This year’s Dance On Gathering will be led by…

Judith Bauer

After a lifetime of watching dance, Judith Bauer is happy to be participating in making dance happen. Judith began dancing fifteen years ago at age 70 as a way of dealing with health issues. While she has studied other forms, she is mainly interested in improvisational dance for its ability to keep one mentally sharp and focused on responding to others. She is enjoying the challenge of facilitating classes within virtual spaces. In addition to being part of the supportive community that is Dance Exchange, Judith is a member of Quicksilver, the senior dance company of Arts for the Aging. Quicksilver dancers—all over the age of 60— use improvisational forms to engage with frail seniors in day programs and residential facilities.

Corina Iona Dalzell

Dance Exchange Community and Creative Hub Manager and Resident Artist

Based in Washington, District of Columbia, Corina Iona Dalzell (They/Them) is a dance maker and performer focusing on inclusion and community.

Corina‘s original performance work has been produced in Ohio, New York, Washington, and Maine. For more info visit corinadalzell.com.

As a performer, Corina has worked with Bodywise Dance Company, Dance Exchange, Fox Whitney of Gender Tender, Vanessa DeWolf, Rachael Lincoln, PE|Mo, Veronica Lee Baik of The Three Yells Performance Company, and Noelle Chun.

Corina supports inclusive arts communities as a creative movement educator serving individuals with cognitive and developmental disabilities. They have partnered with Dance Exchange, Bodywise Dance Company, The Washington State Therapeutic Recreation Association, PROVAIL, The City of Seattle, The City of Shoreline, Costello Syndrome Family Support Network, and CFC International.

Tashi Gore

Tashi Gore is Associate Director at Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre as well as being Co-Artistic director of multi award winning Glass Performance. She works predominantly in socially engaged contexts making original performance as a director/facilitator and supports artists as a producer and consultant in Scotland and internationally.

Tashi makes biographical performance work inspired by the people she meets and the questions they have about the world. With Glass she co-founded young people’s performance collective Junction 25 at Tramway in Glasgow, and Polmont Youth Theatre at HMYOI Polmont, the first youth theatre in a Scottish prison. Junction 25 were the recipients of a CATS Whiskers for outstanding contribution to Scottish theatre in 2015. She has co-authored A Beginners Guide to Devising Theatre with long term collaborator Jess Thorpe that was published by Bloomsbury in September 2019.

Tashi is also a visiting lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and her work in higher education has led her to develop an interest in supporting artists’ development and providing a critical framework for the creation of new work. Tashi is a partnering artist with American company Dance Exchange and is a trainer and facilitator for the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process. She is also part of the Federation of Scottish Theatre CRP facilitators network.

Chisao Hata

Chisao Hata is a performing artist, community organizer, and global citizen artist. Her work shares the Japanese-American story to communities from Hiroshima, Japan to Cuba, and New Mexico to Ontario, Oregon. As an arts educator, her perspectives are shared as an Oregon Humanities Conversation Leader and Vanport Mosaic Festival Stories in Movement artist. She originated Gambatte Be Strong, stories of Japanese-American displacement and resilience in Portland and is a partnering artist at the Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland.

John Johnson

John A Johnson is a Poet/Playwright and native Washingtonian. He is the founder and creator of Verbal Gymnastics Theater Company. Mr. Johnson holds a B.A in Theater Arts from The University of the District of Columbia. He has worked as a drama therapist in partnership with the District's Youth Services Center. Mr. Johnson is a published author, who has written and produced six plays that reflect and celebrate the culture of his native city Washington DC. He is a three-time Artist Fellow of the DC Arts Commission. His most recent contribution is to a radio project at American University WAMU 88.5 in conjunction with the Association of Independent Radio call “Anacostia Unmapped”, which captures the narratives of local residents in rapidly changing communities “East of the River” in Washington D.C. Mr. Johnson uses innovative forms of theater/storytelling to foster meaningful discussions about race, cultural preservation, and the effects of economic development in Washington, D.C.

Cassie Meador

Dance Exchange Executive Artistic Director

Cassie Meador (she/her/hers) is a choreographer, educator, writer and Executive Artistic Director of Dance Exchange. Her creative work builds ways for communities to be together in shared dialogue and critical reflection, and cultivates opportunities to work together across generations. Her performance projects explore questions central to our lives and time, and expand where dance comes to meet our shared world. In 2013 Cassie created the performance How To Lose a Mountain along a 500-mile walk, taking her from Washington, DC, to a mountaintop removal mining site in West Virginia to trace the impacts of the energy that fuel her home; Bricks and Bones, a performance series co-created with Paloma McGregor in 2015, responds to the erasure of Black lives and communities in Dallas, TX; in New Hampshire Avenue: This Is a Place To... , Cassie led a multi-year creative placemaking effort for Dance Exchange’s home community, in partnership with the City of Takoma Park; and currently through her Off-site/Insight: Stories from the Great Smoky Mountains, she is working with the National Park Service, leaders from the Cherokee community, and regional artists to build capacities to contend with the complexities that shape our relationship to the park land. Cassie has taught and created dances in communities throughout the U.S. and internationally in Japan, Canada, England, Ireland, and Guyana. She has worked extensively with the Girl Scouts, National Park Service, and USDA Forest Service to develop and enhance environmental curricula with the arts and encourage environmental stewardship through embodied learning. Her work with educational institutions, such as Wesleyan University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Michigan State University among others, has influenced educators and students to embrace a cross-disciplinary approach to artmaking, education, and social change. She was selected as an artist representative of Initiatives of Change to attend the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban, South Africa. Cassie is a 2017 graduate of Leadership Montgomery.

