biography Ashley Thorndike anticipates completing a PhD in Dance Studies at the Ohio State University in Summer 2009 after course work ranging from Cultural Studies in Education to Dance in Times of Turbulence to Videodance. Disinclined to limit her interests to one discipline, she has decided to forge ahead with a life as a dancer, choreographer, scholar, educator, and citizen. Combining her work in college student development and dance, her dissertation research concerns the epistemological development of undergraduate dancers. In Spring 2009 she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College. |
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After earning a BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah and spending a year studying dance in New York, Ashley moved to the artistic haven, Charlottesville, VA. She worked for four years at the University of Virginia Women's Center where, after earning an MEd in Counseling, she managed the day-to-day operations of the Young Women Leaders Program. UVa's most racially and sociologically diverse student organization, this psychoeducational service-learning program matches college women with in-need middle school girls in a yearlong structured mentoring program. In Charlottesville, Ashley was a resident artist at the McGuffey Art Center and co-director of Prospect Dance Group. |
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Ashley has recently performed at Movement Research in New York and Green Street Studios in Boston, in Annie Kloppenberg's Indelible Marks and at the Theatre Building in Chicago with Beserra Dance Theatre's Jenkins Farm Project. At present she is creating a new work with dancers Laurie Atkins, Meghan Durham-Wall, and Annie Kloppenberg in collaboration with musician Peter V. Swendsen and artist Adina Filipoi at the Experimental Movement and Media Arts Lab at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design. |
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