National Dance Project/Partners: Hub Sites & Advisors
Hub Sites
The term Hub Site has been given to 10 individuals from presenting organizations around the country who have extensive knowledge of the dance community and have taken a leadership role in developing new dance work within their communities. Hub Sites meet as a committee three times a year, together with National Dance Project Advisors, to review proposals, make funding recommendations, and discuss program policy. Selected by a committee, Hub Sites serve for two-year terms and may be re-appointed. Hub Sites also advise artists in final proposal preparation, consult in tour development, present work when possible, and occasionally serve as Presenter Partners in the development of dance projects.
Current NDP Hub Sites:
Celesta Billeci UC Santa Barbara Arts and Lectures (Santa Barbara, CA)
Ed Noonan
Executive Director Myrna Loy Center (Helena, MT)
Ed Noonan is Executive Director of the Myrna Loy Center. The Myrna Loy Center is one of the country’s leading rural arts organization. Ed has been Executive Director for eight years and has produced several major national projects including “Geyser Land” (2003) and Project Bandaloop’s PORTAL (2005). The Myrna Loy Center was recognized for it current work by being one of 17 national organizations receiving the Doris Duke Mid-size Presenting Organization 4-year Grant. He is currently serving the fourth year of a five-year term on the National Dance Project hub site panel. He is also an adjunct professor of Film, Communication, and Performing Arts at Carroll College, where he has worked for 20 years. He is a playwright. Warren Street House, a play dealing with a group home for the developmentally disabled, was performed off-Broadway at the Harold Clurman Theater in 1994. His play Taking History won him the Montana Fellowship for the Arts. Montana Wilderness won the Matthew G Hansen Endowment in 2001. In 1998, his poetry was published in a book titled Noisy Soil: Selected Poems from the Collected Works 1980-1998. He has also published a Catholic children’s novel, Good St. Dominic’s Cat. Ed was a Christian Brother from 1967 until 1980 and taught at high schools in Chicago and East Los Angeles. He has his BA in Speech (Theater) Lewis University and his MA in Speech (Theater) from Ball State University.
Anna Glass
Managing Director 651 Arts (Brooklyn, NY)
Anna Glass has been involved in the performing arts as both an artist and arts administrator for over ten years. Anna is currently the Managing Director of 651 ARTS, a presenting/producing arts organization dedicated to celebrating the breadth of the African Diaspora. Her professional affiliations include the Editorial Board for Inside Arts magazine, National Resource Council for the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and founding member of the Next Generation of Arts Administrators (NGAA). After receiving her Jurist Doctorate from the University of Dayton School of Law, Anna became the Artist Representative for the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) - a company she performed with for three years (DCDC2). In 2003, Anna was named a Vilar Fellow participating in the John F. Kennedy Center's Vilar Fellowship for Arts Management. She is also a licensed attorney in the State of New York.
Michael Reed Director of Cultural Participation Arizona State University Public Events (Tempe, AZ)
Michael Reed, Senior Director of Cultural Participation and Programming at Arizona State University Public Events, has worked with ASU Public Events since retiring from a successful international dance career in fall 1995. Several of Mr. Reed's education and cultural participation programs have been awarded and recognized for their excellence by Arizona organizations including the Arizona Department of Commerce, 100 Black Men of Phoenix, and the Phoenix Area Asian Chamber of Commerce.
Walter Jaffe
Co-Founder White Bird (Portland, OR)
Walter Jaffe (Ph.D., German Literature, Yale, 1979) is Co-Founder of White Bird, a dance presenting organization in Portland, Oregon now celebrating its tenth anniversary. He is a former publisher and former board member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. A year after moving to Portland from New York City in June 1996, Walter and his partner Paul King founded White Bird to bring the best local, national and international dance companies to the city. White Bird has presented 97 dance companies to date. White Bird has co-commissioned 23 important dance works, including Trisha Brown’s Geometry of Quiet, Stephen Petronio’s Strange Attractors, and Bill T. Jones’ You Walk? Jaffe is Treasurer/Secretary of the White Bird Board. He is currently a member of the board of the Friends of the Performing Arts Center and the Advisory Board of Portland State University’s School of Fine and Performing Arts. He is a former board member of the Western Arts Alliance (WAA) and is a member of Dance/USA, Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), California Presenters and International Society of Performing Arts (ISPA), where he serves as Co-Curator of the semi-annual Pitch Session with Paul King.
