Faculty

Full-Time Faculty

• Catherine Solaas

  Department Chair, Associate Professor of Dance, Production Manager
  Email: [email protected]

Catherine Solaas (she/her) has celebrated over 30 years as a dancer, choreographer, educator and arts administrator. A University of Oregon Distinguished Alumna (2023), Solaas joined the dance faculty at Austin Community College in 2011 and has served as department chair since 2015. Solaas leads the paid internship program, produces an annual season of dance events, and teaches dance courses at ACC.

Solaas choreographs for faculty and student productions as well as local and regional dance festivals and conferences. Recently, her work has been shown at Austin Dance Festival, Texas State University, American College Dance Association Conferences, and other dance conferences and festivals. Solaas has received grants and commissions for the creation of new work, including awards from Arts Council Norway, Nordic Culture Point, Freedom of Expression Foundation, Sound and Picture Fund, The Norwegian Wind Ensemble, Austrian Embassy and The Center for the Study of Women in Society. She has presented research at The League for Innovation in the Community College, National Dance Education Organization, and Texas Dance Improvisation Festival. Solaas earned her bachelor’s (1993) and master’s (1996) degrees in dance from the University of Oregon. She is happy to have danced in the US and internationally with Jill Sigman, Tiffany Mills Company, Susan Hadley, Claire Porter, Margo Van Ummersen, Alito Alessi and others, including extensive seasons at New York venues such as Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Joyce Soho, Merce Cunningham Studio, Dumbo Dance Festival and the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church.

Solaas is a member of National Association of Schools of Dance, National Dance Education Organization, and The League for Innovation in the Community College. She also serves on the board of directors for the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company.

• Melissa Sanderson

  Associate Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Melissa Sanderson (she/her) joined the dance faculty at Austin Community College as an associate professor in 2021. Melissa is a dance artist whose work spans choreography, performance, dance film, and education. Her choreography has been presented through 12 Minutes Max in Seattle, the World Dance Alliance Global Summit in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, WDA’s International Young Choreographers Project in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Austin Dance Festival, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, BOOST Dance Festival, {254} Dance Festival, and Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Germany. She is passionate about being in the creative process with students and has choreographed for Bellevue College Dance Company and Kaleidoscope Dance Company. Melissa‘s dance films have been presented in festivals including Agite y Sirva in Mexico, Seyr Festival in Iran, São Carlos Videodance Festival in Brazil, Utah Dance Film Festival, Dans Kamera Istanbul in Turkey, and Festival International de Vidéo Danse de Bourgogne in France.

Based in Seattle from 2017-2021, Melissa performed in collaborative projects with Coriolis Dance, The Gray, Kinesis Project Dance Theatre, and Jessica Jobaris & General Magic in venues including On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, and Base: Experimental Arts + Space. Additionally, she has danced with Jordan Fuchs Company since 2015. Melissa holds a MFA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University (2014) and a BFA in Dance from San Diego State University (2010). As an educator Melissa is committed to guiding students through an embodied learning experience to hone their unique creative voice. She previously taught as Adjunct Faculty at Bellevue College, University of North Texas, Dallas College Eastfield Campus, and Tarrant County College. www.melissasandersondance.com

Adjunct Faculty

• Ellen Bartel, MFA, CMA, RSME

  Adjunct Associate Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Ellen Bartel, MFA, CMA, RSME, and volunteer for Hospice Austin’s group grief counseling, received her B.A. in Liberal Arts from S.U.N.Y. Potsdam and her M.F.A. in Dance at the University of Texas focusing on the pedagogical methods of contemporary dance and choreography of site-dance. She is an award winning independent choreographer and an established dancer and teacher in Austin, Texas. She is the program director and instructor of Somatic Movement Education Training at Austin Community College  and. has recently served as the Interim Education Coordinator and Assistant Instructor at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in NYC, also as a facilitator of creative and somatic approaches to grief while in NYC and in Austin, and previously has been a peer review dance panelist and Creative Ambassador both for the City of Austin. Over the past couple of decades Ellen has been recognized as a creative force in central Texas receiving accolades such as “Dance Mobilizer,” from the Austin Chronicle, “Fortunate 500” (top 500 people to know in Austin) from Austin American Statesman, a Critic’s Choice Award for “Dancing through the Pain,” and was also in the running for multiple “Best Of” nominations in the Austin Chronicle.

