Board of Directors
Sue Bernard
Secretary & Bare Bones Curator
Sue Bernhard is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher, who has shown work internationally and in many venues in NYC. She has created dances for The Juilliard School, Marymount Manhattan College, Purchase College, National Ballet Moderno de Guatemala, LIU, The Yard, Convergence Dancers and Musicians, Invernadero Danza, and others. In collaboration with award-winning videographer Penny Ward, she has created video/dance performances. Their piece Boundaries and Exposures was featured at the Conference on Dance and Technology at Simon Fraser University.
Sue Bernhard was a member of the Jose Limon Dance Company and Anabelle Gamson Dance Solos, and recently performed in the film “Golden” by Patricia Chen. She has taught internationally: Limon technique, dance composition, improvisation, and contemporary and Limon repertoire, and is on faculty at Purchase College. Sue has studied for many years with renowned scholar and meditation teacher Paul Muller-Ortega, founder of Blue Throat Yoga, and is an authorized teacher of Neelakantha Meditation.
Gloria McLean
Treasurer
Gloria McLean is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher, and the artistic director of LIFEDANCE offering workshops and performances. She is based in NYC and Andes, NY at Squid Farm, a center for dance and sculpture shared with her life partner Ken Hiratsuka. Gloria became well-known as a leading dancer and rehearsal director for the renowned Erick Hawkins Dance Company from 1982 through 1993, when she left to focus on LIFEDANCE. Critically acclaimed for her roles, she is a major exponent of this important Modern Dance Legacy. She is equally recognized for her own choreography with LIFEDANCE/Gloria McLean & Dancers which has been presented in US and internationally, and was called by NYTimes critic Jennifer Dunning “… “An intelligent, witty and sensuous choreographic voice.” LIFEDANCE is a creative movement practice that builds on the Hawkins Technique as a base for somatics, technique, composition and performance. McLean has been President of the American Dance Guild since 2012 supporting our mission of offering a “window to the past” and a “doorway to the future” of dance.
Anabella Lenzu
President
Originally from Argentina, Anabella Lenzu is a dancer, choreographer, scholar & educator with over 30 years of experience working in Argentina, Chile, Italy, and the USA.
Lenzu directs her own company, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama, which since 2006 has presented 400 performances, created 15 choreographic works and performed at 100 venues, presenting thought provoking and historically conscious dance-theater in NYC.
As a choreographer, she has been commissioned all over the world for opera, TV programs, theatre productions, and by many dance companies. She has produced and directed nine award-winning short dance films and screened her work in over 200 festivals both nationally and internationally.
As an educator for more than 30 years, she has been teaching in more than 50 institutions, including universities, professional dance studios, companies, festivals, and symposiums in the USA, Canada, Ireland, Egypt, Australia, Panamá, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, London, and Italy.
In 2023, Anabella received the National Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Independent Sector by NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) and in 2022, the Innovative Dance Educator Award by NYSDEA (New York State Dance Education Association), acknowledging her work as a dance educator who develops innovative pedagogy in the dance field, groundbreaking teachings that have a significant impact on dance, as well as an established record of exemplary leadership on the state and national level in USA.
Lenzu has written for various dance and arts magazines and published her first book in 2013, entitled Unveiling Motion and Emotion. Her second book, Teaching Dance through Meaningful Gestures, is expected in 2025.
Ara Fitzgerald
Vice President
Ara Fitzgerald is a choreographer, improvisor, writer, performer and educator. Known for solos with original text, she revels in collaborations with photographer/filmmaker, Peter Cunningham, composer, Wall Matthews, Clare Byrne, Paris based choreographer, Martha Moore, and the honor to perform reconstructions of work by renowned dancer/clown, Lotte Goslar. She was a member of Daniel Nagrin’s improvisation company, The Workgroup, The Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble, performed with Pat Catterson, Jamie Cunningham, created dances for her own company and contributed choreography to theater productions on and off Broadway. A graduate of Connecticut College (BA) and Wesleyan University (MALS), she taught at Connecticut College, The O’Neill Theater Center’s National Theater Institute, Hartman Conservatory and Trinity Square Conservatory before serving until 2017 as a director of dance and theater at Manhattanville College. When she told her grandmother, a retired vaudevillian band leader, that she was going to pursue modern dance, her grandmother replied, “A modern dancer is just a vaudevillian with an education.”
