Dr. Adesola Akinleye

Adesola Akinleye, PhD, is a choreographer and artist-scholar. She is an Assistant Professor at Texas Woman’s University. She has been an Affiliate Researcher and Visiting Artists, MIT, and a Theatrum Mundi Fellow. She began her career with Dance Theatre of Harlem Workshop Ensemble (USA) later working in UK Companies such as Green Candle and Carol Straker Dance Company. She creates dance works ranging from live performance to dance films, installations, and texts (include monographs and edited anthologies).

Photo Credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou

Phil Chan

Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact, and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. He has held fellowships with NYU, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and is currently a fellow at Harvard University, Drexel University, and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post, and current serves on the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance. His latest choreography project, the “Ballet des Porcelaines,” premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2021 and will tour throughout 2022. He is a Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Dance at Carleton College in Fall 2022, and was just named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center.

Photo Credit: Eli Schmidt

Dr. Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel

Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel is Head of Research at the Royal Academy of Dance in London. Her writing on dance has been published in the South African Dance Journal, Treasures of Malta, the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance (2019), and the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet (2021). Her books include Princess Poutiatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta (2020), the first book on ballet histories in Malta, and the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet (2021). Kathrina has organized conferences in London, Paris and New York. For the RAD, she has steered conferences in Australia (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne), curates the Guest Lectures Series, and is Editor of Focus on Education. She is author of two webinar series on ballet as choreography across the 20th and 21st Centuries, and a webinar series on ballet pedagogy in Pioneers of the Royal Academy of Dance (2020). She is currently working on a new anthology on ballet pedagogy with Adesola Akinleye (author of British Black Dance, 2019; and Reclaiming Ballet, 2021).

Photo Credit: Lisa Attard

Jody Greene

Jody Greene came to UC Santa Cruz in 1998 and has served as Professor of Literature, Feminist Studies, and the History of Consciousness. Their research interests include seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature; non-dualist Western philosophy, especially the work of Spivak, Derrida, and Nancy; human rights and international law; queer studies; and the history of literary discourse and literary institutions. Their forthcoming collection, co-edited with Sharif Youssef, is The Hostile Takeover: Human Rights after Corporate Personhood. They are the recipient of the UCSC Humanities Division John Dizikes Teaching Award (2008), the Disability Resource Center Champion of Change Award (2018), and, twice, of the UCSC Academic Senate Excellence in Teaching Award (2001, 2014). In 2016, they were appointed the founding Director of the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL), and they now serve as UCSC’s first Associate Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. In 2021, they were appointed Special Advisor to the CP/EVC for Educational Equity and Academic Success.

Photo credit: Vernon Legakis

Theresa Ruth Howard

Theresa Ruth Howard is the founder and curator of Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet a digital platform that preserves, presents, and promotes the Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet. The online archive and educational resource houses a Roll Call of over 600 professional Black Ballet Dancers, an animated Timeline and the Constellation Project which was created in partnership with Williams College and Princeton University. Howard has lectured at: Barnard, Boston Conservatory at Berkley and Williams and Spelman Colleges in addition to Princeton University. Since 2015 she has become the leading voice in the work of Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism and organizational culture in Ballet and the arts. She works as an international Diversity Strategist for Arts with organizations including: The Royal Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and San Francisco Ballet. Her innovative philosophy and approach to the as made her a sought after speaker, consultant and coach to artistic, executive, and school directors and Board members of Ballet, Opera, academic institutions and service organizations including: The Royal Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera America, National Association of Teachers of Singing and American Guild of Musical Artist. [More at The Kennedy Center]

Photo Credit: Eva Harris

Lauren Huynh

Lauren Huynh, born and raised in Plano, Texas, trained at the Hathaway Academy of Ballet. She later attended Texas Christian University under the Nordan Fine Arts Scholarship to pursue a BFA in Ballet and Modern Dance and a minor in General Business, graduating Magna Cum Laude. At TCU, she performed works by August Bournonville, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Francesca Harper, Jennifer Archibald, among others. Additionally, Lauren was selected to travel to Kigali, Rwanda to further TCU’s relationship with the SEVOTA Peace Institute, an institute geared towards strengthening restorative justice through dance. To supplement her training, she was awarded full scholarship to attend programs at Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem as well as attended summers at BalletX, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and The Joffrey Ballet. Additionally, she joined Bruce Wood Dance while in her senior year at TCU. Lauren has performed at the Kennedy Center, Jacob’s Pillow International Inside/Out Dance Festival, and St. Louis’ Spring to Dance Festival. Lauren is currently in her second season as company artist with Collage Dance Collective where she has performed works by George Balanchine, Nacho Duato, Ulysses Dove, Amy Hall Garner, Christopher Huggins, Kevin Iega Jeff, Geoffrey Holder, Joshua Manculich, and Kevin Thomas.

Photo Credit: Raphael Baker

Jesse Stommel

Jesse Stommel is currently a faculty member in the Writing Program at University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab (2015-2021). He has a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. He is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy.

Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, digital studies, and composition. Jesse experiments relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He’s got a rascal pup, Emily, a clever cat, Loki, and a badass daughter, Hazel. He’s online at jessestommel.com and on Twitter @Jessifer. [More at jessestommel.com]

Photo Credit: Jesse Stommel