Dance and Theatre Faculty
Dance Faculty | Theatre Faculty
Dance Faculty
Carol Kyles Finley
Associate Professor of Dance, Director of Dance
Carol Kyles Finley serves as director of dance and artistic director of Meredith Dance Theatre. Her works have been performed at North Carolina State University, Ohio State University, the North Carolina Dance Festival tour, Third Avenue Performance Space in Columbus, the ACDFA Mid-Atlantic Regional Festival, Southeast Regional Festival and the National Festival in Washington, D.C. Her videodance works have been screened at Toronto's Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film, the New York Dance Films Association Festival and Tour, Festival Riccione in Italy, Wexner Center for the Arts and ODC Theatre in San Francisco. Finley creates staged work and videodances with Bill Brown for their company, Postcards Project Dance Company. In spring 2005 she received a Harry and Marion Eberly Faculty Development Award and in fall 2005 she was recognized by NCAAHPERD as the D.A.N.C.E. College Dance Educator of the Year.
Degrees Held : Bachelor of Environmental Design, Graphic Design, North Carolina State University; MFA in Dance, Choreography from Ohio State University
Courses Taught : Perspectives in Dance; Ballet I, II; Modern I, II; Improvisation I; Dance in Society; Participation in Choreographic Projects; Movement Fundamentals and Lab; Composition I; Music for Dance; Dance Repertory; Creative Arts Touring Company; Composition II; Meredith Dance Theatre
Contact : Weatherspoon 25, (919) 760-8015, finleyc@meredith.edu
Sherry Shapiro, Ed.D.
Professor of Dance, Coordinator of Dance Education and Director of Women's Studies
Sherry Shapiro has been a faculty member since 1989. She teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses focusing upon issues of cultural awareness, critical and creative thinking, and learning through experience. Her work has developed out of a concern with issues of imagination, the value of human difference and social responsibility. Committed to a vision of education as one that has the possibilities for developing a sense of community, democratic participation and compassionate awareness, she integrates critical theory and feminist and cultural studies. Shapiro advises the majors and minors in the program. She is the author of three books, Dance Power and Difference: Critical and Feminist Perspectives in Dance Education, Pedagogy and the Politics of the Body: A Critical Praxis, and Body Movements: Pedagogy, Politics and Social Change. She serves on boards of national and international professional organizations and is serving on the governing board of the National Women's Studies Association as a co-chair of the Program Administration and Development component of NWSA.
Degrees Held: B.A., M.A., Appalachian State University; Ed.D. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Courses Taught: Reading Women's Lives Introduction to Women's Studies, Crossing Borders: Women Making Change in a Global Society, Women's Studies Service Project, Research in Women's Studies, Our Bodies-Our Lives: Shaping Female Identity, Dance Research, Theory and Methods of Teaching K-6, 7-12, Reflective Teaching
Contact: Weatherspoon 15, (919) 760-2857, ShapiroS@meredith.edu
Talani Torres
Instructor of Dance
Talani Torres was the acting artistic director of The Miami Children's Dance Ensemble from 1991-2004. After co-owning The Dance Space in Miami for 10 years, she moved to North Carolina where she earned her MFA in choreography at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, receiving an Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistant award from UNCG for 2005-2006. Torres danced for several Miami-based modern choreographers including Lee Brooke, Leslie Neal and Jane Carrington. Torres was also a principle dancer for Mia Michaels' Miami Movement Dance Company from 1989-1994. Her commercial credits include guests spots on Sabado Gigante, TV commercials and a Gloria Estefan music video. Torres has acted as choreographer/guest teacher for Coconut Grove Playhouse, KIDVISION, Miami-Dade County Magnet Schools, New World School of the Arts and Danza Iluciones in Managua, Nicaragua. She has been presenting her work since 1993 and hopes to continue to do so for many more years. Her recent work includes finding relationships between digital art and dance. She is thrilled to be at Meredith College as she pursues her teaching, choreography and scholarly interests.
Degrees Held: Bachelor of Arts in psychology, Florida International University with a minor in dance; Master of Fine Arts in choreography University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
Courses Taught: Jazz I, Modern I, Dance In Society, Ballet II, Modern II, Jazz II, Dance Composition I, Improvisation II, Dance Repertory, Dance History, Performing Arts Administration
Contact: Weatherspoon 26, (919) 760-2827, torresta@meredith.edu
Alyson Colwell-Waber
Professor of Dance
Alyson Colwell-Waber has helped to build Meredith College's active dance program. She has been awarded two Dance Artist Project Grants from the North Carolina Arts Council, a Raleigh Arts Commission Emerging Artist Award, and a Pauline Perry Artistic Achievement Award. Colwell-Waber has been active with the North Carolina Dance Alliance, serving as a board member, officer and president.
