, 2013
Job Titles:
- President of Council of Dance Administrators
Maura Keefe is a contemporary dance historian. She is a scholar in residence at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, where she writes about, lectures on, and interviews artists from around the world. Keefe has also given lectures and led audience programs nationally at places such as Princeton University, UCLA, the Goethe Institut (Los Angeles), the Kennedy Center, New York Live Arts, the Joyce Theatre, and New York's City Center, and internationally for the Festival Internacional Danza Extremadura in Monterrey, Mexico. Based on those interactions with dancers and choreographers, she has published essays on women in dance, contemporary dance forms, and dance cultures. Other research interests include the relationships between dance and sports, with essays published on subjects such as endzone dancing, baseball as structured improvisation, and the Harlem Globetrotters.
Keefe is the president of Council of Dance Administrators (CODA) and Chair of the Committee on Ethics for the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) and serves NASD as a visiting evaluator. She regularly participates in annual conferences of American College Dance Association as an adjudicator. She has served on the boards of the Congress on Research on Dance (CORD) and Dance Place DC, as a dance panelist for the New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA), Maryland State Arts Council, the D.C. Commission for the Arts and Humanities, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to coming to Maryland, Keefe was Chair of the Department of Dance at SUNY Brockport and was on the dance faculty at Ohio University. She has an MFA in choreography and performance from Smith College and a PhD in dance history and theory from University of California, Riverside. She is the Director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park where she teaches dance history and theory and choreography.
Education/Training:
Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory, University of California, Riverside
M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance, Smith College
B.A. in Dance and English, William Smith College
Job Titles:
- Professor of Dance at UMD
Patrik Widrig has been a professor of Dance at UMD since 2009, and co-artistic director of PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER (PWDT) since 1987. He is the recipient of a 2013 Dance Metro DC award for Outstanding Overall Production at a Large Venue. PWDT has gained an international following for work that transforms the familiar into the mysterious, the subversive, and the intimate. Creating and presenting "American dance theater at its funniest and most compelling" [Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland], the company has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia and New Zealand. Their work has been produced by major dance venues including Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, City Center Fall for Dance Festival, Joyce Theater, the Bates Dance Festival, Flynn Center (Burlington, VT), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans, LA), Hopkins Center (Hanover, NH), Kaatsbaan Arts Center (Tivoli, NY), Omaha Summer Festival, The Painted Bride (Philadelphia, PA), Portland Museum of Art (Portland, ME), Redfern Arts Center (Keene, NH), Rutgers University, Wagontrain Project (Lincoln, NE), and internationally at London's Dance Umbrella; José Limón Festival Internacional de Danza in Mexico; Festival Internacional de Danza in Lima, Peru; New Territories in Glasgow, Scotland; Chang Mu Arts Center in Seoul, South Korea; Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China; Darpana Academy in Ahmedabad, India; and two tours throughout Mr. Widrig's native Switzerland. Financial support includes funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Performance Network, MD State Arts Council, NY State Council on the Arts, the Fund for US Artists at International Festivals, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Rockefeller, Altria, Harkness, Jerome, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore, Leon Lowenstein, O'Donnell-Green, Puffin, Swiss Center, Sequoia, and Lifton Family Foundations, the American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program, the Asian Cultural Council, Arts International, USIA/USIS and the University of Maryland.
Ronya-Lee LaVaune Anderson is a dancer, choreographer, singer, songwriter and educator. She holds a Master's of Divinity from Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, a B.A. in Dance and a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland at College Park. A former member of the Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble, Clancy Works, Carla Perlo's Carla and Company, Erica Rebollar Dance Co., Liz Lerman's Dance Exchange and most recently, Dance Place's Marvin Gaye Project, for which she also serves as Rehearsal Director, Ronya-Lee has performed both nationally and internationally. She has led residencies at Duke University (Durham, NC), Henderson State University (Arkadelphia, Arkansas), Mercyhurst University (Erie, PA) and Prince George's Community College (Landover, MD). Her work has been commissioned by Duke University, PG Community College, Joy of Motion, DanceEthos, Dance For All Youth Company in South Africa, as well as churches, schools and community organizations throughout the United States.
A 2013 recipient of a Bates Dance Festival Teaching Fellowship, a 2014 Sacred Dance Facilitator at Music and Liturgical Arts Week in Lake Junaluska, NC, and a 2015 Main Presenter at the Sacred Dance Guild's biannual conference, Ronya-Lee travels extensively teaching, dancing, and choreographing. She serves as Artistic Director for Dancing by the Power: Movement Matters; her company that combines art, spoken word, live music, dance and fashion in performance. With the ukulele as her songwriting companion, Ronya-Lee is also a genre- bending singer-songwriter, using her dance and choreography experience to create a unique live experience. She is currently working on her debut album, The Light Sessions.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Dance at UMD
Sara Pearson has been professor of Dance at UMD since 2009, and co-artistic director of PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER since 1987. PWDT has gained an international following for work that transforms the familiar into the mysterious, the subversive, and the intimate. Creating and presenting "appealingly subversive, engaging, wry, and deeply affecting work" (The Washington Post), the company has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and New Zealand. Their work has been produced by major dance venues including Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the City Center Fall for Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, Central Park SummerStage, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the Bates Dance Festival, and internationally at London's Dance Umbrella; the Festival Internacional de Danza in Lima, Peru; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile; the Jose Limon International Festival in Mexico, New Territories in Glasgow, Scotland; the Chang Mu Arts Center in Seoul, South Korea; Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China; the Darpana Academy in Ahmedabad, India; and two tours throughout Switzerland. Financial support includes funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Performance Network, the Maryland State Arts Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fund for US Artists at International Festivals, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Rockefeller, Altria, Harkness, Jerome, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore, Leon Lowenstein, O'Donnell-Green, Puffin, Swiss Center, the American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program, the Asian Cultural Council, Arts International, and the USIA/USIS. Professor Pearson is a recipient of the American Choreographer Award and the first Dance Connect Commissioning Project from Dance Metro DC. Recent performance and residency engagements include PWDT tours to Russia Cuba, Mexico, India, and Israel, including site-specific dances created throughout UNESCO World Heritage sites in Essen, Germany at Zeche Zollverein and in Puerto Rico at Castillo San Cristobal.
Below are a few ways to get in touch with TDPS academic advisor Susan Miller this semester (Fall 2020), especially during the first two weeks of the semester before the add/drop deadline. Susan will be available from 10am-4pm for instant messaging. She will do her best to return your Google Chat ASAP and your email within 24 business hours.