Martha Hill Dance Fund, Ltd.

American Dance Festival Dean Emeritus Martha Myers has been a teacher, dancer, choreographer, film producer, television personality, and writer. She served as the Director of Women’s News for WBNS-TC in Columbus, Ohio, and was co-producer, writer and narrator for a collection of programs called “A Time to Dance” which were extensively used for dance courses in colleges and universities. Ms. Myers joined the dance faculty at Connecticut College in 1967, founded its dance department in 1971, and led the department until 1992. One of her first important moves at Connecticut College (which was all-women when she joined the faculty) was to gather some men from Wesleyan University to join female students in her new ground-breaking initiative The Experimental Movement Lab which focused on improvisation and the idea of “play” through movement. In 1969, she was named Dean of the American Dance Festival School, where she pioneered the study of dance medicine and somatics as well as mentoring literally thousands of dancers. She retired from ADF in 2000. In 2002, she received the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching. Ms Myers received an undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and an M.S. from Smith College.

John-Mario Sevilla, director of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, hails from Ka'ehu, Maui. He also teaches at New York University Steinhardt. He was the Director of 92Y Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) and the Education Department at New York City Ballet. John-Mario has danced in the companies of Pilobolus (dance captain), Rebecca Stenn, From the Horse’s Mouth, Daman Harun, Erin Dudley, Lisa Giobbi, Nikolais and Louis, Shapiro and Smith, Janis Brenner, Anna Sokolow and Bill Cratty. John-Mario also performed with juggler Michael Moschen, film animator Laura Margulies, drag artist Sherry Vine, poet John Unterecker and Navajo sandpainter-healer Walking Thunder. John-Mario’s choreography has appeared in New York City at LaMaMa, NYU Steinhardt, Movement Research at Judson Church, 92Y Tribeca, Dance Theatre Workshop, Columbia University, ABC No Rio, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, The Asia Society, Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, as well as at universities throughout the country. John-Mario is dance student of Betty Jones and a student of the hula with Hōkūlani Holt of Pā‘ū O Hi‘iaka and June Kaililani Tanoue. He has an MA in Dance and Dance Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an MFA in Dance Performance from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.