Phil Reynolds
Executive Director The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Phil Reynolds began his tenure as Executive Director of The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago in 1998. The Dance Center is Chicago’s leading presenter of contemporary dance. Prior to moving to Chicago, he directed Catamount Film and Arts Company, an exemplary multi-disciplinary presenter and local arts agency in northeastern Vermont. Mr. Reynolds began his professional career at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He was also employed in New York as Executive Director of the Nikolais and Murray Louis Foundation for Dance. Phil Reynolds has served on funding panels for the The Japan Foundation, Dance Advance - a program of the Pew Charitable Trusts, Illinois Arts Council, Vermont Arts Council, Connecticut Arts Commission, and Chamber Music America. Mr. Reynolds received a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA in Arts Management from Columbia University. Phil is the father of eleven-year-old Sam Reynolds.
Nunally Kersh
Producer
Spoleto Festival (Charleston, SC)
Nunally Kersh has served as Producer of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC since 1995 where she produces and presents a wide range of national and international work each season. Prior to joining the Spoleto Festival, she was Associate Producer for the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City.
Arts experience prior to working with Lincoln Center included serving as Director of Public Relations for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival as well as serving as an independent consultant for a number of national and international projects.
Ms. Kersh has also worked on special projects with a variety of New York-based cultural institutions including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, PS 122 and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Ms. Kersh regularly serves on various national and state funding panels and advisory committees. Ms. Kersh received a BA in international relations from L’Universite d’Aix en Provence and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Pamela Tatge
Executive Director Center for the Arts (Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT)
Pamela Tatge is currently the Director of the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she oversees programming in an arts complex that includes a theater, a cinema, two music halls, and a contemporary art gallery. Offerings include the Crowell Concert Series, the Breaking Ground Dance Series and Outside the Box, a series of theater performances and discussions. She has also spearheaded the development of the University’s Green Street Arts Center, a 12,000 square foot community arts center established to serve as an anchor to revitalization efforts in Middletown’s North End. The Center opened in January of 2005.
Angela Mattox
Performing Arts Curator Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA)
Angela Mattox is Performing Arts Curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts - San Francisco’s leading multidisciplinary contemporary art center that presents bold and innovative performance firmly grounded in exploring the complex issues of our times. In 2003, Angela relocated to the Bay Area from New York to join the curatorial team at YBCA and was instrumental in revitalizing the performing arts program. From 1999–2003, she served as Program Coordinator at Arts International, a New York based organization dedicated to the development and support of global cultural interchange in the arts. In this capacity, she coordinated such national grant programs as the Artists Exploration Fund, the California Presenters Initiative, and The Fund for US Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions. She received her BA degree through the World Arts and Cultures program of UCLA.
Tim Van Leer
Executive Director Lied Center of Kansas (The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS)
Tim Van Leer is Executive Director of the Lied Center of Kansas at the University of Kansas. Serving the university and audiences throughout the state, the Lied Center's core value is that the arts are essential to the human experience. Tim has been involved in public events facility management and presenting the performing arts since 1968. He is a Past President of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, has held leadership positions with statewide performing arts service organizations and served the regional arts service organizations. Tim was a member of the National Task Force on Presenting and Touring the Performing Arts and is a recipient of Arts Presenter’s Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award for his leadership and service to the field.
Joan Gray
President Muntu Dance Theatre (Chicago, IL)
Joan Gray is the President of Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago. She has been with Muntu since 1977 when she joined as a principal dancer. Muntu is one of the leading African dance companies in the country; and will be the first to build its own home from the ground up when its new performing arts center is completed in 2009. The Company’s repertoire consists of traditional dances from various countries, as well as more contemporary work that reflect the diverse cultures of people of African descent around the world. Joan has been in her present capacity since 1986. She is active in the local and national dance community, having served as past president of the Chicago Dance Coalition, as a past treasurer for Dance USA, and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Blacks in Dance. Joan has served on numerous policy and review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and several state arts agencies and foundations around the country. She is a recipient of the Sidney R. Yates Award presented by the Illinois Arts Alliance and the Paul Robeson Award presented by the African American Arts Alliance. In 2002, Ms. Gray was awarded a fellowship to the Executive Program for Non-profit Leaders in the Arts at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Last year, she was honoured by the Chicago Defender as one of Chicago’s 50 Women of Excellence.
