School of Dance Welcomes New Faculty & Chairperson

Gwen Welliver

The FSU School of Dance is pleased to announce that award winning dancer, choreographer, and master teacher, Gwen Welliver, will be joining the faculty fall 2015. Ms. Welliver is a multi-faceted artist and a true veteran of the dance world, having performed with Doug Verone and Dancers (1990-2000) and the Trisha Brown Company (2000 – 2007), where she also came to serve as rehearsal director.  Ms. Welliver has taught for New York Live Arts, Barnard College, Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence College, Tish School of the Arts and continues to teach for the American Dance Festival. Ms. Welliver’s 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. Gwen will be teaching contemporary movement techniques, choreography and composition classes.

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.

Josephine Garibaldi

The School of Dance will also be welcoming a new chairperson, Joséphine Garibaldi. Professor 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 Latvia where she completed a Fulbright in 2014.

Joséphine A. Garibaldi comes to FSU from Idaho State University School of Performing Arts in the College of Arts and Letters where she served as Director of Dance. At Idaho State Professor Garibaldi authored the recently launched Dance major and developed 13 new courses including World Dance/Local Identity, Performance and Society, Aesthetic Issues in Dance, Elements of Movement, Dance Basics, Capoeira: The Art of Survival, and Dance Management and Production. In collaboration with the International Programs Office and IT at ISU, and the Latvian Academy of Culture, Associate Professor Garibaldi developed an international choreographic project in which Latvian and ISU students worked together in real time in digital space to create an original choreographic work. Her interdisciplinary skills in technical software as well as design, technical, and theater management make her a well-rounded and competent educator.