2007-08 Dance Critics Association Board of Directors

Robert Abrams joined the DCA Board in 2006. He reviews dance performances as well as social dancing for ExploreDance.com, of which he is also the publisher and editor. His dance-related articles have also included such topics as still photography ballets featuring photographs of dancers from the New York City Ballet. Robert has been studying dance for more than ten years and currently takes lessons in West Coast Swing. He competed in ballroom on the pro-am level. Robert has a Ph.D. in Education from Cornell University and works for Care for the Homeless. He is an expert in the knowledge representation technique known as concept mapping. Some of his recent projects include the children's books "Sweet Dreams, My Dance Critics" and "Dance Your Verbs - a board book about dance and literacy for toddlers", and the modernization of the Proceedings of the conferences on Research on Misconceptions in Science and Mathematics.

Tom Borek originally began his career as a dancer and choreographer in San Francisco and became inspired to write about dance, which he did for Dance News, and aired his views over KPFA radio. In New York he studied dance at the Merce Cunningham Studio and the Martha Graham School, and performed with choreographers at the early Dance Theater Workshop. As a dance commentator Borek wrote for a number of publications in New York and was the Et Alia critic on WBAI radio covering theater, books, art,and multi-media events. Founder and editor of Eddy, the magazine published articles and reviews on dance and other arts. Borek also writes poetry and has had his poems published. He has taught dance criticism and history and served as a post-performance moderator. Borek has given presentations at conferences: on dance criticism at the International Conference - Dance and Its Audience; global art in dance at the Greenmill World Dance conference in Melbourne, Australia; and, more recently, dance in the current global context at the World Dance Alliance/Dance Critics Association conference, July 2010, in New York. He has also taught writing on dance at the Wesleyan University summer graduate liberal arts program and served as a thesis advisor. Borek has been executive director of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, Rosalind Newman and Dancers, and Dance HK/NY. He is an affiliate at the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton University.

Robert Johnson is staff dance critic for The Star-Ledger in Newark, NJ; and reviews editor for Pointe magazine in New York City. As a freelancer, he has written about dance for many publications, including daily papers, trade magazines and scholarly journals. He has taught and lectured on dance history and criticism. A member of the Dance Critics Association since the mid-1980s, Robert served two terms on the board.

Alastair Macaulay is chief dance critic of "The New York Times". He was founding editor of "Dance Theatre Journal" in 1983, guest dance critic to "The New Yorker" in 1988 and 1992, chief theatre critic to "The Financial Times" between 1994 and 2007 and chief dance critic to the "Times Literary Supplement" between 1996 and 2007.

Ali Duffy is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas Tech University. She holds an MFA in Choreography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BA in Dance from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She founded Flatlands Dance Theatre in 2010, and serves as Artistic Director, choreographer, and dancer for the company. Ali covers the American Dance Festival at Duke University every summer for World Dance Reviews and has also been published in Ballet-Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit Magazine, Classical Voice of North Carolina, The World and I, and is featured in The Longwood Guide to Writing. The Dance Critics Association named her their honorary Gary Parks Scholar, and in 2010, she was elected to their National Board of Directors. Her written research has been presented at the International Conference on the Arts in Society in Sydney, Australia, the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, and the Annual Conference on the First Year Experience in San Francisco. Texas Tech recently honored her with the 2010 Gloria Lyerla Memorial Research Grant to study the works of choreographer Jerome Bel. Ali has toured internationally with Stiletto Entertainment and has performed in American Dance Festival's Acts to Follow, NC Dances Festival, Choreo Collective, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra Concert, and has also been invited to perform the contemporary works of Donald McKayle, Martha Williams, BJ Sullivan, Ann Dils, Duane Cyrus, Posy Knight, and Katherine Kiefer Stark of Naked Stark Dance Company.

Joanna Gewertz Harris, Ph.D, dance teacher, dance therapist, historian and critic, was an editor for IMPULSE, the annual of contemporary dance, from 1957-70 and is senior editor for the current IMPULSE project. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BS Dance), Mills College (MA Dance) and UC Berkeley (PhD, Drama), she taught at several Bay Area colleges, including UCB and UCSC. Currently on the faculty of OLLI Institute and the Modern Dance Center, Berkeley, her articles are included in the books "Margaret H'Doubler: America's Dance Education Pioneer" and "Legacy in Dance Education." "Beyond Isadora: Bay Area Dancing, 1915-65, " a history of Bay Area dance was published in 2009. Joanna reviews for culturevulture.net.

