Tuesday October 10 2023 6:00pm-7:00pm EST

This webinar honors the career and legacy of long-time NDEO member and leading figure in North American dance education Myron Howard Nadel, who passed away on March 5, 2023, after a tenacious battle with cancer. In December 2022, prof. Nadel was nominated Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) after his last semester of teaching. He joined UTEP in 1998, and before moving to El Paso, he was Chair of the Theatre and Dance Department at Buffalo State College, Visiting Professor in Music Theatre at Carnegie Mellon University, and Founding Chair of the Dance Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Myron attended The Juilliard School in New York, where he studied with Antony Tudor, José Limón, Louis Horst, and Paul Draper, among others. He was the author of several textbooks, including The Dance Experience: Insights into History, Culture, and Creativity, now in its Third Edition, and Looking at Contemporary Dance: A Guide for the Internet Age, widely used in university and college dance programs throughout the United States.
To commemorate and retrace the dance contributions and legacy of prof. Nadel, this webinar brings together some of his recent and past colleagues, students, and dance friends, who will share memories, anecdotes, and original footage and archival materials. Such accounts will offer original and first-person insights into key figures of 20th and early 21st c. dance and dance education. 

Presented with the support of prof. Nadel’s wife, Jane Poss By:

Kathryn Austin is a long-standing member of NDEO with many terms of Board service to her credit. Dr. Austin remains active in service to the organization through committee work and presentations in the areas of Early Childhood education and topics that serve those who teach in the private studio setting. In addition to her teaching and leadership in her studio for 33 years, Austin has 8 years of experience in K-12 dance and nearly 10 years in Higher Education settings.She is currently an Adjunct Professor in the BFA dance program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Her studio, Centre for Dance & the Performing Arts, located in Oakland, Florida is non-competitive dance studio offering a full dance currilcum ranging from creative process through precollegiate technical progressions and specializing in traditional Scottish Highland Dance. Dr. Austin holds a BFA in Dance from Florida State University, her MA in Dance from University of Hawaii, and a PhD in Comparative Studies of the Fine and Performing Arts from Florida Atlantic University. She serves on the Board of Directors for Dance and the Child International-USA and helped found the daCi Youth Leadership Training program in 2020. She is actively involved in ScotDanceUSA on the Professional Development and Choreography committees and is a Fellow of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing.

Dr. Daniel Lewis Hon DFA, internationally-recognized dancer, teacher, choreographer and author, joined New World School of the Arts (NWSA) in Miami, Florida, in 1987, as founding Dean of Dance. Here, drawing from nearly three decades of experience in the field, Mr. Lewis created the dance division’s eight-year professional program.

In addition to developing and managing NWSA’s dance program, Mr. Lewis has heightened modern dance awareness in South Florida through Miami Dance Futures, a company he formed in 1988. Miami Dance Futures produced the highly successful Miami Balanchine Conference, the Dance History Scholars’ Conference, the National High School Dance Festival and the Daniel Lewis Dance Sampler.

Mr. Lewis is perhaps most widely known for his association with the work of José Limón. From 1962-74, he danced with the José Limón Dance Company, originating roles created by José Limón. Mr. Lewis completed the choreography of The Waldstein Sonata, an unfinished work begun by Limón just before his death.

As Mr. Limón’s assistant for seven years, Mr. Lewis staged the works of Limón and Doris Humphrey for such companies as the Royal Swedish Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, American Ballet Theatre, National Ballet of Canada, the London School of Contemporary Dance, The Juilliard School, and the José Limón Company. In 1972 following the death of José Limón Mr. Lewis served as the Limón company’s acting artistic director and in 1984 became founding director of the Limón Institute. His book; The Illustrated Dance Technique of José Limón (Harper & Row Publishers, 1984), has been translated in German, Spanish and Japanese. In May of 2020 his biography Daniel Lewis A Life in Choreography and the Art of Dance was published by McFarland Press.

