David Anthony is an Educational Specialist at Belle Isle Nature Center, where he creates engaging programs, including Nature Tots and the Belle Isle Nature Walk. For this project, he led several nature walks on Belle Isle for the middle school students. His passion is connecting people with nature through hikes, tours, and experiences that create a sense of wonder. David has worked with many schools, community groups and government agencies including Detroit Public Schools, Royal Oak Public Schools, Development Center, Matrix Head Start, United States Forest Service and the Michigan Department of Nature Resources.
Luke Grange is an Educational Specialist at Belle Isle Nature Center, where he is an established leader and facilitator of informal education. His specializations include student-centered learning, environmental and place-based education, and Project Based Learning. For this project, he assisted with the workshops for the middle school students and arranged transportation for the students.
Amy Greene, the Nature Centers Director for the Belle Isle Nature Center/Detroit Zoological Society, facilitated introductions between Belle Isle and Beyond team members and shared ideas about what works best in partnerships and collaborations with Detroit schools.
Christine McNulty, Curator of Education, Fine and Performing Arts for the Detroit Zoological Society, served as a liaison with Belle Isle Nature Center staff members and other project team members to assist with facilitating the Belle Isle and Beyond project.
Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Big Red Wall Dance Company:
Erika 'Red' Stowall is an award-winning dance artist residing in Detroit, MI. She is the founder and artistic director of the Big Red Wall Dance Company in Detroit and was on the dance faculty of the Detroit Academy of Arts and Science (DAAS) 2014-2019.For the Belle Isle and Beyond project, she facilitated workshops with her middle school students from DAAS and was a dancer/choreographer in the June performances. She is currently the dance teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Detroit. She is a recipient of the Kresge Artist Fellowship, Applebaum’s Emerging Art Award as well as Fulbright Hays GPA Study Abroad grant, awarded through the University of Detroit Mercy. Stowall uses her training in modern, jazz, and ballet, combined with her background in West African dance as the foundation of her work. Her work is based on her life in Detroit, representation of black stories, and advocating for black women's voices. Stowall sees her art as a calling and is passionate about creating performance pieces which invite conversation on safe space for women of color, restoration, and positive narratives/images of black communities. She is a BFA Dance alumna of University of Michigan.
Oiya Lowe is a freelance movement artist. She served as a dancer/choreographer for this project. She was a member for five years of FlyGround, a Philadelphia-based company led by Lela Aisha Jones. Since returning to her hometown of Detroit, Oiya has performed in works by Penny Godboldo, Erika Stowall, Paulette Brockington, as well as her own. She works with the youth of community organizations as an instructor and rehearsal director. She also assists in healing spaces for women using meditation and dance.
Marsae Mitchell is a dancer and educator and served as a dancer/choreographer for this project. She is currently an MFA candidate in Dance at U-M. She studied at The Ailey School in New York and received her BFA in Dance from Marygrove College, where she received an "Outstanding Dancer of the Year" award. Marsae has performed and taught throughout the US. She is the 2016 recipient of the Kresge Art Foundation's Gilda Award for her work as the lead choreographer and co-producer of My Hair, My Story, My Glory, an artistic narrative on the history and culture of hair expressed through poetry, music, and dance. She is motivated by the belief that it is an artist's responsibility to engage, empower, educate, and entertain.
Danielle Williams studied dance at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School and Marygrove College. She joined the Big Red Wall Dance Company in 2015, and is working toward her certification as a Katherine Dunham technique teacher. She served as a dancer/choreographer for this project.
Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences middle school student participants:
Dr. Sara Adlerstein-Gonzalez, Associate Research Scientist, U-M's School for Environment and Sustainablity, is a visual artist and an applied ecologist and who explores the connections between art and science. She collaborated on the development of this project and co-led several of the workshops for the middle school students. As a scientist, she investigates processes at the ecosystem level using statistical modeling. Her main interest in research is to understand ecological processes and population dynamics of aquatic organisms at the ecosystem level, in particular those aspects that are relevant to resource management. Recently she has been investigating spatial and temporal scales needed to study the spatial distribution of fish abundance and obtain indices of abundance of fish populations in marine and freshwater ecosystems. Since fish, as other aquatic organisms, cannot be directly observed, large-scale population studies must rely on analysis of data from scientific surveys or commercial operations. The analysis of this information requires specialized statistical modeling. Currently Alderstein-Gonzalez’s focus is in the Great Lakes.
Patty Branam, costume designer for Belle Isle and Beyond, has been designing and producing costumes for dance and theater companies in the Ann Arbor area for over twenty years. A staff member in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance costume shop, she has designed for numerous faculty and student dance projects at the university. She has also worked as a costumer on several professional films, including the feature film Whip It.
Geoffrey Brown served as sound engineer for the performances. He received a BFA in Performing Arts Technology from U-M.
Alexandria Davis, received her MFA in Dance from U-M. She served as a dancer/choreographer and marketing assistant for this project. She is a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher from Gainesville, Florida. She received her Associate of Arts degree in dance from Santa Fe College in 2011, where she was a member of the Dance Theater of Santa Fe. She holds a BFA in Dance Performance and a certificate in Dance in Medicine from University of Florida. She has worked with several renowned artists including Sonia Calero-Alonzo, Alora Haynes, Rodney A. Brown, Trent Williams jr., Mohamed Dacosta and Mouminatou Camara. Alexandria is a dance activist and social justice advocate dedicated to community engagement and performing arts enrichment.
