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Donnell Oakley is an independent choreographer, performer and teacher based in Brooklyn, New York. A North Carolina native, she trained at Arts Together in Raleigh under Lemma and Glenda Mackie among other incredible teachers from a very young age through high school. Donnell studied modern technique, ballet, composition, improvisation and performance, among other movement classes. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography in 2001 and attended the American Dance Festival in the summers of 1999 and 2001 and has been dancing professionally in New York ever since. Donnell co-founded everything smaller in 2002, a Brooklyn-based dance company driven by collaboration. She spent 6 extraordinary years making dances with the inimitable Jessica Jolly and David Schmidt. everything smaller performed in venues and events such as the Studio 42’s Starving Artist Ball, Movement Research’s Improvisation is Hard, The Flea Theater’s Dance Conversations, Dance Now, the Bodyblend series at Dixon Place, the Solar Powered Arts Festival, Dancespace Center’s Wave of Humanity and their Elizabeth Pape Memorial Concert for which everything smaller received the Elizabeth Pape Scholarship in 2005, the Williamsburg Free Festival, the International D.U.M.B.O Dance Festival, WAX Works, Triskelion Arts Benefit Concerts, New Jersey’s S.W.E.A.T., Teresa Wimmer’s Twilight Project, the Brooklyn Dance Sampler, Middlebury College, University of Michigan, Swarthmore University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

In 2008, Donnell finished 6 extraordinary years with everything smaller. She has continued making dances and has had her work produced through Movement Research, the 92nd Street Y, the West End Theatre, Triskelion Arts, the Joyce SoHo, Dance Now NYC and Boston, Dance New Amsterdam, Gibney Dance Center, Dixon Place, The Yard, Gowanus Art + Production, Jacob’s Pillow, the American Dance Festival, the Ringling International Arts Festival and was the recipient of the Bessie Schönberg Choreographic Mentorship Residency at The Yard in 2013. Donnell has received additional artistic support through residencies at the Silo The Lumberyard and SUNY Brockport. She has been fortunate enough to work and collaborate with the extraordinary likes of Xan Burley, Courtney Drasner, Josh Palmer, Jordan Risdon, Alex Springer, Deborah Lohse and Cori Marquis. Donnell has also had the pleasure of working with designers and composers such as Paul Moffit, Scott Nelson, Mandy Ringger, Randi Rivera, Oana Botez, Justin Levine and Matt Stine.

In addition to her own work, Donnell currently loves collaborating and dancing with Steeledance, Chavasse Dance & Performance, Liz Staruch, Fritha Pengelly in Pengelly Projects, Cori Marquis and The Nines [IX], her collective LMnO3:  Deborah Lohse, Cori Marquis, Donnell Oakley, and Doug Elkins Choreography Etc.

She has been invited to teach and/or set work at West Chester University, the University of Michigan, Middlebury University, Arizona State University, Prescott College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, SUNY Brockport, Enloe High School and Arts Together in NC, The Yard, The Beijing Dance Festival, and as a continuing part of Gibney Dance Center, teaching a contemporary technique class every Wednesday and Friday at noon.

Donnell feels a strong connection to her roots and believes deeply in Arts Together’s philosophy:  “We believe that students who develop personal artistic vision as well as technique become creators rather than imitators.”

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Founder of MoBBallet, Theresa Ruth Howard is an expert and advocate on the issue of diversity in Ballet. She has sat on panels for Dance/USA, Dance/NYC, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance at Duke University, and collaborated with International Association of Blacks in Dance in the planning and facilitation of the first Ballet Audition for female ballet dancers of color. A former member of the Dance Theater of Harlem, and Armitage Gone! Dance, Howard has worked extensively with choreographer Donald Byrd, and was a guest artist with Complexions Contemporary Ballet. As a contributor to Pointe, Expressions (Italy), Tanz (Germany) and dance media publications, Howard has emerged as a clear and defining voice on topics such as body image and race. She holds more than 17 years of experience as a dance educator including Ballet Faculty at the Ailey School.

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Xan Burley works in New York City as a performer, teacher, arts administrator, and choreographer in collaboration with her partner Alex Springer and has been a member of Doug Varone and Dancers since 2012.

The work of dance artists Xan Burley and Alex Springer, as creative and life partners, is inherently and essentially collaborative. Since 2008, their cohesive efforts have taken shape as dance theatre for the stage and camera, interdisciplinary work, site-specific performance, durational exhibition, and community engagement. They strive to make work that inhabits spaces holistically, creating physical landscapes that harmonize with each individual project. With multidisciplinary collaborators, they collectively design comprehensive aural, visual, and contextual environments in which performance is experienced intimately.

