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IMS Faculty and guest instructors are all Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysts. The team expertise draws from the areas of professional dance, dance ethnology, psychotherapy, somatics, exercise physiology and physical therapy. The internationally known core faculty has developed a unique approach to the study of the Laban/Bartenieff material and to the understanding of movement as an inroad to creativity. They have worked together as dance artists, movement educators and Laban/Bartenieff Certification Faculty for 30 years.
Director
Colleen Wahl
Colleen is a movement educator, author and dance artist. She joined the Integrated Movement Studies faculty in 2012, and is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Alfred University. She is the author of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis: Contemporary Applications (Human Kinetics 2019) and has a second book forthcoming. She also runs a movement education practice, Move into Greatness, that integrates Touch for Movement Repatterning, corrective exercise and somatic education. Her research interests include centering the body in the creative process and applying L/BMS to athletics, especially boxing. Colleen holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Dance from SUNY Brockport, a Masters in Liberal Studies from SUNY Empire State College, and a Bachelors in Dance and Arts and Education from William Smith College. She is a Master Somatic Movement Educator through ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Educators and Therapists Association) and Certified Personal Trainer through NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine). She is also a Certified Simonson Teacher and studying applied neuroscience with Z-Health. www.colleenwahl.com
Core Faculty
Sarah Donohue
Sarah Donohue is Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Dance at Utah Valley University and is on faculty with Integrated Movement Studies. Sarah holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Utah and is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. Sarah danced professionally with Repertory Dance Theatre and has taught and choreographed nationally and internationally, including South Korea, Bella Vita Arts Workshop in Italy, Montana Dance Arts, De Sales University, Rutgers University, The University of Utah, and The University of Oregon. She is the recipient of the 2019 UVU Presidential Fellowship, Grants for Engaged Learning, the UVU Faculty Excellence Award, the School of the Arts Inclusion Grant, and High Impact Practices grants. Sarah’s research explores play and the physicality humor through a Laban/Bartenieff lens. Sarah has presented at the International Society for Humor Studies conference in Ireland, the National Dance Education Organization’s Annual conference, and the Bill Evans Somatic Dance Workshop. Sarah’s choreography was selected and performed at the American College Dance Association’s National Festival at the Kennedy Center.
Erin Law
Erin Law (they/she) joined the IMS Faculty in 2019. They are supported in their work in multiple spaces, both online and in-person, by their background in movement analysis, dance, somatics, massage/bodywork and cultural studies. Erin’s call and vocation is to facilitate spaces rooted in creative embodied practice at the borders of education, art, and healing that support people and communities who are ready and willing to lean into personal and collective liberation and deeper self-awareness. Erin is currently Embodiment & Somatics Curator at Our Collective Becoming where they gently invite people envisioning and creating ethical futures to include the experiential wisdom of their bodies. In the last few years, Erin has developed a passion around more intentionally integrating movement, somatics, and social healing. This was sparked by the connections they perceived in their own experiences as a dancer and as a massage therapist, but carried further by their love of Susan Sgorbati’s practice of Emergent Improvisation as they perceive it to be connected to adrienne maree brown’s work and book Emergent Strategy. So, after years of tracking these types of intersections, they have come to approach their life as a commitment to co-creating culture through embodied creativity and meaningful relationships. Erin facilitates and engages in practices, analysis, advocacy, and activism to contribute to the transformation and alchemy of systemic oppression/supremacy culture, toward the blossoming of a more resilient and whole humanity. Erin is indebted to their family, and all of their teachers, students, and colleagues who have challenged and inspired them. You can learn more about Erin via their website: www.erinlawembodiment.com
Supporting Faculty
Brenton Cheng
Brenton Cheng has been an IMS faculty member since 2007. In addition to directing his own work, he has performed with internationally-acclaimed Contraband, Zaccho Dance Theater, Angus Balbernie, Kim Epifano, Jo Kreiter & Flyaway Productions, and many others, at such places as Jacob’s Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, and the Festival d’Avignon, France. He teaches the Laban work to professional and non-professional movers in classes and workshops around the world, and has been a presenter at the Motus Humanus Roundtable. In addition,
he has created the world’s first Laban mobile app “Moving Space” — a compendium of the Space Harmony scales. Brenton lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is an adjunct faculty at University of San Francisco.
