Allegra Romita (MA, CMA, EdM, RYT) is co-creator of Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action® and co-author of Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers and Functional Awareness and Yoga: an Anatomical Guide to the Body in Reflective Practice. Allegra serves as the Program Administrator and Faculty for NYU Steinhardt Dance Education program. Since 2011, Allegra has been performing regionally and nationally with Sydnie L. Mosley Dances and is the Artistic Visioning Partner with the collective. Allegra graduated from the University of Michigan with honors with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Movement Science. She received her MA in Dance Education from NYU Steinhardt and EdM in Motor Learning & Control from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her passion for somatic investigation led her to certification (CMA) in Laban Movement Analysis through the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Allegra teaches at Brooklyn Yoga Project and Heatwise Yoga in Brooklyn, NY, and co-teaches in the teacher training programs at both studios. 

Orphaned as a child, Chasta found comfort in the creativity, play, and catharsis of the performing arts. This led to a life as an arts entrepreneur where she believes that everyone has the power to reach their fullest potential and disrupt the status quo in an empowering and inspiring way.

She is personally doing that through her entrepreneurial endeavors, writing and motivational speaking. This niche in change management has developed through a variety of personal and professional challenges that have forced her to find optimism in her quest for success, happiness, and impact.

Chasta is the Founder/ CEO of Stage Door Dance Productions and Founder/ President of the non-profit Girls Geared For Greatness. She’s also a best-selling author (Trash The Trophies and Handle the Horrible) and speaker (TEDx: You Weren’t Built to Break). Chasta lives in Raleigh with her husband, John, their son, Bash, and their Scottish Terrier, Elvis.

CLEO PARKER ROBINSON

Founder / Artistic Director / Choreographer / Producer

CLEO PARKER ROBINSON is founder and artistic director of the 51-year-old Denver-based artistic institution, CLEO PARKER ROBINSON DANCE (CPRD), leading a professional Ensemble (CPRDE), Cleo II (her 2nd company), a Youth Ensemble, an Academy of Dance, an International Summer Dance Institute, a 240-seat theatre, and numerous community outreach programs nationally and internationally. She has received honors and awards from corporate, civic, community, and artistic entities world-wide, bringing CPRDE to myriad organizations and venues for performances, teaching residencies and community engagement programming. A master teacher/choreographer and cultural ambassador, she and CPRDE have performed nationwide and throughout Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, and the African continent, with their most recent international tours taking them to Bogota, Colombia in Spring of 2019 and Mexico in Fall 2019.

Ms. Parker Robinson’s awards and honors include the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence (1974), Denver Mayor’s Award (1979), induction into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame (1989) and the Blacks in Colorado Hall of Fame (1994). Recognized in Who’s Who in America Colleges and Universities she holds an Honorary Doctorates from Denver University (1991), an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Colorado College (2003), an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from Regis University in Denver (2008), an Alumni Award from University of Denver (2021), the 2020 Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, Honous Causa from CU Boulder, and was named an Honorary Member of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (2021).

In 1991, Ms. Parker served on the task force creating a permanent location for the Denver School of the Arts (DSA), Denver’s first performing arts magnet school, and was subsequently honored In September 2017 at their 7th Annual Fall Gala, in recognition of her long-term commitment to excellence in arts education. She is also co-founder of the National Bahamian Dance Company, based in Nassau. In 2011, Ms. Parker Robinson was voted an Honorary Lifetime Trustee of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, in recognition of her longtime commitment and lasting impact on the Center. In June 2017, she received the highly prestigious DanceUSA Honor Award and in September 2017, the Randy Weeks Arts Leadership Award from the Denver School of the Arts.

Ms. Robinson has served on NEA panels on Dance, Expansion Arts, Arts America, and Inter-Arts panels for the USIS, and for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts as well as other national task forces, boards, and committees on the arts. In April 1999, she was appointed by then-President William Jefferson Clinton, with Senate confirmation, to serve for four years on the National Council on the Arts, a 14-member panel advising the Chairman of the NEA on agency policy and programs, reviewing and making recommendations on grant applications.

