Who We Are

Megan Bridge is a dancer and dance maker based in Philadelphia. She currently co-directs FIDGET a platform for her collaborative work with Peter Price. She works and lives in a warehouse space in Kensington (the fidget space) with her husband two kids. READ MORE

Becca Weber is always asking questions. Most of the time, these investigate the places where the body meets the brain—where dance and Somatics intersect. She is a TA and MFA Candidate at Temple University, and holds a Master’s degree in Dance & Somatic Well-Being from the University of Central Lancashire. In addition to performing, she choreographs work in Philadelphia and surrounding areas as Somanaut Dance. She plays with bodies, ideas, space and words.   READ MORE

  Kalila Kingsford Smith, a Philadelphia native, is a performer with Dancefusion and Underground Dance Works, a teacher at Gwendolyn Bye Dance Center, a facilitator for Dance4Life Philly, and a choreographer in her spare time. A graduate of University of Michigan with a BFA in Dance and a BA in Cultural Anthropology, Kalila is curious about the ambiguity of experience. Guided by this interest, she completed a thesis entitled Body, Mind, and Frustration: Navigating Dance in the Context of Academia. READ MORE

Julie B. Johnson, a Baltimore native and longtime New York resident, is thrilled to call Philadelphia her new home.  She is an Artistic Director of Evolve Dance Inc., and a first-year PhD student in the Dance Program at Temple University, working on community interaction through choreography, education, performance, and collaboration.  READ MORE

  Patricia is a student of the body, through her Shiatsu practice, which is teaching her about wordless dialogue and how a human being can contain and compress time. She holds a BFA in Dance, magna cum laude from Temple University.A Recently, she danced in Le Grand Continental, Philly Fringe Festival 2012, with about 150 of her closest friends. READ MORE

Kristen Gillette (TD Intern and Writer) is a senior Magazine Journalism undergrad at Temple University looking to learn more about arts criticism and writing, driven by her new passion for dance. After taking dance lessons as a child, Kristen returned to ballet as an adult and blogs about her experience at Adultballerinaproject.com. READ MORE

Dance is a central part of her life and has evolved through many roles including elementary school teacher, researcher, choreographer, teaching artist, and arts advocate. She is a collaborator, interpreter, and engager with the deeply held belief that every person should have the opportunity to experience dance as a unique and integral embodied form of communication. Currently she serves as a Professor of Theatre and Dance and Director of a university-wide, Undergraduate Research & Experiential Learning Program at the University of Delaware. READ MORE

Whitney H. Weinstein arrived in Philadelphia in 2008 to expand on her small-town life in Lancaster, PA.  Upon completion of her BFA in dance at Temple University, Whitney continued to teach, choreograph, and perform with coEXIST Dance Company.  She is thrilled to be starting her first year writing for thINKingDANCE. READ MORE

Lisa Bardarson has danced with South Street Dance Company,  Dance Conduit and independent choreographers Philip Grosser and Jano Cohen, to name a few. In addition to her own choreography, Bardarson’s eclectic background includes in-depth study at the Laban Institute for Movement Studies and a fifteen year practice in bodywork.    READ MORE

Lynn Matluck Brooks has headed the Dance Program at Franklin & Marshall College since 1984. The recipient of several awards for her research work in dance history, Brooks has also written reviews for Dance Magazine, served as editor of Dance Research Journal and Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts, and published books and scholarly articles. An active choreographer, researcher, and teacher, she specializes in modern dance, baroque dance and notation, movement analysis, and dance history. READ MORE

Julie Diana is a principal dancer with Pennsylvania Ballet and a former principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet. She holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and has written for various publications including Playbill, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit. She is married to PA Ballet principal dancer Zachary Hench with whom she has two children. READ MORE

Through Ladybird, Anna embarks on international projects in organizational development, mutual understanding and research--most often in dance. Along with artists who make honest, ambitious work she remains curious about like-minds in far-flung places who are interested in the individual and the body. READ MORE

Meg Foley is a dance artist and the director of Moving Parts, a name ascribed to various dance- and performance-based actions that explore the materiality of dance and its relationship to form. To that end, she has recently recommitted to an improvisational solo practice. She loves to watch, reflect on, and talk about performance and is very excited to flex those muscles in a more structured way in the thINKingDANCE project. READ MORE

