PAMELA HANDMAN

Pamela Geber Handman is currently a Full Professor in the School of Dance at the University of Utah. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle with an emphasis in dance science and education, a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with an emphasis in performance and choreography, a certification in Carl Orff's teaching pedagogy for dance and music from Bloomingdale House of Music in New York City, a 200-hour Yoga teacher certification and is currently in the process of working on teaching certification for Pilates Reformer. Pamela has regularly been a student of various somatic forms, continuing to integrate somatic principles and practices within her own teaching. She has performed professionally with Sara Rudner, Wendy Perron, David Gordon, Fred Darsow and in works by Joanna Kotze, Stephen Koester, David Dorfman, Susan Marshall, Doug Varone, Mark Dendy, Zvi Gotheiner as well as reconstructions by Vaslav Nijinsky, Alwin Nikolais and Doris Humphrey. Pamela has performed duet works with partner, Eric Handman, including original and commissioned choreography. Pamela has had an ongoing fascination with experiential anatomy and somatic areas of study. As one of the co-founders of the Dance Kinesiology Teachers' Group in 2002 (later re-named the Dance Science and Somatics Educators) and a long-time member of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS), Pamela has hosted several conferences and workshops bringing together dance science and somatics educators to share educational ideas and resources for teaching dancers. Pamela has ongoing interests working with individuals who have special needs and mixed ability communities, Pamela organized and co-taught (alongside local writer, Melissa Bond), a workshop entitled "Jump Start": a dance and story-sharing workshop for individuals with Down Syndrome and their families for which a documentary film was created, funded by both the Utah's State Office of Education and the Council for Dee Fellows. Pamela received another Council for Dee Fellows grant in collaboration with Professor Angela Smith, Professor Kristen Paul, and Utah Presents, co-developing a week-long series of workshops and discussions about disability and the arts, centered around Axis Dance Company, a professional dance company including members who are physically disabled. Pamela actively seeks out community collaborations, projects, and writes for grants in order to continue these types of projects linking the University community with off-campus organizations and schools.