Since 2011, Ms. Parker Robinson has significantly returned to her greatest passion as a choreographer, creating and presenting Dreamcatchers: The Untold Stories of the Americas and the world premiere of her Romeo and Juliet, in collaboration with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Her work On the Edge… Reaching to Higher Ground premiered in October of 2014 in answer to resurging racial and human rights infractions world-wide. In Spring 2017, she re-staged two works, melding classical and jazz composition with the power, passion and beauty of modern dance – Romeo and Juliet and Porgy and Bess. Fall 2017 saw the premiere of Copacetic: A Tribute to Jonathon “JP” Parker, honoring her late father. In Spring of 2018, she premiered Lark Ascending in collaboration with the Boulder Philharmonic. Her Rhapsody in Black, created in collaboration with CPRD Associate Artistic Director, Winifred R. Harris, premiered at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, University of Denver. In January 2019, in collaboration with the Denver Brass, she choreographed an innovative interpretation of Bernstein’s On the Town and

Spring 2019 saw a collaboration with the Colorado Ballet entitled The MOVE/ment as part of the Tour de Force series at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Center for the Performing Arts. In 2019, she traveled to UMKC, Kansas City, to set a work on the students of CPRDE alum Gary Abbot, entitled Check Cashing Day in tribute to the jazz genius of Bobby Watson and Milt Abel. In August 2021, she premiered Standing On the Shoulders, a work commissioned by the Vail Dance Festival. September 2021 saw the debut of her work Freedom Dance, created in collaboration with jazz icon Dianne Reeves and CPRD co-founder and poet, Schyleen Qualls and in October 2021, she premiered R.I.Power, an original work commissioned by the Colorado College Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs.

Cleo Parker Robinson continues to be dedicated to celebrating the human experience and potential through the Arts and Education. Her life-long vision of “One Spirit, Many Voices” remains strong and steadfast, expanding to welcome, embrace, and sustain all people.

Crystal U. Davis, MFA, CLMA is a dancer, educator, movement analyst, and critical race theorist with twelve years of experience teaching in P-12 education and seven years supervising dance educators. Her work has been published in the  Journal of Dance Education, Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education, and in her book, Dance and Belonging: Implicit Bias and Inclusion in Dance Education. As an artist, her performances span from Rajasthani folk dance to postmodern choreography examining incongruities between what we say, what we believe, and what we do. She is an Assistant Professor of Dance Performance and Scholarship at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches anti-racist pedagogy for dance and theater, modern technique, somatics, and movement analysis.

Gerald Casel (he/they/siya) is artistic director of GERALDCASELDANCE. Their choreographic work complicates and provokes questions surrounding colonialism, collective cultural amnesia, whiteness and privilege, and the tensions between the invisible/perceived/obvious structures of power. The company has been presented at Bates Dance Festival, La MaMa, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, CounterPulse, ODC Theater, Asia Pacific Dance Festival, and at festivals in South Korea, Taiwan, the U.K., and France. Casel is Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. A graduate of The Juilliard School, with an MFA from UW Milwaukee, they received a Bessie award for sustained achievement. Casel is the founder of Dancing Around Race, a community-engaged participatory process that interrogates racial inequities in dance. www.geraldcasel.com

Nancy Romita (MFA, RSME, M.AmSAT RYT) is Senior Lecturer at Towson University (http://www.towson.edu/dance/fac-wanich-romita.asp), co-founder of Functional Awareness® (www.functionalawareness.org) is certified in dance rehabilitation training (WDPT/NYC) & current director of the Alexander Technique MidAtlantic Teacher Training Course. Romita is former Artistic Director of NanDance NYC (1981-1985) & The Moving Company 1993-2003), choreographed over 50 works at such venues as DTW/New York Live Arts, the 92ndStY, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Kennedy Center,  Her research has been presented at IADMS, NDEO, CORPS de Ballet International, Alexander Technique International Congress. She is co-author of several books published by Oxford University Press. The second edition of Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers recently released June 2023.

Shelby Jarosz is the Senior Director of Programs and Education at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. She received her Master's of Education in Dance from Temple University and taught at an Arts integrated charter school in Wilmington, Delaware before moving to Colorado. During her tenure at Kuumba Academy, she worked as a Kindergarten teacher and the Arts Integration Specialist, pioneering an integrated Arts curriculum to enhance student learning and motivate student attendance in this inner-city community. In 2007, she received the Partnership of the Year award for her work with the Delaware Art Museum. Currently at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, she is overseeing all Arts in Education programming, including their camps, Academy, community outreach and school programs. In all aspects of her professional life, she continues to implement her passion for using the Arts to teach and motivate students and teachers to learn in new and exciting ways.