Joselli Deans leads panel for Utah Ballet Summer Intensive
During the University of Utah Ballet Summer Intensive (UBSI), in honor of Juneteenth, School of Dance’s Associate Professor Joselli Deans led a panel for the students, which included herself and two additional former members of the historic Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH): Kevin Thomas and Christina Johnson. They each represent a different era of the company and reflected on their time there and the impact it had on the rest of their lives.
This talk was presented with encouraging support from School of Dance's Professor (Lect.) Maggie Wright Tesch (Ballet BFA ’03), who serves as UBSI's Director, and Utah Valley University's Assistant Professor (Ballet) & School for Cultural & Social Transformation (Gender Studies) Tyler Schnese (Ballet MFA ’23), who serves as UBSI's Assistant Director. Tesch and Schnese believed the sharing of the trio's collective knowledge and experience was essential to the intensive curriculum and an important opportunity for students to be informed of this critical era in dance history, which deserves recognition for its profound impact on the broader dance community.
About the panelists:
Dr. Joselli Deans is at the forefront of researching and preserving the history of black artists in dance. During her extensive career with DTH, she worked with noted dance personalities such as Agnes de Mille, Frederic Franklin, David Gordon, Louis Johnson, Billy Wilson and Arthur Mitchell. Deans holds a Doctorate in Dance Education from Temple University, is a Mellon-funded Transformative Intersectional Collective (TRIC) grant member, and was awarded a grant from the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts. She has worked as a consultant for DTH, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, School of American Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, the Dance Oral History Project for NYPL, the documentary "Black Ballerina,” and as a member of the design and facilitation team for “The Equity Project: Increasing the Presence of Blacks in Ballet."
Kevin Thomas is the founder and Artistic Director of the BIPOC Collage Dance Collective in Memphis, Tennessee. Before joining DTH, Thomas performed with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and Cleveland San Jose Ballet. He has also made guest appearances with the Royal Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and Fleming Flindt and Peter Schaufuss, on Broadway in The Phantom of the Opera, and on television in Law and Order. Thomas received his degree in dance from the CEGEP de Vieux Montreal and is a National Visiting Fellow at the School of American Ballet in New York City.
Christina Johnson is an internationally renowned teacher and coach. Her career began at age seventeen with Boston Ballet before joining DTH. Johnson is a founding member of Complexions Contemporary Ballet and has been a featured guest artist with the Royal Ballet, Le Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve, and Ballett Basel. She held the position of Rehearsal Director for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Washington Ballet, Armitage Gone! Dance, Trey McIntyre Project and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Hollins University and has served on faculty at Marin Ballet and at Dominican University in the LINES/Dominican BFA in Dance Program.