Welcome to TDPS, Professor Crystal Davis!

It is with enormous pleasure that we share the appointment of a new Assistant Professor of Dance, Crystal U. Davis to the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, beginning in the fall of 2017.

It is with enormous pleasure that we share the appointment of a new Assistant Professor of Dance, Crystal U. Davis to the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, beginning in the fall of 2017.

Crystal U. Davis is a movement artist and scholar born and raised in North Carolina. Her work has been renowned by an eclectic community of adjudicators and audiences from Donald McKayle to Peggy Hackney to the royal family of Jodhpur, India. Ms. Davis earned her B.A. in Religious Studies with a minor in Dance from Emory University, her M.F.A. in Dance from Texas Woman’s University, her Masters in Performance Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and her Laban-Bartenieff Movement Analysis certification from Integrated Movement Studies. 

As a performer her work spans an array of genres from Modern Dance companies including Notes in Motion to East Indian dance companies including Nayikas Dance Theater Company to her own choreography and performances at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She has performed both her post-modern works and classical and folk forms of India and Africa across the country and abroad. 

As an independent artist, Ms. Davis founded a movement consulting company called Movement Artistry Project (M.A.P.) where she has worked in a variety of educational settings as a teacher, performer, and educational consultant. She has contributed her expertise in dance and somatic movement education to the Lincoln Center Institute, the board of the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association, the National Association of Independent Schools and the National Dance Education Organization. Her academic research focuses on the relationship between belief systems and movement. Her most recent creative work centers around the incongruities present between our daily behaviors and belief systems.

Welcome to TDPS, Professor Davis!