FSU School of Dance Welcomes New Faculty
The Florida State University School of Dance would like to welcome our new faculty, Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Gwen Welliver.
Joséphine Garibaldi
Associate Professor and Chair, Joséphine A. Garibaldi has enjoyed a great success as both an educator and artist. In 2004 Joséphine built Barefoot Studios, an interdisciplinary dance studio, art gallery, performance space, and home base for two performance companies, and was owner and director until its restructuring into the nonprofit organization Barefoot Collective, in 2009. Barefoot Studios received recognition from public commissions, such as the Tacoma Arts Commission and the Piece County Arts Commission. Professor Garibaldi has a published both peer-reviewed and invited works in major journals and articles in-press such as Global Corporeality: Collaborative Choreography in Digital Space. She has received over $100,000 in grants and awards and has completed international residencies in Finland, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Southeast Asia, and most recently as 2014 Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Contemporary Dance at the Latvian Academy of Culture in Riga, Latvia.
Garibaldi has collaboratively devised over 20 original performance, installation and digital works including Stories from the Park, Grass is Green, and LIVE in Riga, Latvia; The Rule of Life and Appartengono in Assisi, Italy; Cagevent: Sometimes it works, Sometimes it doesn’t Helsinki, Finland; the contemporary opera Double Blind Sided and the permanent 5500′ environmental installation Birch Loops in Hameenkyrö, Finland.
Currently artistic director of Callous Physical Theatre, Joséphine was the founder of Omulu Capoeira Sul in Los Angeles and past director of Omulu Capoeira Performance Group in San Francisco, has produced and directed site-specific performance festivals SiteWorks: Dance on Tour; SiteWorks 2006, SiteWorks 2009, Train and Big Dance/Little Space and served as past director of dance at Idaho State University where she authored the BA in Dance Performance and Choreography. Additional faculty appointments include Southeast Missouri State University, Luther College, Alma College, Loyola Marymount University, and CSU Dominguez Hills.
Garibaldi’s teaching areas include Contemporary Dance, Composition, Physical Theatre, Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Arts Management, Dance Technology, Capoeira. Her research agenda includes devising, intermedial performance, environmental installation, and site-based performance.
For more information visit the Callous Physical Theatre website.
Gwen Welliver
Assistant Professor Gwen Welliver is an award-winning choreographer and dancer known for her longstanding work with some of the leading names in modern and contemporary dance. A true veteran of the dance world, Welliver has performed with Doug Verone and Dancers (1990-2000) and the Trisha Brown Company (2000 – 2007), where she also served as rehearsal director. Ms. Welliver taught for New York Live Arts, Barnard College, Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence College, Tisch School of the Arts and continues to teach for the American Dance Festival.
Welliver’s choreography has been presented both on the stage and in gallery settings at venues including Center for Performance Research, Dance Theater Workshop, La Ma Ma, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Museum of Arts and Design, and New York Live Arts. Most recent choreographic successes include What A Horse! presented as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in New York and the world premiere of the opera Paradise Interrupted by composer Huang Ruo for the Spoleto Festival USA, both works presented just last month.
As Rehearsal Director for Trisha Brown, she maintained Brown’s extensive repertory, directed the revival of Brown’s seminal works for the touring exhibition Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue 1961–2001, and oversaw Brown’s operatic choreography at La Monnaie and Festival d’Aix. Welliver’s own choreography for opera premiered in a contemporary production at the Spoleto Festival USA 2015.
Welliver received a Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance Award) for Sustained Achievement for her work with Doug Varone. Ms. Welliver joins an already prestigious faculty in the School of Dance and is the third Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance Award) winner on the faculty. Jawole Zollar, the Director of Urban Bush Women has two Bessies for her choreographic work, and Carla Peterson, Director of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and recent Director of New York Live Arts, has one in recognition of her leadership in the field.
Teaching has been a central part of Welliver’s research and practice for decades. She has taught in a wide range of settings — including academic, conservatory, cultural centers, and dance festivals — on four continents. Professor Welliver’s areas of teaching include contemporary dance, improvisation, choreography, and composition. Of particular interest our her research inquiries into pedagogical experimentation and modernist diagrams. Welliver holds an MFA from Bennington College.