Amanda Newman

Dance Exchange Director of Communications and Partnering Artist

Amanda Newman (she/her/hers) is a dancer, social worker, community organizer, and cross-field collaborator. As Director of Communications, she believes deeply in the power of stories, images, and collaboration to deepen our understanding of ourselves, our world, and all that we are co-creating in it. As a Partnering Artist with Dance Exchange, Amanda facilitates classes and trainings as part of Dance On, and helps to manage the Organizing with Artists for Change initiative.

Originally from Utah, Amanda earned her BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah, but did her most important learning about dance and community while moving and making in museums, summer camps, living rooms, and parking lots. She first came to Dance Exchange in the 2014-15 season as a resident artist, youth programs facilitator, and communications coordinator. In that season, she was project manager, key facilitator, and performer in New Hampshire Avenue: This is a Place To.... Amanda then spent a year as a healthcare innovation fellow with Health for America at MedStar Health—an experience which affirmed her belief in artists as agents of change in all of our biggest, messiest institutions. Most recently, Amanda completed her master's in social work at Hunter College in New York. In addition to her work with Dance Exchange, Amanda is a teaching artist and project manager at Community-Word Project. She lives in Astoria, Queens, with her partner Nick and her dog Mac.

CJay Philip

CJay Philip is Artistic Director of Dance & Bmore, a Baltimore-based ensemble creating unique fusions of original music, movement, and spoken-word. They create socially conscious work that engage and invite audiences to celebrate life. Dance & Bmore also designs multi-generational community programs that seek to stimulate the imagination and strengthen relationships while building a sense of well being. Dance & Bmore are resident artists at the Waxter Senior Center and their Elder Arts programs serves hundreds of senior citizens throughout Baltimore. DAB's free virtual Elder Jam connects seniors from Baltimore to Atlanta and New York every 2nd Saturday of the month.

CJay's work in community programs has been recognized with a Baltimore Social Innovators Award, an Arts Advocate Award and a Champion of Courage Award. CJay is a Robert W. Deutsch Fellow and one of the first Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellows.

Maxine Stitzer-Hodge

I returned to a life-long love of song and dance toward the end of a long career in academic research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. At Hopkins, I was a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry with a specialty in addictions research. I retired in 2019 after a successful 44-year career. Retired life has both challenges and opportunities. Seeking out opportunities for seniors to sing and dance, I have performed with the Senior Star Showcase at Essex Community College, the Paint and Powder Club, of Baltimore, and am a member of the ShowTime Singers chorus based in Ellicott City, MD. I even dipped a toe into community theatre before Covid and I enthusiastically support the Dance & BMore Elder Arts program co-teaching regularly and performing with the DAB Ensemble. Other activities that round out life include travel, hiking, gardening, reading and learning more about performing arts and artists. I have a very supportive husband, and a step daughter who lives in a peaceful setting at Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland, where we love to visit.

Janine Tursini

Janine Tursini is Arts for the Aging’s Director & CEO and the leading force behind the organization’s pioneering directions and its national recognition for best practices, program design and outcomes: Under her tenure Arts for the Aging has been named a Model Program in Lifelong Learning by the National Endowment for the Arts, a Trailblazer by the Maryland Department of Aging and One of the Best D.C. Area Small Charities for Excellence, Impact and Cost-effectiveness by the Catalogue for Philanthropy. AFTA has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN News, and in the award-winning national PBS documentary film Do Not Go Gently. Janine is on the Applied Health Equity Education Council with the Rodham Institute of George Washington University (GWU), Maryland’s Age-Friendly Montgomery (County) Advisory Group, the Smithsonian Institution Dementia Programming Advisory Committee. She consults nationally on best practices in the growing field of creative aging. She has served on advisory boards for the GWU Center on Aging, Health, and Humanities, and the National Center for Creative Aging, and she is a member of Leadership Greater Washington class of 2018. Her article, A Person Who Is Becoming, is published in the Creativity & Human Development International e-Journal, and she has contributed to seminal industry resource guides including Creativity Matters: The Arts and Aging Toolkit and Bringing the Arts to Life: A Guide to the Arts and Long-Term Care.

Meet the 2022 Dance On Gathering Artists and Leaders