May 5, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Wendy Woodson, a professor of theater and dance at Amherst College, has been selected as a Senior Fulbright Scholar for the 2006-07 academic year. Woodson will be an artist-in-residence at the Victoria College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne in Australia in the spring 2007 semester. Woodson will create new performance and video work that continues her interest in stories and images of reconciliation and meditation, and in experimental interactions between live performance and digital technologies.

A member of the Amherst faculty since 1987, Woodson is also the founder and artistic director of Present Company, a non-profit interdisciplinary touring ensemble. She has created 80 works for stage and video that have been performed throughout the U.S. and in Europe, in such venues as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Emerson Majestic Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, Wolf Trap and the DeCordova Museum. She has received numerous awards for her work, including fellowships and grants in choreography, playwriting and video from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the D.C. Commission on Arts & Humanities and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Consortium, among others. She earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the George Washington University, and trained in theater and dance with Erick Hawkins, Martha Graham, Meredith Monk, Twyla Tharp and many others.

Fulbright Senior Scholar awards are given by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission to American citizens to engage in four to six months of research or teaching at an Australian institution. Since 1949, the commission has worked to“to further mutual understanding between the people of Australia and the United States through educational and cultural exchange.”

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