Degrees Held: B.S., Pennsylvania State University; Master of Fine Arts in dance, Arizona State University
Courses Taught: Modern I, Modern II, Dance Composition I, Mind/Body Integration, Dance History
Contact: (919) 760-8388, colwella@meredith.edu.
Cindy Hoban
Yi Lu
Joan Nicholas-Walker
Cailen Waddell
Technical Director and Lighting Designer
Ken Ray Wilemon
Accompanist
Ken Ray Wilemon is a percussionist, composer and painter based in Raleigh. He has accompanied dance at Texas Christian University, University of Texas at Austin, Connecticut College, Hollins University, the American Dance Festival, and at the White Mountain Summer Dance Festival for the last 11 years. Wilemon has appeared with Stage West, Hip Pocket and Jubilee Theaters in Ft. Worth, Texas; performed with singers/songwriters Karen Tyler and Illene Weiss; periodically records with songwriter Val Davis in Vermont; recently created scores for seven dances at North Carolina State University; and is currently staff accompanist at Meredith College, Duke University and the Durham School of the Arts.
Theatre Faculty
Catherine B. Rodgers
Department Head, Professor of Theatre
Catherine B. Rodgers has acted professionally and directed regionally for the past 20 years. Recent productions include portraying Rose in Gypsy and directing After the Fall, for which she received the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Meritorious Directing Award, and No, No Nanette for Meredith Ensemble Theatre, and performing in NCSU's Barefoot in the Park in 2005. Rodgers enjoys working on the Meredith Center for Women in the Arts and is very proud of the theatre program as it expands with the licensure program and the musical theatre concentration.
Degrees Held: B.A. in religion and American civilization, Meredith College; M.A. in speech communication and theatre arts, Wake Forest University; and an MFA acting and directing, UNC-G
Contact: Jones 133, (919) 760-8586, rodgersc@meredith.edu
James E. Cuthrell
Assistant Professor
James Cuthrell joined the Meredith faculty in 2004, directly from the Tony Award winning Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. There he served as the stage supervisor and worked with nationally recognized director Michael Wilson, as well as Broadway and regional theatre designers and technicians. Cuthrell spent two seasons with the Charleston Stage Company in South Carolina, as the resident designer/technical director, where he mentored more than 60 students in scenery, lighting and costuming through the Theatre Wings High School Apprentice Program. He is also the technical theatre chair for the Center for Creative Youth, an intensive arts training program, at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Cuthrell has two seasons in the costume shop with the Tony Award winning Utah Shakespearean Festival. Regionally, he has worked with the Barter Theatre, The Lost Colony, and even spent some time in the entertainment department at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
Degrees Held: B.A. in technical theatre, Radford University, MFA in scenographic design, UNC-Greensboro
Contact: Jones 135, (919) 760-2891, cuthrell@meredith.edu
Steven Roten
Assistant Professor
Steven Roten is a professional actor and a member of the Actor's Equity Association. He is artistic director for Stillwater Theatre, a new professional theatre company in residence at Meredith College. He is also a proud member of the New River Dramatists, an organization that exists solely to support playwrights and screenwriters. Some of his film/TV credits include Follow the River, Jane and the Evil Spinstresses, Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, Madox One Metal Skin Panic. Stage credits include: George in Veronica Vavoom: Volcanologist, Players Club NYC, Jack Burden in All The King's Men (directed by Adrian Hall), George in Suddenly Last Summer (starring Diane Kagan), Daisy in Baby with the Bathwater, Malcome McLaren in Lipstick Traces, Guido Contini in Nine, and probably his favorite role, Frankenfurter in the Rocky Horror Show. His directing credits include Un Becoming, Ledge, Ledger, and the Legend for Stillwater Theatre; Gypsy, David's Redhaired Death, Nightingale, The Apple Tree, and Abraham and Isaac for Meredith College; and Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Applause Cary youth theatre.
Degrees Held: BFA, Western Carolina University; MFA in acting, UNC-Greensboro
Contact: Jones 134, (919) 760-8719, rotenjo@meredith.edu
Judy Dove
Elizabeth Grimes Droessler