Ellen has been a dance educator for over three decades teaching in Central Texas and New York and instructing locally at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University, Saint Edwards University and Austin Community College. She integrates contemporary dance techniques such as Humphrey-Limón, release technique, and Bartenieff Fundamentals into her beginning and intermediate modern classes. Ellen is also an experienced improvisor, and teaches improvisation as a tool for choreographic inquiry and as a performance practice.  Currently she is an adjunct professor at Austin Community College and continues to choreograph original work and teach independently in Austin.

• Allison Beaty

  Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

• Rebekah Chappell

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
Email: [email protected]

Rebekah Chappell is a teaching artist, performer, and dance maker from Williamsburg, Virginia. She holds an MFA in Dance from The University of Iowa and BFA in Dance from Shenandoah University. She has taught dance in studios, community programs, public and private schools, and universities across the country. In higher education, she has served as an Adjunct Lecturer at Texas State University (2022), Adjunct Lecturer at SUNY Brockport (2020-2021), Visiting Assistant Professor and Assistant MFA Director at Hollins University (2017-2020), Instructor of Record at The University of Iowa (2014-2016), and as Adjunct Faculty at San Jacinto College South (2011-2014).

Rebekah has had an extensive performance career as a solo and ensemble artist. Her creative work explores the efficacy of somatic and improvisational practices to affect change. Her most recent project addressed the multiplicities of grief, resulting in the screen dance, Can’t Relax in a Yard Like That. Her choreography has been presented at Austin Dance Hub, Houston Fringe Festival, Small Plates Choreography Festival, Greensboro Fringe Festival, InHale / ExHale Performance Series, and Charlotte Dance Festival. As an Alexander Technique Teacher, she explores the relationship between identity and embodiment. You can learn more about her background, creative work, and scholarship at www.rebekahchappell.com.

• Joseph Cox, MFA

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
Email: [email protected]

Joseph Cox holds an M.F.A. in Dance from The University of Iowa. He teaches Dance Appreciation for Austin Community College, offering a perspective informed by both scholarship and an extensive performance background.

Joseph and his wife currently serve as directors of the Slavin Nadal School of Ballet. His dance career began with Eugene Slavin and Alexandra Nadal at Ballet Austin, and continued with Cincinnati Ballet, Dayton Ballet, and most notably as a principal dancer with the Louisville Ballet. Over his twenty-five year performing career, he learned much of the classical ballet canon and numerous masterworks of the 20th century, working closely with dance icons, such as Sir Frederic Franklin, Suzanne Farrell, and Nicholas “Papa” Beriosoff.

Joseph previously taught ballet technique and dance history as Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He has also served in various teaching and staging capacities with Ballet Arkansas, Cincinnati Ballet, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, Cincinnati Opera, and The Carnegie Theatre of Northern Kentucky. Joseph and his wife were the founding directors of the Crossing Lines Project, a team of professional performers dedicated to sharing dance with student artists throughout Kentucky.

Joseph’s choreography has been performed with Louisville Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Dayton Ballet, Louisville’s Moving Collective, Austin Contemporary Ballet, and in other venues. His honors include the 2009 Kentucky Arts Council “Al Smith” Fellowship for Choreography, the 2011 Iowa Arts Fellowship, and a Governor’s commission as a Kentucky Colonel.

