- I design lights for dance and theater in many places and help save bats whenever I can.
- Movement is my language of origin and the foundation for all of my work. Through movement I have enjoyed exploring words, text, and visual imagery and how to synthesize these elements into a coherent performance whole. Improvisation is a fundamental process for me in creating work and teaching. Both my performance work and teaching seek to find and draw out the relationships between the personal, the political and the spiritual. For the past ten years I have been the Artistic Director of the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, which has performed regionally and abroad as well as doing residences in schools in the area. The courses that I teach are process-oriented and range from an introduction to performance techniques to exploring human rights issues through performance.
- My guiding principle in my work as a dance/theater artist, as well as in my approach to teaching, is that dance and theater are fundamentally an investigation of the human spirit. We are complex and wonderful creatures and the performing arts enable us to examine, celebrate and bemoan all of what and who we are. In my own solo work I have been investigating the journeys of women in various times and cultures, both real and fictional, from Eve to a nineteenth-century astronomer to myself. I am interested in how the confluence of dance and theater can more deeply express the personal, the political, and the spiritual. In addition I have worked as a dancer, actress, choreographer, Off and Off-Off Broadway, as well as around the U.S. and Europe.
- I received my BA in Government from Harvard, a Master's in Dramatic Arts from UC Berkely, and a PH. D. in Performance Studies from NYU. I have been teaching at Trinity since 1985. I am a playwright, director, dramaturg, and scholar. In 1998 my play "Malcolm's Call" had a 16 week run and received an Equity showcase production at Syncronicity Space in SoHo, NYC. I adapted the six Cuchulain plays by William Butler Yeats into a single evening piece entitled "Sword Against the Sea", and have received permission from the Yeats family for worldwide production and publication. I served as Associate Scholar and Resident Dramaturg at the Hartford Stage Company from 1994-1998. My book "The Simple Stage" was published by Greenwood Press in 1992.
- Seeing and understanding the unspoken messages the body speaks continuously reinforces my belief that movement is essential to life. The years I have spent fine- tuning my technical skill as a dancer/performer has provided me with extensive information regarding dance/movement language and non-verbal communication. The Elements of Movement class that I teach gives non-Theater/Dance students an opportunity to investigate and experience their own and other movement styles. Education through Movement gives students the opportunity to explore the benefits and possibilities that movement and the creative arts offer to the learning process incorporating first-hand experience in a community school classroom with professional teaching/artists.
- I was a soloist with Boston Ballet from 1989-1997. In 1990 I attended the Vaganova Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia where luminaries such as Anna Pavlova, Baryshnikov, and Balanchine also received their training. I performed throughout the United Sates and Europe. Some highlights of my career as a dancer include creating new work with Twyla Tharp and dancing in all three of Tchaikovsky's great ballets, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and of course The Nutcracker.
- My serial performance works include My Father And The Wars, Indian Blood, and Sally's Rape which represent the history of my family in this country from as far back as they can imagine these stories. They are a metaphor of an African American family surviving against racism. I am a veteran of New York theater and continue to explore the actor's art inside and outside of the theater. I attempt to deal with what I consider to be an organic relationship between charged content and experimental form - work that may be personal, political, educational and beautiful.
- What excites me the most is the student who has the compulsion to create innovative art and the intellectual resources to make that art meaningful. I teach Dance History, Performance Theory, and Women in the Arts, and feel that these courses seek to develop in students a passion for what art has to offer as well as a critical understanding of art as a dynamic force in culture and history. My own scholarship, which is primarily focused on the modern dance choreographer Martha Graham, is an examination of Graham's post-war choreographies in light of specific cultural and ideological concerns of that time.
- I am a graduate of Trinity College and presently direct my own studio in the Hartford area. I have returned to Trinity as faculty to teach Dance Technique and Body Practice. From my own performing I have found that strong technique is an invaluable tool to open students to the multitude of movement possibilities. I enjoy guiding students toward realizing how their technical strengths can lead them to artistic expression and freedom.
- I was born in Guinea, West Africa and grew up in the nation's capital of Conakry. As a boy I was recruited to participate in nationally sponsored dance competitions, which my troupe won consistently. I began teaching at 16 years of age and in 1986 I joined Les Merveilles D'Afrique In 1989 I left to join Les Ballets Africans, Guinea's premiere national dance company. Until leaving Guinea in 1994 I was also principal dancer, percussionist and director of technique for Merveille. I have toured and taught throughout Africa, Europe, Latin America and the US. Currently, I am the Artistic Director of my company Fotoba in Connecticut, and I perform and teach at multiple schools and community venues.