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Barbara Sellers-Young is a Senior Scholar and Professor Emerita in the Dance Department of York University. She was Dean of the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design (2008-2013) and Professor in the Department of Dance at York University (2008-2016). She previously taught in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC/Davis (1990-2008) where she also served as the interim executive director of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts (2005/06). She has also taught at universities in England, China, and Australia. Her research projects on the intersections of performance, body and globalization have taken place in Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Nepal, China, England, and Australia.

Her articles can be found in The Journal of Popular Culture, Theatre Topics, Asian Theatre Journal, Dance Research Journal and elsewhere. She is the author of three single authored books: Teaching Personality with Gracefulness, Breathing, Movement, Exploration, and Belly Dance Pilgrimage and Identity as well as the jointly authored book with Robert Barton Movement OnStage and Off.  Edited volumes include: Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity and Belly Dance and Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy with Anthony Shay; Embodied Consciousness: Performing Technologies and Narrative in Performance with Jade Rosina McCutcheon; Belly Dance Around the World: New Communities, Performance and Identity with Caitlin McDonald; and, Spiritual Her Stories with Amanda Williamson.

Professor Sellers-Young’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada), American Council of Learned Societies (United States) and the Centre for Cultural Research into Risk, (Charles Sturt University, Australia), as well as numerous grants, including a Davis Humanities Fellowship and a Pacific Rim Planning Grant. She served for two years as convener of the International Federation of Theatre Research Working Group: Theory and Practice of Performing and from 2008 to 2010 was president of the Congress on Research in Dance.  She is the recipient of the 2008 Alumni Award from the School of Music and Dance at the University of Oregon and the 2011 Dixie Durr Award for Outstanding Service to Dance Research from the Congress on Research in Dance. She was the 2018 editor—in-residence for the Dance Chronicle and is a member of the advisory council for the School of Music and Dance at the University of Oregon.

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Areas of Research and Teaching Specialty: Performance Studies

Professor Manley has been a faculty member in York’s Department of Dance since 1974. She has taught a broad range of courses including studio courses in modern technique, improvisation and composition and lecture courses in pedagogy, education, dance science and community arts practice. She teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level and frequently supervises directed reading courses, major research projects and theses for graduate students.

Professor Manley’s research specialization and publications are in the areas of creative and modern dance pedagogy; dance education in early to middle childhood; choreography and performance for and by young people; and community arts practice. Her publication credits include articles in the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD); Choreography; Childhood in Canada: Cultural Images and Contemporary Issues; Conference Proceedings of the Society for Canadian Dance Studies, and in the Proceedings of the Dance and the Child International (daCi) Conferences. She edited the dance chapters of The Arts as Meaning Makers, and authored the biography Roots and Wings: Virginia Tanner’s Dance Life and Legacy. Her latest academic project, daCi’s First 30 Years: Rich Returns, an anthology comprising papers from daCi conference proceedings from 1978 to 2009, will be published in July 2012 at the 10th triennial daCi conference in Taipei, Taiwan.

Strongly committed to arts education and community arts practice, Professor Manley developed and directed Artstart, a fine arts program for children and teens, from 1986 to 1996. She recently redesigned the program to meet the needs of the community bordering York University. Now known as ARTStarts Afterschool, the program brings together teacher candidates and artists from the community who organize and lead after-school classes in dance, theatre, visual arts and music in many of the local schools.

As a mentor to the Roots Research and Creation Collective (RRCC), a group of Aboriginal choreographers and young dancers, Professor Manley has shared the work of the RRCC internationally at several World Dance Alliance conferences and at the Dance and the Child International Conference held in Jamaica in 2009. In collaboration with the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, she currently co-directs Dancing the Rights of the First Nations Child: Our Dreams Matter Too, a project designed to implement an arts residency with artist-educators in six Aboriginal communities in Canada.

Professor Manley also maintains professional connections in Vancouver and internationally, serving as president of the board of Judith Garay’s company, Dancers Dancing, and as a member-at-large on the board of Dance and the Child International.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Dance Education, Creative and Modern Dance Pedagogy, Children’s Dance, Community Arts Practice for Social Change

Modern Dance and Dance Sciences, Composition and Choreography, Repertory.

Donna Krasnow has a distinguished background as a choreographer, performer, researcher and teacher. She founded Dance Source, a professional training school in San Francisco, and was artistic director for its resident company Mobius.

In addition to performing as a guest artist with such companies as Footloose, Northern Lights and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, she performed with the Daniel Lewis Repertory Dance Company in New York and assisted with the staging of José Limón’s classic works There Is A Time and A Choreographic Offering. She has taught at many universities and professional studios internationally, including the Limón Institute in New York, Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre in Toronto, Arts Umbrella in Vancouver, California State University Northridge, and Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia.

Professor Krasnow’s scholarly research focuses on dance science, particularly injury prevention, motor learning and motor control, conditioning for dancers and psychological aspects of injury. Her articles have been published in The Journal of Dance Medicine & Science; Impulse: the International Journal of Dance Science, Medicine, and Education; Medical Problems of Performing Artists; Bulletin of Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences; Médecine des Arts; and Dance Research Journal.

Donna is the creator of C-I Training™, a conditioning with imagery system for dancers. She has written a book called Conditioning with Imagery for Dancers, and produced a DVD series of the work. She also offers workshops for teachers on a variety of topics, and offers teacher certification courses in C-I Training. She is also a level one GYROTONIC® trainer.

At York University, Professor Krasnow taught courses in modern dance, composition and choreography, repertory, conditioning for dancers, kinesiology, prevention and care of dance injuries, and motor learning issue in dance. In 1988 she founded the York Dance Ensemble, the Dance Department’s pre-professional repertory touring company.