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2019 National Awards

 

 Naima Prevots 

Naima Prevots | Lifetime Achievement Award

Naima Prevots, BA Brooklyn College, Phi Beta Kappa, MS University of Wisconsin, PhD, University of Southern California, is Professor Emerita from American University, where for 34 years she was Director of Dance and for three years was Chair, Department of Performing Arts. Her early influences include: classes in Dalcroze; with Graham, Nikolais, Holm, Limon, among others; performance with Cunningham as Brandeis University sophomore (1952) and with Marie Marchowsky at Henry Street Playhouse (1955, after transferring to Brooklyn College and graduating). She studied at Juilliard in 1959 and earned her MS in Dance in 1960. After moving to Washington DC in 1962 she co-founded a dance company, and was hired (1967) by American University where she was instrumental in creating the Department of Performing Arts (1973), with both undergraduate and graduate dance majors, and summer dance company residencies. By the 1970s her interests turned towards leadership, dance education, writing and criticism. She served on many boards and panels including ADG, CORD, SDHS, NDEO, NEH, NEA, NIPAD, D.C. Commission on the Art. She completed her PhD 1983. In 2000 she helped bring dance organizations together for the Millennium Conference. Writings have included dance education curriculum (Project CAREL pilot), and surveys; three books (Dancing in the Sun; American Pageantry; Dance for Export); numerous articles. Awards include: six Fulbright Fellowships; CORD outstanding publication; Pola Nirenska and university awards. She has been teaching “OPDI-106: Choreographic Explorations in Dance since 1953t” on-line for NDEO's OPDI program since 2012, and was recently published in JODE and Ballet Review.

Read Naima's Conference speech here.
Susan Griffin

Susan Griffin | Outstanding Dance Educator (PreK-12 Education)

Susan Griffin has taught dance to students at every age and level since she graduated from Rutgers University in 1976. She was an Associate Instructor while she pursued her master’s degree at Indiana University and taught as a member of professional dance companies in Bloomington, IN, and Rochester, NY. She taught dance and created choreography at the University of Rochester and Centre College, and taught at Arizona State University. She was the dance teacher at Mineral Springs Elementary School (NC) before joining the faculty of South Mountain High School in Phoenix, AZ, where she has been teaching since 2003. She is active in developing dance curriculum and assessment both for Phoenix and statewide for Arizona. She has served AzDEO, NDEO's state affiliate in Arizona, and NDEO in various capacities since 2006 and was president of AzDEO from 2009-2011. AzDEO named her the Katherine Lindholm Lane Dance Educator of the Year in 2014. That same year, Phoenix Union High School District recognized her as the Teacher of the Year for the entire district in all subject areas. Graduates of her program in Phoenix have gone on to become successful teachers and performers, including one student who is dancing with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

Blumenfeld 2019

Barry Blumenfeld | Outstanding Leadership

Barry Blumenfeld has been a dance educator in a wide range of environments from pre-schools, studios, public and private K-12 schools to universities, including American University, Gallaudet University and New York University. Barry is on the faculty of Friends Seminary in Manhattan where he created and built a K-12 dance program over the past 20 years. He is an adjunct professor at NYU Steinhardt and on the faculty of the Dance Education Lab of The 92nd Street Y, for which he co-created the app, DanceMaker. Barry holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in Dance from American University and is a certified Level 1 Teacher of Language of Dance®; a certified yoga instructor; and a Registered Dance Educator. Barry served on the board of the New York State Dance Association and was a recipient of the Outstanding PreK-12 Dance Educator Award from NYSDEA in 2017. He was the artistic director of TAPFUSION, a dance company combining modern dance and tap, for a decade in New York City. Barry also started the Men in Dance SIG in NDEO and co-chaired the Men in Dance Symposium at WVU. He writes a monthly “Ask the Experts” column for Dance Teacher Magazine, as well. 

Marijeanne Liederbach

Marijeanne Liederbach | Outstanding Dance Education Researcher

Marijeanne Liederbach is Director of the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries at NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at NYU School of Medicine. Prior to her current appointment, she headed the Dance Medicine Services for The Joffrey Ballet while serving as Supervisor of Sports Physical Therapy at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma and Instructor of Kinesiology at Columbia University. Dr. Liederbach is a physical therapist and certified athletic trainer with a doctorate in biomechanics. She has provided backstage therapy for hundreds of dancers, dance companies and Broadway shows and has authored numerous papers and chapters as well as lectured internationally on topics pertaining to the prevention and care of dance injuries. She has long served on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Dance Medicine and Science, the National Advisory Committee for the American Physical Therapy Association's Performing Arts Practice Analysis and the DanceUSA Task Force on Dancer Health. She is also an elected Affiliate Member of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, a Founding Member of IADMS as well as Chair of its Standard Measures Consensus Initiative. Dr. Liederbach danced professionally and her critically acclaimed choreography has been shown in Europe and throughout the USA. In 2010, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Dance Library of Israel by Broadway sensation, Ben Vereen.

Wendy Oliver

Wendy Oliver | Outstanding Dance Education Researcher

Wendy Oliver is Professor of Dance and Women’s & Gender Studies at Providence College, where she chairs the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Film. She has published in Dance Chronicle, Dance Research Journal, Research in Dance Education, Journal of Dance Education, and other journals, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of JODE. She is the author of Writing about Dance, published by Human Kinetics. Her co-edited book Women Making Art: Women in the Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts since 1960, 2nd edition, will be published early in 2020. In 2017, she co-edited Dance and Gender: An Evidence-Based Approach with Doug Risner, In 2014, she published Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches with Lindsay Guarino at University Press of Florida. She also contributed a chapter on tap dance and aging to Staging Age: The Performance of Age in Theatre, Dance, and Film (2010). Her current book project is co-edited with Lindsay Guarino and Carlos Jones and focuses upon 21st Century Jazz Dance. Her research interests include dance in higher education, jazz and tap dance, women choreographers, race & gender equity, and dance history and criticism. She holds an MFA from Temple University and an EdD from Columbia University.