Ara also serves on the board of The Mystic Paper Beasts. She and Stuart Pimsler edited and complied Martha Myers’ memoir, Don’t Sit Down. Ara’s pieces and drawings make a leap from stage to page, in her new book, Slow Dancing Is Easy, Scripts for Solo Performer.
Dyane Harvey-Salaam
Board Member
Dyane Harvey-Salaam is a BESSIE award nominee (2019) and winner (2017), dance educator, choreographer, certified Pilates instructor and board member of the American Dance Guild. She is a founding member and assistant to director Abdel R. Salaam, of The Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company, and has appeared nationally and internationally with concert dance companies including: The Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Joan Miller’s Dance Players, Chuck Davis Dance Company, Walter Nicks Dance Company, Otis Sallid’s New Art Ensemble, George Faison’s Universal Dance Experience, Dance Brazil, and The Repertory Dance Theatre of Trinidad and Tobago. Commercial appearances include The Wiz(Broadway and original film), Timbuktu!, Spell #7, Your Arms Too Short to Box With God (Paris, France Company), AileyCelebrates Ellington (CBS Special), Free To Dance (PBS Special). Most recently she served as guest artist in Sydnie L. Mosely’s Purple A Ritual In 9 Spells, produced at Lincoln Center and Dance Place in Washington, D.C. Her choreography for Black Theatre companies has earned her AUDELCO Awards for Oya the Dance Drama, and Great Men of Gospel, and The United Solo and Broadway Berkshire Awards for Becoming Othello a Black Girl’s Journey. Other awards include: A.I.R. Living Legends Award from Miami Dade Community College, Distinguished Woman Award from the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Harlem Chamber of Commerce. Aspects of her life have been recorded for the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library Jerome Robbins Dance Division’s Oral History Project, and The Dance Historian Is In, a presentation highlighting the life and careers of Eleo Pomare, Joan Miller and Talley Beatty. Her published article, “Making Movement as an Act of Listening, Riding with the Muse” as part of the CLAJ Special Edition dedicated to the legacy of collaborator, Ntozake Shange, as well as “The Goodness of Sweet Honey In The Rock” in the anthology “Good Is Powerful beyond Measure”. As an educator, she teaches and designs courses at both Princeton and Hofstra Universities, sharing her philosophy about the dance of life itself.
Columbine Macher
Board Member
Columbine Macher began her formal training in Germany under Pina Bausch. Based in New York City since 1987, she has performed extensively with choreographers Eleo Pomare, Maxine Steinman, and Xavier Le Roy at MoMA PS1; taught at The Ailey School and Ballet Hispanico; presented her own work; and held guest artist residencies in Asia and Europe.
Celia Ipiotis
Advisor Board Member
Celia Ipiotis is the creator, producer and host of the award-winning humanities PBS series, EYE ON DANCE. Honored with a "Lifetime Achievement" award in 2024 by American Dance Guild, Ipiotis began her professional career as a dancer, choreographer, director and videographer. Singled out for her expertise, Ipiotis lectures and served on college faculties including Rutgers University, Hunter College, Harvard, Ohio State University, New York University, Marymount Manhattan, Aegina Arts Center; sits on local, state, and national arts panels; advised WNET's "Dance in America" and led arts forums at major cultural institutions like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, NYC Ballet, NY Foundation for the Arts, Guggenheim Works & Process and Harlem Stage.
After receiving a BFA in Dance at OSU and MA in Arts Media Studies at New School, Ipiotis secured choreographic fellowships, and held artist-in-residence positions throughout the USA. Invited to join the Bessie Awards Nominating Committee, Ipiotis is a member of the Columbia University Dance Scholars Seminars and served as a Research Fellow at Jacob’s Pillow. Articles by Ipiotis appear in various cultural publications and she manages the on-line cultural journal EYE ON THE ARTS. Ipiotis also produces public lectures coupled with EYE ON DANCE episodes for the general public, educational, and cultural institutions. Ipiotis heads the team raising tax-deductible funds for the restoration of the EYE ON DANCE archive for future generations. www.eyeondance.org.