Jessica Fogel, Professor Emerita of Dance, is a founding member and artistic director of Ann Arbor Dance Works, the resident dance company of U-M's Department of Dance, where she taught for 35 years. She served as the project director for Belle Isle and Beyond. Her roles in the project included leading the dance workshops; choreographing the dance We're All Connected in collaboration with the DAAS middle school students; serving as artistic director and a choreographer of the site dance performance Belle Isle and Beyond, which featured a collaboration between Ann Arbor Dance Works and Detroit's Big Red Wall Dance Company; and developing the art exhibit about the project in collaboration with Sara Adlerstein and Samantha Plouff. Fogel's choreography has been produced nationally and internationally since 1974. She spent a decade in NYC where she performed with several companies and was artistic director of Jessica Fogel and Dancers. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Michigan Council for Arts, ArtServe Michigan, the Cultural Council Foundation of New York, and numerous other sources. In recent years she has created several large-scale interdisciplinary site dance projects that promote empathy for the environment, drawing inspiration from the stories embedded in rural and urban landscapes.
Tessa Fornari is pursuing a bachelor's degree in Sound Engineering at University of Michigan while working as a sound effects artist, music producer, and audio installation developer for the university's Auxiliary Marketing department. She served as a composer for this project. She is also a vocalist, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist who produces music independently under the alias "Allium".
Bob Grese was Director of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. He served as a consultant for this project. A Professor Emeritus of U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability, his teaching and research involve ecologically-based landscape design and management that respects the cultural and natural history of a region. Grese is particularly interested in the restoration and on-going management of urban wilds and the role such lands can play in re-connecting children and families with nature. He has long been fascinated by the work of early designers such as Jens Jensen and Ossian Cole Simonds who borrowed from the native landscape in their work, as there is much to be learned about their designs and their fate over time. He has a growing interest in green roofs and other low impact design strategies.
Michael Gurevich is Associate Professor in the Department of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance, where he teaches courses in physical computing, electronic music performance and the history and aesthetics of media art. He served as a composer for the Belle Isle and Beyond project and also led a sound recording workshop for the middle school students. His highly interdisciplinary research employs quantitative, qualitative, humanistic, and practice-based methods to explore new aesthetic and interactional possibilities that can emerge in performance with real-time computer systems. Other research areas include network-based music performance, computational acoustic modeling of bioacoustic systems, and electronic music performance practice. His creative practice explores many of the same themes, through experimental compositions involving interactive media, sound installations, and the design of new musical interfaces.
Sarah Kalikow received her M.A. from University of Michigan School for Environmental and Sustainability. She assisted Dr. Adlerstein in developing and facilitating the visual art workshop with the middle school students for this project.
Samantha Plouff received her B.A. in Art and Design from U-M with a focus on photography and sustainable textile design and a B.A. Program in the Environment with a focus on sustainable urban food systems. She assisted with the exhibit design, performance program, and production crew for this project. In her free time she advocates for animal welfare with the Michigan Animal Respect Society and does photoshoots with SHEI Magazine.
Mariah Stevens: Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Mariah Stevens is a senior pursuing a dual degree in dance and mechanical engineering at U-M. She served as a dancer/choreographer for this project. She has been dancing since the age of 4, and grew up going to Belle Isle with her family. At U-M, she has gained performance experience as a dancer in Lenard Foust's thesis work, Kandis Terry's senior concert, and University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance Collage Concert.
Mario Virchareceived a Masters of Fine Arts in Dance at University of Michigan. He also has a MA in dance of the National University of Costa Rica and was a member of the National Dance Company of Costa Rica 2010-2018. He served as a dancer, videographer, and workshop assistant for this project. Mario has conducted guest artist residencies in the departments of Modern Dance of the University of Utah and University of Georgia, USA and has been a guest choreographer and performer in CORE Concert Dance Company's annual season performances, held in Athens, Georgia 2008-2011 and 2016. He was a guest artist with the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies at U-M in 2016. His works are part of the repertory of the National Dance Company and Dance Company Chamber Danza UNA in Costa Rica. He has toured as a dancer and teacher in major festivals of dance throughout North and South America and Europe. Mario has directed his own choreographic projects, Mario VirchaDanza, since 2011.
Florence Woo: A native of Hong Kong, Florence Woo graduated from University of Michigan with a dual degree in Dance and Biomolecular Science. She served as a web designer for this project. At U-M, Florence danced in works choreographed by Meredith Monk, Ohad Naharin, and Shannon Gillen/VIM VIGOR. She was the choreographer and movement director for Children's Corner Ballet, a collaborative music ensemble and dance project, with components of educational workshops at Tappan Middle School and Skyline High School. This project culminated in a final performance that was performed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Stage Manager:
Maddy Rager : A dancer and choreographer based in Detroit, MaddyRager served as stage manager for the project. Maddy received her BFA in Dance from University of Michigan, and is also an alumna of Interlochen Arts Academy.