• Jessica Coxe, MFA

  Adjunct Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Jessica Lindberg Coxe is an Adjunct Professor of Dance at Austin Community College (ACC), an instructor of Ballet technique at Greater Austin Dance Academy, is actively involved in teaching the dance students at various schools in the Round Rock and Austin Independent School Districts, and presents, performs, and stages her reconstructions of Loie Fuller’s masterworks. Coxe holds a BFA in Dance Performance from Southern Methodist University, an MFA in Dance Reconstruction / Directing from Score from The Ohio State University, and she is certified in Labanotation and Language of Dance®. Coxe has been teaching History and Appreciation of Dance, later Dance Appreciation, with ACC since 2010 and in 2018 she created the World Dance course in which ACC students learn about various cultures and interact with dance practitioners from around the world.

Coxe used historical accounts, reviews, photographs, lithographs, and other artwork of the 1890s, to reconstruct Night, Fire Dance, Lily of the Nile, and La Mer, master works by the dancer, choreographer, and theatrical lighting pioneer Loie Fuller. She has performed these works across the United States and locally with Dancestry at the Long Center. She has staged and presented her research internationally including the Art Institute of Chicago, Maryhill Museum, the University of Washington, Gonzaga University, Texas State University, Western Michigan University, MOMENTA Dance Company in Chicago, among others. Coxe is currently in talks to present La Mer at the Battery Dance Festival in New York City with the Lori Belilove Dance Company in August, 2023.

• Roxanne Gage, BA

  Adjunct Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Roxanne Gage has celebrated over 30 years of experience as a dance artist, choreographer, educator, and dance adjudicator. She holds a BA in Dance from the University of Texas at Austin and an Associate of Fine Arts from Kilgore College.  She is a former Kilgore College Rangerette Lieutenant and Swingster as well as a former Austin High School Dance Director. As a dance educator in the industry, Roxanne has shared her knowledge and experience at conferences such as the American College Dance Association and the Texas Dance Educators Association for over 20 years. She is also a core member of the Dance Education Assessment and Learning staff as an adjudicator for TDEA.

Roxanne is a member of the dance faculty at ACC and the outreach and recruitment coordinator for the dance department.  She enjoys encouraging high school dance students to reach their full potential through a college education.  She is also a part-time faculty member at Texas State University where she teaches Jazz and Ballet. She is on the board of directors for the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company and serves as a  producer and director for the Austin Dance Festival Youth Edition. She is also on the board of directors and serves as a volunteer for Leap of Joy which is an after-school program that gives at-risk youth empowerment and confidence through dance education.   Her most recent dance adventure has been with Blue Lapis Light Aerial Dance Company where she collaborated with choreography and auditioned dancers in the Austin community to perform in a beautiful production about protecting our environment and honoring all beings, “Belonging”.

Roxanne has directed and produced choreography for the Blanton Museum of Art- Exhibition Opening of Andy Warhol,  the Opening of the JW Marriott Austin, the Essential Oils World Convention in Dallas, the Rodan+Fields World convention, and the Texas CASA conferences. She was the assistant choreographer and assisted with auditioning and hiring dancers for the movie, “Miss Congeniality”, starring Sandra Bullock. In 2021 she choreographed a full dance scene for the HBO upcoming limited series Love and Death with Elizabeth Olsen and Krysten Ritter. She has had the privilege to serve as a USASF judge for The Dance World’s Championship where over 40 countries competed. She is a former dance company member and rehearsal director for the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company where she performed, and worked in collaboration for over 15 years.  She is a former dance artist for Sharir Dance Company, Jose Bustamante Dance Company, and Andrea Beckham Collaborative Dance Company.

Roxanne’s artistic focus is to create an energetic and supportive learning environment for the training of dancers. She remains dedicated to making everyone feel welcome in the world of dance and emphasizes the importance of training students to have skills beyond movement technique, such as creative problem-solving, communication, critical listening, and leadership skills. Specifically, she strives to build the future dance industry with intelligent, disciplined, and passionate artists who are the next generation of choreographers, performers, educators, judges, dance directors, dance therapists, and YES, school administrators. She is committed to helping dancers grow and achieve levels they did not know they were capable of attaining.