Ellen Gerdes currently teaches dance, its theory, and its education at Temple University, Drexel University, the Folk Arts Cultural Treasures School, and in Philadelphia’s public schools. Her work as a dance educator is deeply informed by her ethnographic research and written scholarship on dance of the Chinese Diaspora. She is a member of the Mendelssohn Club Choir and the Leah Stein Dance Company. READ MORE

Originally from Bucks County and currently a resident of Fishtown, Christina has spent the last eight years galavanting around Philly appreciating the generous and sincere art community here. Christina enjoys folding choreography, performance, movement education, and arts administration and advocacy into her artistic pursuits and curiosities. She is easily sidetracked from work (like writing her own bio) because practicing yoga, improvising in the kitchen (both with food and movement), watching snip-its of her favorite choreographer, Ivana Muller's, work on youtube, and discussing art and life with her lovely housemates lure her away. READ MORE

Beau Hancock is a dancer, choreographer, and educator who recently earned his MFA in Dance from Temple University, and is a co-founder and frequent collaborator with Ellie Goudie-Averill/Stone Depot Dance Lab. As a performer, Beau has had the pleasure to work with Ben Munisteri Dance Projects, Ellen Cornfield/ cornfield dance, and Douglas Dunn and Dancers, among others. READ MORE

Kirsten Kaschock is the author of two books of poetry: A Beautiful Name for a Girl and Unfathoms. Sleight--her novel about performance, artistic responsibility, and atrocity--is available from Coffee House Press. She is currently a doctoral fellow in dance at Temple University. READ MORE

Lisa began writing to chronicle teaching Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy to the Paris Opera Ballet in 2003. Since then her articles and essays have been published in Dance Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Dance Advance Archive and many more. Her weblogs are Decoy Among the Swans and Writing My Dancing Life. READ MORE

Kilian Kröll,Certified Executive Coach, dancer, published writer and President of Third Culture Coach, earned a B.A. in English from Haverford College and an M.A. in Cultural Studies from the University of East London. Kilian grew up in a bilingual family of classical musicians in Germany, Austria and the U.S. He teaches creative executives how to thrive where cultural and vocational worlds intersect. READ MORE

Amelia has worked in arts administration for the past five years, and sees live dance as often as possible.  She has a background in creative and academic writing.  Thinking about dance critically and exploring journalistic writing will be an adventure. READ MORE

Carolyn is an anthropologist, writer and dancer. She is the author of Tango Nuevo (University Press of Florida, 2012), part memoir and part ethnographic study of contemporary Argentine tango. Carolyn teaches courses in anthropology and performance studies at Bryn Mawr College. READ MORE

Peter Price is a composer, digital artist, and media theorist. He co-directs thefidget space in Philadelphia, a research laboratory for new forms of art, performance, and media. He holds a PhD from the European Graduate School in Switzerland. READ MORE

Jim Rutter has covered dance and theatre in Philadelphia since 2005, where his work has appeared in Broad Street Review, the Philadelphia Inquirer and… READ MORE

Debbie Shapiro helps artists and inspiring people get their work done, and currently serves as a consultant for various small companies around town. Her fascination with dance and culture has traveled with her through the years and to the various places she has called home including New York, Paris, Israel, and Philadelphia. She holds an MS in Arts Administration from Drexel University. READ MORE

Jonathan Stein’s day job is general counsel at Community Legal Services Inc. where since 1968, he has pursued anti-poverty lawyering. Taking modern dance and contact improvisation since the 1970s, his performances since 1989 include Headlong Dance Theater's Cell  and Jerome Bel’s The Show Must Go On. He also writes dance and theater reviews for BroadStreetReview.com READ MORE

R. Eric Thomas is a playwright, teaching artist and storyteller. His solo show, "Will You Accept This Friend Request?" premieres in November as part of the First Person Festival. READ MORE

Laura Vriend is a doctoral candidate in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside currently working on her dissertation project, which examines theories of space in relation to the site-based work of several Philadelphia area choreographers. When she is not writing her dissertation, Laura can be found teaching dance composition at Bryn Mawr College or making dances in her living room, kitchen, shower and dreams. READ MORE

Kariamu Welsh is a Professor of dance at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Kariamu is the artistic director of Kariamu & Co.: Traditions and she is the founding artistic director of the National Dance Company of Zimbabwe. READ MORE

Annie Wilson is a local person who wears several different hats in the realms of dancing, performing, embodiment, and writing. She is currently interested in the audience-performer relationship and the boundaries of the self. She last wrote professionally for Philly Fiction 2. READ MORE