Symposium Presenters and Performers
Danté Brown is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Theater and Dance Department at Amherst College. He began his dance training at Wesleyan University, which led him to The Ohio State University to receive his MFA in Choreography. As a performer, Danté has worked with artists such as Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Christal Brown, David Dorfman, Nicole Stanton, Noa Zuk and at the Dance Exchange. Since its founding in 2010, Dante Brown|Warehouse Dance has toured nationally at venues such as Bates Dance Festival (ME), Dance Complex (MA), Dance Gallery Festival (NY & TX), Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, and Sam Houston State University (TX). Danté has held collegiate positions as an Adjunct Professor at CUNY Westchester Community College, Lecturer in Dance at Bates College, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. Most recently, he was awarded the Schwartz Center for Performing Artists Fellowship at Emory University.
Dr. Marcia Heard is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, historian, and co-author of “African Dance in New York City” in DeFrantz, Thomas, ed. Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002). In 1998, Marcia embarked upon her first community service program, "Arts in the Park," a program that provided free concerts to Newark and the surrounding communities. Marcia is an alumnus of the Neighborhood Leadership Initiative, Class of 2003. With the entire physical education department, she taught the entire school a step routine as a part of a unit on the Olympics. Marcia is a member of the NDEO, NJDEO, NJREA, Past-Senior Representative of the MEA, and the recipient of several grants, awards, certificates and fellowships. Retired in February of 2017, Marcia has immersed herself in a long awaited passion: the founding of the Ivy Hill Vailsburg Center for Arts, Culture and Community Activism in the summer of 2016. The non-profit is emerging as a much needed oasis of arts education, cultural experiences and activism in the community.
Alvin Rangel has enjoyed an international career as a performer, choreographer, educator and artist/scholar. He began his professional career performing ballet and jazz in his native Puerto Rico and has performed at The Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center and American Dance Festival, among others. Rangel is an Associate Professor of Dance at California State University-Fullerton and is a guest artist with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) and Charles O. Anderson’s Dance Theatre X. He is the director of In-Version Dance Project and his choreography explores the essence of what connects us as humans. During the 2011-12 season Alvin was awarded Best Dancer by Austin Critic’s Table and his Tango Vesre [Inverted Tango] was nominated for Best Short Work. Tango Vesre received the Fresh Fruit Festival’s 2013 Fruit of Distinction Award for outstanding work in Dance and in 2015 Tango Vesre was featured in the international Kuandu Arts Festival hosted by Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. For nearly a decade, Alvin performed and traveled across the globe with the internationally acclaimed Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC). There, he originated roles and worked with Bill T. Jones, Bebe Miller, Dwight Rhoden, Donald McKayle, Eleo Pomare, Ronald K. Brown, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Doug Varone, Debbie Blunden-Diggs and Kevin Ward. He participated in the PBS documentary Free to Dance and the American Dance Festival’s Dancing in the Light. In 2001 he received the Josie Award for Best Male Concert Dancer. In 2016, he performed with DCDC in Donald McKayle’s masterpiece, Rainbow “Round My Shoulder, as part of the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance spring season at the Lincoln Center. This performance received the coveted Bessie Award : 2016 New York Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Revival.
Abdel Salaam is the Executive Artistic Director of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, founded in 1981, and Artistic Director of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s DanceAfrica, originally founded by Baba Chuck Davis in 1977. Abdel is a critically acclaimed director and choreographer and has received numerous awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New England Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Foundation for the Arts, The New York State Council for Arts, The National Council for Arts and Culture, and Herbert H. Lehman College. Abdel and his company are the recipients of the 2017 Bessie NY Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Production and the 2013 Audelco Award for Dance Company of the Year. He has served as a choreographer and/or director for productions including the New York Shakespeare Festival, The Billie Holiday Theater, The Apollo Theater, The Winter Solstice at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, The New York Musical Theater Festival, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. His theater, film and television credits include: “Measure for Measure” at New York Shakespeare Festival; “Pecong” at Newark Symphony Hall; “Ebony Magic: The Life and Legend of Marie Laveau” at Aronow Theater; and the PBS documentary “Free to Dance.” Abdel has created ballets for Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco), Joan Miller Chamber Arts/ Dance Players, The Chuck Davis Dance Company, Union Dance Theater (London), Ballet Isleños (Puerto Rico), Muntu Dance Theater, and The African American Dance Ensemble. He has served on the faculties of the American Dance Festivals in the United States and Seoul, Korea, Herbert H. Lehman College, and The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, and is the creator of the Kwanzaa Regeneration Night Celebration in Harlem.
Peggy and Murray Schwartz are are co-authors of "The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus” which was published by Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011. A paperback edition is now available.
Peggy Schwartz’s career spans more than forty years. She developed a rhythm and movement program for the Pilot Program for Head Start in Berkeley, California in the 1960s and was the founding Chairperson of the Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts Dance Department in the 1970s). She joined the Five College Dance Department first at Hampshire College (1983) and then the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1991). She served as Chair of the FCDD and Director of the Dance Program at UMass Amherst and was the founder and artistic director of the Sankofa Dance Project: Celebrating African Roots in American Dance. Peggy has published, lectured, conducted workshops and consulted in dance education, curriculum design, national standards in arts education, and the work of Pearl Primus, nationally and internationally. A founding member and board member of NDEO and Founding Associate Editor of the JODE, she served as the National Representative to daCi and was a guest artist at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Israel, the Claremont Colleges and New York State Summer School of the Arts. In October 2013, Peggy received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Dance from the National Dance Education Organization.
For over forty years, Murray Schwartz has taught Shakespeare, psychoanalysis and Holocaust literature. His writing spans a wide range of interdisciplinary interests and includes essays on Shakespeare’s last plays, the work of Erik Erikson, applied psychoanalysis, modern poetry and trauma studies. He has also co-edited several anthologies, including Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays (1980), Memory and Desire: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Aging (1985). He is President of the PsyArt Foundation and edits the online journal, PsyArt (www.psyartjournal.com). Murray was Dean of the Colleges at SUNY/Buffalo (1979-83), Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at UMass Amherst (1983-91), Provost of the Claremont Graduate University (1991-97) and Academic Vice President at Emerson College (1997-99). He is a scholar member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and has participated in studies of the effects of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the writing of psychoanalytic history. Currently, he teaches at Emerson College in Boston. In October 2013, Murray lectured on the Primus biography and the life of Shakespeare in Shanghai at the international conference, “Portraiture of Chinese Lives: Life Writing and the Current Trend.”
