Paul Anthony Dennis
BFA Juilliard School, MFA Purchase College, SUNY
PAUL DENNIS, earned his BFA at the Juilliard School, and MFA at Purchase College, Conservatory of Dance. An Associate Professor at UMass Amherst and a former member of José Limón Dance Company, Paul was also Associate Director of the White Mountains Summer Dance Festival. As a Five College faculty member, he teaches at Mount Holyoke, Amherst, and Hampshire Colleges. His career includes performances with Works/Laura Glenn Dance, Jacob’s Pillow Men’s Dancers: The Ted Shawn Legacy, Janis Brenner and Dancers, Scapegoat Garden, a 1995 White House performance and Florence’s “White Nights Festival” at Palazzo Vecchio Salone De Cinquecento.
His creative activities include an internationally touring solo concert featuring repertory by Reggie Wilson, Deborah Goffe, José Limón, Eve Gentry, Pearl Primus and Daniel Nagrin. He has been in residence with Dance International and adjudicator for Certamen International de Choreografia, in Burgos, Spain; guest artist/faculty at International Dance Association in Ravenna, CivitanovaDanza, Italy. Paul is the régisseur of masterpieces of Ted Shawn, José Limón, Pearl Primus, Ted Hershey and Doris Humphrey for numerous companies including Scuola di Ballo Accademia Teatro alla Scala, The Limón Company and The Rome Opera Ballet.
His current research blends studies in Laban/Barenieff Movement Analysis (L/BMA) and dance with research in neuroscience to examine the effects of L/BMA-based dance on the functional mobility in individuals with Huntington’s Disease (HD). As well as test L/BMA as a viable replicable method to capture, the kinematic and non-kinematic aspects of movement by subjects with HD.
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Curriculum Vitae
Paul Anthony Dennis
85 Cahillane Terrace, Northampton, MA 01062
pdennis@dance.umass.edu
203.767.1768
M.F.A. in Teaching and Performance, including a certificate in Arts Administration
Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, SUNY (2007)
B.F.A. Dance
The Juilliard School, New York, NY (1991)
Additional studies
2013 CMA, Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, LIMS®
2013 Certified Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Associate (CHPA)
The HIPAA Privacy regulations require health care providers and organizations, as well as their business associates, develop and follow procedures that ensure the confidentiality and security of protected health information (PHI) when it is transferred, received, handled, or shared. This applies to all forms of PHI, including paper, oral, and electronic, etc.
2007 to Present Associate Professor, UMass Amherst
2006 to 2007 Guest Artist, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College
2013 Guest Artist, Hampshire College
2007 to Present Artistic Director of University Dancers Ensemble,
UMass Amherst
2007 to 2017 Associate Director, White Mountain Summer Dance Festival,
Sarah Lawrence College and UMass Amherst
2010 to Present Principal Advisor: UMass Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration (BDIC)
2008 to Present Master Teacher: American College Dance Association (ACDA)
Spring 2018 Master Teacher: Teatro Cantiere Florida, Florence, Italy
Summer 2015 Master Teacher: Limon Dance Company, NYC
Summer 2015 Faculty: NYU-Steinhardt/Limon Summer teachers’ workshop Summer 2011-13; Master Teacher: Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, community class
Summer (ongoing): Jacob’s Pillow Community modern class
International: Italy, Spain, France, Hungary, Brazil, El Salvador, US Virgin Islands, and Trinidad & Tobago
Choreography:
2018 “a leisurely collapsing of the thing into its possibilities…,” 14 dancers with music by Arvo Pärt; Compagnia Versiliadanza, Florence Italy
2017 “Ahhhhh” music by Vivaldi, 6 dancers, White Mountain Summer Dance Festival; “Fire and Ice” – duet co-choreographed and performed with Sonia Plumb; Bushnell, Hartford and Artist for World Peace, Old Saybrook, CT.
2016 “(Un)charted” in collaboration with sculptor Valerie Gilman
2015 “Play With Your Food” New Century Theater fundraiser, directed by Harley Erdman; “WTF” (With The Flow) music by Vivaldi, 8 dancers, White Mountain Summer Dance Festival
Theater:
2019 “Baltimore” UMass Theatre Production (Rand Theater)
2012 “Violet” UMass Theatre Production (Rand Theater)
2011 “Urinetown” UMass Theatre Production (Rand Theater)
2010 “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” UMass Theatre Production (Rand Theater)
Reconstructions and Directing:
2020 “Michael Row Your Boat” Choreographed by Pearl Primus; 92nd Street Y.