Their work, under the moniker the Median Movement, has been presented in NYC by Movement Research at the Judson Church, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series, the 92Y, the TANK, Triskelion Arts, MATA Interval at the Museum of the Moving Image, and Gowanus Art & Production, among others. In May of 2016, they developed for North, an evening-length interdisciplinary project, as recipients of Center for Performance Research’s inaugural Tech and Production residency. With support from CPR’s Mertz Gilmore Late Stage Production grant, the project premiered there in December 2016. Their yearlong 2013-14 artist residency at University Settlement culminated in sold-out performances of JACK Rally featuring 26 performers, some of whom participated in their accompanying community engagement project. They were invited as resident artists to Cultivate New Hampshire in the summer of 2014 where they held workshops and developed and shared work in collaboration with sound/visual artist Will Owen. In 2011, they received BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s Fall Space Grant, premiering a new piece after three months in residence. Burley and Springer will perform their duet You being Me being You and the Eye as part of New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival in June 2017. In addition, this August they will be Research Fellows at Jacob’s Pillow, presenting a new site-specific work at Inside/Out, and will spend a month in residence at the Marble House in Vermont this September.

Burley and Springer were honored to receive the 2015 Emerging Artist Award in Dance from their alma mater, the University of Michigan. They were DANCENOW’s 2011 Joe’s Pub Festival Encore Challenge winners and received DFA’s 24-Hour Challenge Silver Award (2009) for their screendance daylighting.  An Ostrich Proudly was featured on Hulu in TenduTV’s Essential Dance Film and their choreography appears in the feature-length film Frances Ha (2013).

They have created work as guest artists at the University of Michigan, Skidmore College, Bates College, Colby College, Goucher College, James Madison University, Ball State University, Ohio University, Oakland University, the Harkness Repertory Ensemble, Harrison High School, Cora Youth Company, and The Collective. In April 2017, they will stage their work on Minnesota’s Zenon Dance Company.

Burley and Springer have offered master classes in technique, partnering, composition and improvisation at Hunter College, Muhlenberg College, DeSales University, the University of Maryland, Grand Valley State University, Albion College, and Ballet Western Reserve, among others. They teach regular classes in NYC at Mark Morris Dance Center and Gibney Dance Center and currently as guest faculty at Purchase College. As members of Doug Varone and Dancers, both have taught and performed extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including Korea, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and Hungary. In addition, they have performed for artists/companies such as Nancy Bannon, Alexandra Beller, Daniel Charon, Shannon Gillen, Heidi Henderson, Shannon Hummel, Tami Stronach, Donnell Oakley, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.

Burley graduated from the University of Michigan with degrees in Dance and English.

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Tami Stronach creates imaginative, interdisciplinary works to uncover the many contradictions of the human condition. Heralded as a “choreographic doctor of the human condition” (Dance Insider) she creates “wickedly observant” (New York Times) dances about the search for connection, control, power, intimacy and meaning from a distinctly feminine perspective. Since the formation of her company in 2000, Tami Stronach Dance (TSD) has been commissioned and presented by more than 20 venues in NYC including Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, Dance Theater Workshop, Joyce Soho, PS122, Here Art Center, Dance New Amsterdam, La MaMa Etc., The Flea, and Movement Research at Judson Church, among others. TSD has toured to venues throughout the US and internationally to England, Australia, and Mexico with an upcoming project slated for fall 2017 in the Czech Republic. She also choreographs for musical theater, plays, fight choreography and will venture into stop motion choreography for an upcoming music video next month. Stronach recently co-founded Paper Canoe Company to create family programming that utilizes movement, theater, puppetry, and object manipulation.

Hilary Easton established her company in 1992, which has since performed at venues including The Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church (6 seasons), American Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop (4 seasons), Carnegie Hall, PS 122, The University of Texas/Austin, Central Park Summerstage, CCA-Santa Fe, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Roger Williams University, The Yard, Mount Tremper Arts, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Bennington College, and the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival. They have been honored with grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, The Manhattan Community Arts Fund, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, The Bossak-Heilbron Foundation, Meet the Composer, and the Maxine Greene Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts and Education. Upcoming performances include the premiere of “Radiator” at the Gibney Dance Center, May, 2017.

Hilary Easton has additionally choreographed for artists/companies including The Talking Band, Joffrey II, Headwaters Dance Company, and the Mettawee River Theater Company. She has choreographed for college and university students at Connecticut College, Princeton University, the University at Buffalo, Roger Williams University and the University of Montana/Missoula. Back in the day, she performed with companies including Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company and Kinematic.

Ms. Easton is on the faculty of the Juilliard School, where she teaches dance composition, and is the director of global K-12 dance programs for Juilliard Global Ventures. She is the education consultant for New York Philharmonic Schools and also consults with cultural organizations including the Houston Symphony and the Austin Symphony, VSA arts, Lincoln Center Education, and Carnegie Hall.