Madegan Lynch
Melissa Mirza
Cat Kamrath Monson
Daniela Wancier
Daniela is honored to have joined the IMS faculty in 2018. She holds a double major from the George Washington University in Dance and Art History and an MFA in Dance with a focus in Choreography from the Ohio State University. She completed her Certification in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis through Integrated Movement Studies in 2010, and in 2015, she certified as an Evans Dance Instructor and a Movement Pattern Analyst (MPA) – Warren Lamb’s Effort-Shape lineage of the L/BMA system. Currently she serves as Director of Dance at Broward College in Davie, Florida, and is founder of Suite Decisions, LLC, a consulting company that utilizes Movement Pattern Analysis to profile the decision-making and interaction styles of entrepreneurs, business executives and leadership teams to optimize productivity and harmonize dynamics. She has created original workshops utilizing MPA’s decision-making framework, such as The 3 Stages of Decision-Making: Ready, Aim, Fire! and Team Dynamics: Are You in Sync?, which she shares across the country. Most recently, Daniela presented at the Harvard School of Medicine during the world conference on Movement and Cognition on the ties between our non-verbal patterns of behavior and decision-making. She believes in the power of movement to heal, to connect, to deepen relationships, to harness productivity and to find joy in all that we accomplish every day.
Emeritus Directors
Janice Meaden, Founding Director, Faculty
Janice holds a Master of Arts in Education from Antioch University, Seattle, where she pursued a course of study focused on creativity and adult learning theory. Her five year tenure as Head of Modern Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts allowed her the opportunity to experience and explore issues of cross cultural education while touring Asia as a guest performer and lecturer. Janice has been teaching the Laban/Bartenieff work since 1980. From her initial interest in dance performance, she expanded her passion for the movement arts into using movement as an inroad to learning and personal knowing. Janice has been an active member of the Seattle-based Institute for Creative Development’s Consultants to Education team, which facilitates educators in re-visioning their purpose as educators during this time in culture. Janice is co-founder of Integrated Movement Studies, and is Director of the IMS Certificate Program in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies at the University of Utah. She has trained in Body-Mind Centering, CranioSacral Therapy, and Pilates which she integrates with her Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis in a private somatic practice focused on movement education and the healing arts.
Peggy Hackney, Co-Founder, Faculty Emeritus
Peggy holds a B.A. in Psychology, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, from Duke University (with a double major in Education), and an M.F.A. in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. In addition, she is a Certified Teacher of Labanotation, a Registered Somatic Movement Thereapist (ISMETA), and a Certified Massage Therapist. Peggy graduated from the very first Effort/Shape Certificate Program in New York City in 1968, and was a colleague of Irmgard Bartenieff for nearly 15 years.Peggy has been involved in the Laban work since 1963. She was a co-founder of the Intensive LMA Certification Programs in New York City, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Berlin, and Berkeley. Currently, she is based in St. George, Utah; and she teaches globally with an emphasis in Italy. She delights in working with Post-Certification trainings in both Italy and the USA. Prior to her retirement in 2013, Peggy taught in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California at Berkeley for 8 years. Peggy performed with many dance companies in New York City for 10 years before joining the Bill Evans Dance Co. and touring the USA. She was on the Dance Faculty of the University of Washington for 11 years, and has taught around the globe. She helped to found Seattle’s performance space for emerging artists entitled, “On The Boards.” In addition to directing and teaching in the IMS programs, she was the Assistant Director of the Moving On Center Certificate Program in Somatics and Participatory Arts in Oakland, CA. Peggy is the author of the hugely successful book, “Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals,” (Routledge). Other publications include her video tape, “Discovering Your Expressive Body,” and “A Study Guide to Elementary Labanotation,” both distributed by Princeton Book Co.Peggy is happily married to Rob Anglin, who is an architect. Their daughter, Ashby Anglin, works for the United Nations in NYC. Currently Peggy teaches in the summers for Art Therapy Italiana in Bologna and Rome, Italy. She has had grants from the National Science Foundation through the NYU Computer Science Dept. to research the use of LMA to improve the dynamics of Motion Capture in Animation, i.e. The Green Dot Project.Peggy loves working with both groups and private clients as they engage in meaningful movement!