2019 “A Choreographic Offering” Choreography by José Limón; UMass Dance program
2018 “Negro Speaks of Rivers” Choreographed by Pearl Primus; 92nd Street Y.
2015 “The Traitor” – Choreography by José Limón; Dance Company
2014 “The Unsung” – Choreography by José Limón; Accademia Theatro alla Scala
2008 to Present University Dancers, Artistic and rehearsal Director; UMass Dance program
2020 “This present moment in healing the brain and spirit” Online Somatic Movement Summit. Hosted by Living Somatics and the Shift Network
2015 to Present Movement Intervention for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND): Dance for Huntington’s Disease (HD)
- Lecture presentation for Huntington’s Disease Society of America’s online training program, spring 2020
- Lecture presentation at 25th Annual Huntington’s Disease Society Conference, Boston, MA 2019
- Lecture presentation at 23rd Annual Huntington’s Disease Society Conference, Chicago, IL 2017
- Tewksbury Hospital, Tewksbury, MA
- Western Massachusetts Hospital, Westfield, MA
2013 Laban Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) “Choreography” Movement analysis and creative, expressive and functional movement research for Huntington’s Disease patients
Departmental:
AY ‘18/’19 Committee – Assistant Professor in Dance search – Mount Holyoke College
AY ‘18/’19 Committee – UMass Fine Arts Center Director search.
AY ‘16/’17 Committee Chair – UMass dance FT/TT Assistant Professor Search
Spring 2016 Evaluation Committee – Inaugural Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching
Five College Dance Department (FCDD):
2018 Smith College, second reader, Shayla-Vie Jenkins MFA candidate.
2017 Politics & Somatics: Race, Body and Activism – panel committee, Hampshire
College.
Community:
2017 Benefit Dance for Refugee Resettlement Program – facilitator, Florence, MA
2007 to Present Performance Project-First Generation, Guest Artist/artist mentor
Professional:
2020 External evaluation for faculty tenure and promotion – Skidmore College
2019 External review committee for Skidmore College Dance Program
2029 External evaluation for faculty tenure and promotion – University of Maryland
2018 to Present Amherst Academy of Ballet – Board member
Photos of Paul Dennis
Photography by: Jim Coleman, Joshua Sugiyama, & Julie Lemberger
Movement Intervention for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND):
Dance for Huntington’s Disease (DfHD)
Dance is a complex sensorimotor activity involving the integration of rhythm, spatial patterns, synchronization to external stimuli and coordination of the whole body. While regular exercise is frequently recommended as a beneficial practice for Huntington’s Disease, (HD) and other neurodegenerative disease, there are a limited number of studies that examine the benefits of dance. One of the earliest studies compared dance/movement therapy to a traditional exercise program on patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The authors observed improvements in movement initiation in the dance group but not in the exercise group. (Westbrook and McKibben, 1989).
Researchers conducting the first brain imaging studies of both amateur and professional dancers found various brain regions contributed to dance in ways beyond simply carrying out motion (Brown and Parsons, July 2008). These studies suggest that regular activities such as walking, reaching, stooping etc. ‘scale up’ to rhythmically timed, spatially patterned whole-body movements which may explain why dance has a greater impact improving balance and gait. Additionally, studies point to the work of Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) and Irmgard Bartenieff (1900–1981) known as Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis (L/BMA) as a promising, replicable method for coding nonverbal behavior in psychotherapy process research (Davis and Hadiks, 1990). L/BMA has been used to capture the kinematic (velocity, acceleration and momentum) and non-kinematic (posture/position) aspects of movement by subjects whose movements had been affected by stroke (Foroud and Whishaw, 2006).
My research studies the effects of dance on functional mobility in individuals with HD, as well as evaluate L/BMA as a replicable method to capture, various aspects of movement by subjects with HD, creating a functional record of movement interventions, which if deemed to have positive effects, can later be replicated in future work and in a clinical setting.
Videos
References
Contact Me
Paul Anthony Dennis
85 Cahillane Terrace
Northampton, MA 01062
pdennis@dance.umass.edu
203.767.1768