As a choreographer, Mr. Lewis has been commissioned to create works by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Dallas Civic Opera, American Opera Center at Lincoln Center, Amherst College, the University of California, Los Angeles, The Juilliard School, and companies in South America and England. His repertory company, Daniel Lewis Dance Repertory Company, performed and taught extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Scandinavia for 17 years. Anna Sokolow was the resident choreographer for 15 of those years. In 1975 Anna reworked Dreams for the camera in the CBS television production of Camera 3 on the Daniel Lewis Dance Repertory Company.

From 1984-87, Mr. Lewis was Assistant to Martha Hill, the Director of the Dance Division, at The Juilliard School, where he had been a member of the dance faculty since 1967. Mr. Lewis was also an adjunct professor at New York University and a professor at Amherst College for six years while his company was in residence there.

Mr. Lewis has served on the Fulbright Screening Committee, a dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, a dance panelist and advisor to the Canada Council for the Arts, a dance panelist for the Florida Department of State, a grants panelist the Metro-Dade Cultural Affairs Council. He has served as president and immediate past president for the National Association of Schools of Dance. 

Mr. Lewis graduated from New York’s High School of Performing Arts in 1962 and The Juilliard School in 1967. In 1990, the National Society of Arts and Letters awarded Mr. Lewis the gold medal for Lifelong Achievement in Dance. In 2001 he received The Florida Arts Recognition Award recognizing his outstanding initiatives, leadership and excellence in supporting the arts in Florida. In 2002 he was Honorary Chairman for “dance4life”, receiving a Life time achievement award and was presented with the Nancy Smith Award, In October of 2010 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Dance Educators Organization, In February of 2011, Miami Dade County and the City of Miami declared February 5, 2011 as Daniel Lewis Day.  In 2011, he received a proclamation from the floor of the Florida State Senate for his work in the arts in Florida by Senator Anitere Flores. He received the 2011 Martha Hill “Lifetime Achievement Award in New York City. In 2012 Mr. Lewis received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Florida.  In 2013 he received an Education Advancement Award from the José Limón Foundation.  In 2017 he received the Doris Leeper Award by the Florida Alliance for Arts Education (FAAE). In 2019 he was Honored by Dance Now Miami at their benefit for bringing the legacy of time and culture to South Florida. In 2020 he was awarded the 2020 “A Life for Dance” Lifetime achievement Award from the International Ballet Festival of Miami.

He is currently the General Manager and treasurer, of the Florida Dance Educators Organization. On the boards of Miami Dance Futures (president). and Arts for Learning. As well as his teaching, choreographing, staging his and Limón works around the world.

Melissa Melpignano is Director of Dance and Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at El Paso. Her interdisciplinary scholarship and artistic praxis encompass historical and theoretical research on ballet; the study of livability through dance and choreography in border and conflict areas such as Israel/Palestine and Mexico-U.S. border; the practice of somatics in healthcare equity; and community-engaged dance performance for environmental justice. Her writings appear in TDR: The Drama Review, The Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance, Dance Research Journal, among others. She performs internationally across the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. Melpignano received her Ph.D. in Culture & Performance from UCLA. She is a recipient of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award from the Society of Dance History Scholars and served as a Board member of the Dance Studies Association. She is a certified Franklin Method® educator.

Janet Soares - Bio Not Available

Neri Torres

Born in Havana, Cuba, Neri Torres is the founder and artistic director of the Miami-based IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Company. Torres holds an MFA in dance with a minor in film from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She also studied at Instituto Superior de Artes and Escuela Nacional de Instructores de Artes in, Havana, Cuba. Her work combines traditional Afro-Cuban dances, contemporary dance, and multimedia to address social issues related to migration, women, and spirituality. Torres has toured extensively. Neri danced and choreographed on numerous international tours, film, television and stage productions with renowned artists such as Gloria Estefan, Andy Garcia and other renowned Latin artists. Every summer, her company produces the IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Festival in Miami, FL, in partnership with local institutions. The festival attracts scholars and participants from around the world. Neri is the editor of Perspectives on Dance Fusion in the Caribbean and Dance Sustainability: Rituals of Modern Society. Currently, she works as an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at El Paso while completing a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at The University of the West Indies in Barbados. Her research focuses on Afro-Cuban dance and migration, the Caribbean dance diaspora, cultural appropriation, and hybridization in popular culture. She joined NDEO in 2013 and now serves on the policy advisory committee.

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