Angela Harris
Angela Harris is the Executive Artistic Director of Dance Canvas, Inc., a career development organization for emerging choreographers. A graduate of The Baltimore School for the Arts, Angela trained at Dance Theater of Harlem, School of the Hartford Ballet & Eglevsky Ballet. She attended City College of New York, earning a B.A. in Journalism, while training at Steps on Broadway. Angela danced professionally with The Georgia Ballet, Columbia City Ballet and Urban Ballet Theater. Choreography credits: The Georgia Ballet, Ballet Lubbock and Oklahoma Arts Institute. Theater choreographic credits: Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Song & Dance and the Suzi award winning Bridges of Madison County (Aurora Theatre). Angela was an Inaugural National Visiting Fellow at the School of American Ballet. She received a SDCF Observership and worked with Tony Award winning, Susan Stroman, on the Broadway Lab of Little Dancer. Angela has developed dance programs for recording artist, Usher's New Look Foundation, and the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, and has taught on the dance faculty at Dekalb School of the Arts and Oklahoma Arts Institute. She received the National Emerging Leader Award from Americans for the Arts/American Express. Angela is currently on faculty at Emory University and Spelman College.
Jeffery Duffy
Mr. Duffy received his BFA from The Juilliard School. He has instructed dance locally, nationally, and internationally. Consultant at New York University’s School of Professional Studies, Pebblebrook High School, Braswell Arts Center in Basel, Switzerland; MOVE(NYC), Spelman College, Atlanta Ballet School, Lou Conte Dance Studio, DanceMakerz of Atlanta, Central Gwinnett High School, and Eglevsky Ballet. National Tours: Charles Lee in HAMILTON (Hollywood Pantages Theater); Ensemble Swing: HAMILTON (CIBC Theater); Choreographer: First Deep Breath (National Black Theater) written by Lee Colston. Fight Choreographer: The Color Purple (Byers Theater). TV and Film: A Jazzman’s Blues (Netflix), Fox New Year’s Party with Steve Harvey. Princess Grace Fellowship Recipient; Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Certified GYROTONIC® Instructor.
La'Toya Jackson
LA’TOYA PRINCESS JACKSON is a writer, performing artist, dance and music researcher, and historian on African American performance. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and Harvard University. With a focus in black performance studies, her specialized research is on Blacks in ballet and dance history, the Black ballet aesthetic, and Black female identity in contemporary music and pop culture. Intersecting studies in the Harvard Dance Program, the Department of Music, and the Theater, Dance, Media department at Harvard, her interdisciplinary focus includes the study of music, dance, and performance. As a graduate student at Harvard, she engaged in performance research under the direction of senior faculty in the Theater, Dance, Media department. She wrote her thesis on the history of classical black ballet companies in the United States entitled Black Swans Shattering the Glass Ceiling: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of Historically Black Ballet Companies from Katherine Dunham to Arthur Mitchell. She also presented a critical study on black female identity and misogynoir in popular music and culture in which she researched the musicological impact of black female artists in contemporary pop culture. She graduated from Harvard University in 2019 with a Masters Of Liberal Arts degree in Dramatic Arts from the Harvard Extension School. She has worked as a professional in the ballet field with Boston Ballet and has operated ballet outreach programs in the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta and Boston. She was also the Residence Artist for Harvard College's First Year Arts Program for four years and a choreographer in the Pathways to Performance program at MOBBallet’s 2022 symposium. She is the writer and producer of Vanity Lane, an original fairytale that highlights the beauty within the African diaspora. The full-length ballet debuted at Harvard University in 2018. She was also the historian for Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet and presented her research at the inaugural MOBBallet Symposium. In 2023, she founded LaPrincess Ballet Co with the goal of providing quality ballet training and access to BIPOC dance.