• Gabrielle (Aufiero) Gucciardi

  Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Gabrielle (Aufiero) Gucciardi is an educator, choreographer, and dancer based in Austin,
TX. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Dance Department at Austin Community
College and serves as the Director of Round Rock High School’s Dragon Pride Dance
Company where she also founded and teaches the Modern/Contemporary dance
academy course. Gabrielle holds an MFA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University and a
B.A. in American Studies with a minor in Dance from Franklin Pierce University—where she
graduated Valedictorian of her class. She was also selected as one of 7,980 individuals
selected out of 57,000 applicants to serve as a 2013 corps member for Teach For America.
As a choreographer, educator, performer, and scholar Gabrielle has made appearances
both nationally (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Texas, Virginia) and internationally
(Lyon, France). Her choreography has been selected for regional and national
performance debuts for the American College Dance Festival in New England and SHAPE
America’s National Convention and Exposition. She has presented professional
development workshops and lecture demonstrations at the Texas Dance Educators’
Association’s annual convention. She also enjoys teaching master classes, serving as a
guest artist/lecturer, and setting freelance choreography.
As an educator, Gabrielle recognizes that there is just as much responsibility in sharing
the art of dance as there is in mentoring the future of the dance field and the members of
our greater community. By sharing her passion for dance, creating a space that holds
students to high expectations, and teaching students the tools they need to be
successful in their lives beyond the classroom, Gabrielle hopes to enrich each student’s
understanding of their individual potential and empower them to create significant
contributions to their chosen career fields and beyond.

• Kathy Hamrick, MFA

  Adjunct Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Kathy Dunn Hamrick is the Artistic Director of Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company and Founder and Executive Director of Austin Dance Festival. Hamrick has committed her professional life to dancing, teaching, choreographing, presenting, mentoring, and advocating for modern dance and dancemakers. She has created over 50 dances that have been described as “strikingly athletic and wonderfully expressive,” “heavenly,” “smart” and “masterly,” garnering numerous recognitions for the dance company, including Austin Critics Table awards for Best Choreographer, Best Dance Concert, Best Dancer, Best Duet, Best Lighting Design, and Best Ensemble. Her work has been featured in Arts Journal and Dance Magazine, and the company has performed throughout Texas as well as in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto. Kathy teaches modern dance at Café Dance and ballet at Austin Community College; provides professional development for educators; directs artist residencies for high schools and universities; and serves as a mentor for Austin Emerging Arts Leaders. In 2018, Kathy was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame as “a model for the artist who approaches each project in a spirit of experimentation and reinvention.”

• Darla Johnson

  Adjunct Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Darla Johnson is a choreographer, teacher, and author living in Austin, Texas. She is the author of The Art of Listening: Intuition and Improvisation in Choreography (2012), and a contributor to Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project (2010). She is also a published poet.

From 1990 to 2005 Johnson was the co-artistic director of Johnson/Long Dance.
J/LDC received numerous awards and grants from the City of Austin, the State of Texas and the National Performance Network. The Austin Symphony, the University of Texas, Dance on Tulsa, and Winona State University commissioned dance/theatre works from J/LDC. The company performed nationally and internationally in such cities as Los Angeles, Honolulu, Little Rock, Albuquerque, and Hamburg, Germany, and taught residencies throughout the United States while touring.

Johnson founded the dance department at Austin Community College. She has received the ACC Teacher’s Excellence award twice. In 2009, she received the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development Award for Teaching Excellence and Service. She was invited to be a Visiting Scholar, with a focus on globalizing curriculum, at the University of Texas for the 2016-2017 academic year.

Recently, Johnson’s work has been produced and performed at the Austin Dance Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Black Arts Movement Festival, Texas State University, Spelman College, Georgian Court University, with the Shay Ishii Dance Company and in a project with other Austin choreographers entitled 11:11.