Philip Sandstrom

Rajika Puri, an international exponent of two forms of Indian dance: Bharatanatyam and Odissi, has studied ballet, modern dance and flamenco, and is versed in western music. Known for her work with different kinds of music - flamenco, Bach, American Song - and for her danced storytelling, she now conceives evening-length productions with her company of dancers and musicians, like 'DEVI-MALIKA: a garland of danced stories on the feminine divine in India' ('05), 'Conversations with Shiva: Bharatanatyam Unwrapped' ('07), and 'TAPASYA: Ascetic Power and Tales of the Ganges' ('09). Cast by director Julie Taymor as lead in Lincoln Center Theater's 'The Transposed Heads' ('86), she went on to productions at the Public, Guthrie, Theatre for a New Audience, and Classic Stage Company, and took part in films. An M.A. (NYU, '83) in 'The Anthropology of Human Movement' (understanding movement traditions from a cultural perspective), she writes, lectures and gives workshops on Indian dance and theater. Her reviews and articles - on flamenco and modern as well as Indian dance - have appeared in Playbill, Semiotica, India Today, The Independent (India), NewsIndia Times, Narthaki.com, and Exploredance.com. Ms Puri is co-curator of 'Erasing Borders' the Indo-American Arts Council's festival of Indian dance. www.rajikapuri.com

Rita Kohn is a senior writer with NUVO Newsweekly as their craft beer columnist and reviewer of local arts and culture. Her by-line also currently appears in national journals and on-line including Theatre Library Association, Dramatists Guild, Dance Critics Association, ExploreDance.com.

She is the author of 20 books including True Brew: A Guide to Craft Beer in Indiana [Indiana University Press*, 2010] and the forthcoming Full Steam Ahead: The Enduring Impact of the First Steamboat on the Ohio River [Indiana Historical Society Press, 2011]. She is editor of the Ohio River Valley series published by University Press of Kentucky+ and a reader of potential author manuscripts for UPK+ and IUP*.

Kohn's 25-plus plays have been produced nationwide and include the "Stories of Indiana" series presented at the Indiana State Museum, where "Before the Shadows Flee: Edwin Booth at the Brooklyn Academy" ran May 2010 to close out the ISM "Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth /Indiana and National celebrations." Rich Lives, presented August 2010 at the Indiana State Fair Pioneer Village, was the first dramatic production at The Fair.

Kohn is a writer and producer of documentaries with WFYI-Public Television including Long Journey Home: The Delawares of Indiana, Wind Chimes & Promises and Before the Shadows Flee. Rich Lives premieres January 2011.

Kohn served on the faculties of Illinois State University, Butler University and Indiana University/Purdue University in Indianapolis, with the Indiana Humanities Council as coordinator of the NEH-six states humanities councils "Always a River: The Ohio River and the American Experience" project, and with the Indianapolis Children's Museum as an exhibits writer. She is a frequent presenter at conferences, most recently at the American Theatre Library Association in Boston, Hoosier Folklore Society in Nashville, IN, Ann Katz Festival of Books in Indianapolis, West Lafayette [IN] Public Library. She is an active civic volunteer including co-founding the Indiana American Indian Theatre Company and Indy Fringe DivaFest.

Kohn holds degrees from Buffalo State College, New York, and Illinois State University, which awarded her Outstanding Alumni Award in 2003. She was named a Sagamore of the Wabash in 2004. Grants include: National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Indiana Arts Commission, Arts Council of Indianapolis, Indiana Humanities Council, Lilly Foundation, Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, Central Indiana Community Foundation and the Austrian government for a study on how family heritage is transmitted across generations. She is recognized in multiple Who's Who publications, and has received awards in all her genres.

Current professional memberships: Authors Guild, Dance Critics Association, Dramatists Guild, Hoosier Folklore Society, Indiana Association of Historians, National Museum of the American Indian [Smithsonian], Theatre Library Association, Women's Press Club.

Brian Schaefer is a writer, arts journalist, and presenter from Los Angeles. He holds degrees in Dance and Communication from the University of California, San Diego where he wrote about dance and the arts for San Diego News Network, SanDiego.com, and Power Line Magazine. He received a fellowship in Arts Journalism from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007 at the American Dance Festival and served for three years as the Program & Audience Development Manager at ArtPower! at UC San Diego, the university's multi-disciplinary arts organization. He currently lives in Tel Aviv, Israel where he was a 2010-2011 Dorot Fellow, volunteering at the Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance & Theatre and contributing to the Jerusalem Post, Makom/Ha'aretz, Dance in Israel, and his blog MyTwoLeftFeet.net. He is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in English Literature/Writing at Bar Ilan University in Israel.