Sixto Wagan
Co-Director Diverseworks (Houston, TX)
Sixto Wagan is the Co-Executive Director/Performing Arts Curator for DiverseWorks Artspace. During his tenure he has co-commissioned works from Tere O’Connor, Aaron Landsman, Michelle Ellsworth, Marty Pottenger, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez and Elia Arce. Wagan has focused much attention on the development and support for local artists, expanding the Houston Performing Arts Residency Program and created other forums for the creation and support of new work by promising local artists.
Advisors
Advisors are leaders from the dance field that include dancers, choreographers, managers, and presenters. The Advisors are selected by NEFA staff with input from Advisors themselves. The advisory committee is designed to provide guidance and direction to NDP as a whole, and to oversee and facilitate the process by which NDP supports the development and distribution of dance work.
Current NDP Advisors:
Alicia B. Adams
Vice President International Programming and Dance (The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.)
Alicia B. Adams is the Vice President of International Programming and Dance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She joined the Kennedy Center in 1992, first serving as Special Assistant to the Chairman, James Wolfensohn. For the past decade, Adams’ role at the Center has been producing and presenting in the international arena.
In addition to major international festivals, Adams also curates the Center’s Contemporary Dance Series and the Etcetera Series.
She has worked in the field of arts management in New York City for institutions including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Belafonte Enterprises, Inc., City Center Theater, Harlem School of the Arts and International Production Associates.
Carla Peterson
Artistic Director
Dance Theater Workshop (New York, NY)
Carla Peterson is Artistic Director of Dance Theater Workshop, since fall, 2006. She is responsible for leading the institution’s overall artistic vision and designing programming that advances dance and live performance in New York City and worldwide. From 2002-‘06, she served as the Executive Director of Movement Research (MR); while there, she received a 2005 New York Dance and Performance Award a.k.a. The Bessies in recognition of her leadership in directing MR. From 1996 – 2006, she also worked as a writer, project manager, project development advisor and fundraiser for independent artists, such as Tere O’Connor, Jennifer Monson, and Susan Rethorst, and for arts organizations, such as the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, SURDNA Foundation, Association for Performing Arts Presenters, National Performance Network, and National Association of Artists’ Organizations. From 1993–‘96, Ms. Peterson was Director of Inter/National Projects at Dance Theater Workshop. From 1988–‘93, she was Assistant Director of Performing Arts at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Ms. Peterson received her M.F.A. from The Ohio State University in 1983.
Ella Baff
Executive Director Jacob's Pillow (Becket, MA)
Ella Baff is Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow, an international dance festival, professional school, archives and National Historic Landmark located in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. She is from New York City and studied classical music and dance. Some of her past positions have included Program Director at Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, which commissioned and presented work in all the arts from around the world, and Project Director for WNET public television in New York for America Dancing. She has been a consultant for many foundations, government, and not-for-profit organizations and has been invited by U.S. and international government agencies and arts organizations to be a speaker and panelist. She is currently on the Boards of MASS MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA) and ISPA (the International Society for the Performing Arts, NY). Baff has received several awards, including the William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Zane Booker
Zane Booker has been a member of the White Oak Dance Project, Ballets des Monte Carlo, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Chamber Dance Project, and Philadanco. He has performed as a guest artist with companies including the Opera de Monte Carlo and Jeanne Ruddy Dance.
Mr. Booker has worked with Ann Reinking and toured with Fosse directed by Debra McWaters. Mr Booker is a
2004 PCA Fellowship recipient. He is a faculty member at Howard university and University of the Arts. In
2006 he founded The Smoke, lilies and Jade Arts Initiative, a socially conscious multi-media dance theater company that promotes HIV/AIDS awareness.