The JUSTICE Project is Johnson’s recent work and research project. The project is a collaboration with Nicole Wesley. Spelman College (Atlanta, Georgia), Northumbria University and The Contemporary School of Dance (United Kingdom), Austin Community College (Austin, Texas) and the University of Trinidad and Tobago (Trinidad) the University of Bedfordshire, (United Kingdom), Texas State University (San Marcos, Texas) and McCallum Fine Arts Academy (Austin, Texas) have all commissioned The JUSTICE Project. In June of 2016 a chapter that was co-authored by Johnson and Wesley on the McCallum Fine Arts project was published in The Young are Making Their World, Essays on the Power of Youth Culture.

Dawn Davis Loring

• Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
  Email: [email protected]

Dawn Davis Loring is delighted to be teaching Dance Appreciation and World Dance at ACC. She recently published her first book, Dance Appreciation, in January 2021 (Human Kinetics), co-written with Julie L. Pentz, and maintains the Today in Dance resource and podcast on her website. Dawn has been writing about dance since 1998 and has published articles and reviews in The Boston Globe, The Dancing Times magazine (UK), the Austin Chronicle, and the Journal of Dance Education (JODE). She directed the dance/theatre company, Mosaic Dance Body (MDB), for over 10 years and her choreography has been described as “goofy, pointed political theatre” by the Boston Globe, and by the Austin American-Statesman as “fresh and clever with a sarcastic wit,” and MDB is described as a company that is “not afraid to take themselves a little less seriously to achieve some big laughs”. She has taught dance for over 20 years to adults, youth, and children in situations ranging from universities, to K-12 public and private schools, and studio classes. As an administrator, she served as the San Antonio organizer for the first IAHPEDS World Conference in July 2022, and she has worked with the Royal Academy of Dance in London and the San Antonio Dance Umbrella.

• • Jessica MacFarlane, MA

    Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
    Email: [email protected]

Jessica Maria MacFarlane is an interdisciplinary dance researcher and creative writer from Houston, TX. Her teaching and research interests include dance history, theory, criticism, and archival practices alongside creative writing, film, and popular culture. She began her academic pursuit of dance at San Jacinto College South, and later transferred to Texas State University where she earned a BFA in dance studies with a minor in writing. Jessica holds an MA in individualized study with a concentration in dance studies, science fiction, and creative writing from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (‘19). In between her studies, Jessica was a public relations and marketing archivist and research contributor at Houston Ballet. She’s written about dance for Arts and Culture Texas, Dance Source Houston’s Dance DiSH, Playbill, and was a freelance writer for the pop-culture media outlet, The Nerdist. She’s a member of the Dance Studies Association and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. In her personal practice, Jessica writes short stories about resilient women living in contemporary Texas, science fiction tales imagining dance futures, and nonfiction essays that explore nostalgia and pop-culture. She’s currently working on a series of cli-fi and dystopian short stories about the lives of human and cyborg dancers.

• Jun Shen, MFA

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance
Email: [email protected]

Jun Shen is the founder and artistic director of Shen Jun Movement Effect based in the Austin area. Shen, born in Mainland China, began dancing in high school. He earned his bachelor degree in dance at Beijing Capital Normal University and then attended Beijing Dance/LDTX as a dancer and choreographer. In the past several years, he has performed and choreographed many dance works for many worldwide dance festivals and events including Dance Salad Festival, Beijing Dance Festival, Fall For Dance Festival, and Busan International Dance Festival, among others. He has collaborated with many different artists from various fields, as well. Shen has also taught in many educational institutions and dance studios, both nationally and internationally, such as Virginia Common University, Shanghai Drama Academy, Lines Ballet Training Program, and the University of Texas at Austin. He was invited to join the graduate dance program at UT Austin in 2013 and earned his MFA in May of 2016. He currently teaches movement and Tai-Chi at Sansori High School and is the modern dance instructor and guest artist for Blue Lapis Light.

FOR MORE INFO CONTACT: CATHERINE SOLAAS  AT (512) 223-7198 OR [email protected]