Duke UniversityDance Program

ACROSS THE THRESHOLD:  CREATIVITY, BEING & HEALING SYMPOSIUM
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Duke University East Campus.

Featured Presenter:
Ciane Fernandes is a tenured Professor in the Performing Arts Graduate Program at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil and an associate researcher at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS), New York. In The United States, she danced with many different companies as well as independent projects and is the author of Pina Bausch and The Wuppertal Dance Theater: The Aesthetics of Repetition and Transformation and The Moving Body: The Laban/Bartenieff System in Performing Arts Education and Research.  Prof. Fernandes participation in the Symposium is made possible with support from the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University.

Presenters:
Richenel “Muz” Ansano has done energy work for three decades alongside his cultural work, used empathic-intuitive access and listening deeply to stories to help people go through life's transformative challenges. He has led programs in alternative and complementary medical education for health care professionals and others. Muz has honed his intuitive practice through years of the study of cultures ancient and modern, working with Western Medicine practitioners bringing alternative perspectives to their practices and through his own healing.

Charlotte native Beverly Botsford is a cross-cultural percussionist and educator.  She has been a member of Chuck Davis’ African American Dance Ensemble (1983-96), served on the faculty of the American Dance Festival Faculty (1985-99), and has been an arts educator since 1978.  Beverly is currently on the touring/residency rosters for the N.C. Arts Council, and the S.C. Arts Commission and is a member of Alternate ROOTS (Regional Organization of Theaters South), supporting original, community-based art that raises social consciousness.
 
Larry Burk, MD, is a member of Oriental Health Solutions, LLC, and President of Healing Imager, Inc. He is a musculoskeletal teleradiologist and integrative physician specializing in Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), medical acupuncture and hypnosis.

As a Gu Zheng soloist and a master herself, Jennifer Chang is in demand around world as teacher and performer, including as a featured artist for the emperor of Japan and the former president Bill Clinton. Since 2004, Ms. Chang has been collaborated with Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra for several concert series including “Voices of Asia and the Pacific”, “Creatures – Scenes & Fairytales,” “Around the World,” “China Dream – Tradition & Technology.”

Barbara-Lynn Freed has 20 years Aromatherapy experience and is the owner of AromatherapyCelebrations.com, where she creates and sells a fine line of aromatherapy products.  She is also the Founder and Facilitator of the Center for Transformational Studies, where she helps people reconnect with themselves and nature through her Alliance of Divine Love ministry, Awakening the Heart! Spiritual Healing, Web of Life Seminars, and Transformational Astrology readings.

Susan A. Gaylord, Ph.D. is Director of the Program on Integrative Medicine and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, where, since 1998, she has led the development of research, education, and clinical initiatives in complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine.  Research interests include homeopathy, mindfulness, craniosacral therapy and acupuncture; the role of health beliefs in determining care pathways; cancer therapeutics; geriatrics; and women’s health issues.

Louis Gervais (MFA) creates transcendent dance rituals, performances and workshops in Seattle, Washington.  Louis teaches contact improvisation, yoga and chakra balancing, which is a creative healing process based on the chakra system.  Louis also presents spiritually metaphoric dance work as a solo artist and choreographer.

Alyssa Hinton is mixed media painter and collage artist. She earned her BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after studying art extensively in both China and France. Her composite narratives explore the folklore and history surrounding her southeastern Native American roots. These unique images delve into the soul of the past, portraying aspects of traditional spirituality while commenting on the cultural displacement of native peoples.

Keval Kaur Khalsa, Director of the Dance Program at Duke University, is also the Co-Artistic Director of 2 Near The Edge Dance Company, for which she has choreographed over a dozen works, often in collaboration with Co-Artistic Director L.D. Burris.  A certified Kundalini Yoga instructor, Ms. Khalsa helped implement the first certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training course in NC, and currently assists with a Teacher Training course in Detroit, MI.

Africa, Italy, Japan, Brazil are known throughout the world for their beauty and exoticism, but for Viviane Kraus they are heritage.  Born and raised in Brazil, she was exposed to multiple facets of artistic expression and found her calling in the manipulation of physical design and color.  Training under some of the most renowned designers of our time, Viviane learned to tap into her own cultural history in order to share her love for colors and her appreciation for eclectic expression through innovation and design.

Violinist Hsiao-mei Ku is a Professor in Duke University's Department of Music and a member of the Ciompi Quartet, bringing the diversity of cultural offerings to the Duke community and beyond. She made her début at age seven in her native China, and eventually continued her studies in the United States at Indiana University’s School of Music, where she earned a Master of Music degree with Distinction and was awarded a Performer's Certificate.

Natalie Marrone, Artistic Director of The Dance Cure, recently moved to North Carolina from Ohio where she received her MFA in choreography from Ohio State University.  Since its inception in 1998, The Dance Cure has premiered four evenings of work based on the fusion of southern Italian vernacular dance/rituals and contemporary dance. Ms. Marrone is currently on the Dance faculty at Elon University, and has also served on the faculties of Ohio State University, Western Michigan University, Ohio Wesleyan University and Meredith College.

Reared among the three cultures of Brazil, Mexico and the U.S., Poranguí McGrew was steeped in various traditional forms of music, healing and ceremony since birth.  Drawing from his cross-cultural background and ethnomusicology training at Duke University, Poranguí has over twelve years of international work experience as an artist, educator, filmmaker, consultant and therapist, utilizing the healing properties of sound and movement to foster our individual and collective well being.

Originally from Brazil, Vera Moura is on the faculty of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation’s Program on Integrative Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  After becoming aware of the limitations of psycho pharmacotherapy, and realizing the importance of the spiritual dimension of healthcare, she completed the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Professional Certification Program and uses that information, combined with ancient healing methods derived from various indigenous cultures including Andean (Kichwa), African, Brazilian and Native American, in her practice.

Jon Seskevich is a nurse clinician in one of the country's foremost medical centers. Jon has given over 300 presentations, lectures, workshops and classes that teach stress reduction, mind-body, and complementary therapies to hospital patients, health care professionals, community and church groups, and high-school and college students. He is founder and president of the Flying Monkey Programs, which sponsors mind-body-spirit educational workshops and seminars in North Carolina.

Heather Williams is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a former attorney. She was a 2007-08 Fellow at the National Humanities Center. This collection of her quilts spans her professional career and reflects both her intellectual and artistic interests. Employing a variety of textiles and techniques, Williams's handmade quilts include both abstract and narrative subjects, many of them related to the history of African Americans in the South.

Ken Wilson is a professor in Duke's Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and the organizer of the web site spiritofmedicine.com.  He is also interested in ancient healing traditions.  For the last 30 years he has been learning and playing the ngoma (drum) tradition of Congo.  Ngoma simply means drum but the suffix *goma is used widely in African in words that refer to dance rituals for trance and healing.

Dancer/choreographer/video artist Andrea E. Woods is on the dance faculty at Duke University.  She is artistic director of SOULOWORKS/Andrea E. Woods & Dancers and graduated magna cum laude from Adelphi University and is a former dancer and rehearsal director of Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Co. (1989-1995). She completed her MFA in dance technology at The Ohio State University and her MAH in Caribbean Cultural Studies from SUNY Buffalo. While having a generous world-view, her dances centralize family, and African American history and culture.  Woods calls her dances SOULOWORKS because they are works from the heart, works from the Soul.