1111 16th Street, NW, Ste. 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 778-1190
info@dancemetrodc.org
Dance/MetroDC Staff
Director
As a director, teacher, facilitator and arts practitioner, Peter DiMuro has woven a career over a thirty year span, bridging classical, post modern, social forms and jazz styles, while splicing theatre and text, image and movement into performance works that reveal extraordinary and humane aspects of the world around us.
Peter's facilitation and teaching is informed by three decades of creating performance and dance works involving subject matter of wide ranging social concern and their evolutions over time: the challenges facing families and HIV/AIDS awareness was explored in residency engagement activity and through the repertory of his Boston based company, Peter DiMuro Performance Associates (1990-2000), while an enveloping scope of world-wide communities was investigated through his fifteen-year collaboration as a performing member of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (1993- 2008). Peter left the Dance Exchange as Producing Artistic Director this fall.
As a performer he has appeared in a broad range of modern master's works: Ted Shawn, Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor, Lucinda Childs, David Dorfman, Mark Taylor, Mark Morris, Bebe Miller, as well as the works of Liz Lerman. He was a founding member of Gerri Houlihan’s Boston Dance Project, a veteran of Concert Dance Company of Boston and a guest soloist with Boston Ballet, appearing as Drosselmeier in "The Nutcracker. "
Recent works include the national tours of original dance/theater works created under the auspices of the Dance Exchange, including the docu-dances of intergenerational gay,lesbian,bi-sexual, transgendererd lives in “Near/Far/In/Out” and the alternative-family inspired “Funny Uncles”. Most recent is a commission from VSA Arts for the Washington area 2007 Shakespeare Festival: “The Farthest Earth From Thee” was created for a cast of all ages and all abilities, including adults survivors of polio and “wheeled” dancers (wheel-chair as primary mode of movement through space).
His work has appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Danceplace and Church Street locally and commissioned by the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts, The Florida Dance Festival, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, The Bates Dance Festival, Auras Dance Theatre (Lithuania), Boston Dance Umbrella and several university dance and theatre programs. His choreography appears in a nationally aired television commercial for the National Institute on Aging. Regional theatre credits include Theatre J, the Folger and Open Circle Theatre.
Peter has been artist in residence, teaching social workers for VSA Arts in Hong Kong, creating new work to a score of Rachmaninoff at Point Park University, facilitating graduate students’ choreographic laboratories at American University, as a few examples. He taught several summers at the American Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival, designed and facilitated the Massachusetts’ Cultural Council’s Elder Arts Initiative, a mutual mentoring program for artists and caregivers working with seniors.
Peter has spoken on creative process and community arts practice at including keynotes for the National GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network) Conference, state arts councils in Oklahoma and New Hampshire and as a guest of the National Dance Academy/Mexico City and Firkin Crane Institute/Cork Ireland. He has adjudicated for several American College Dance Festival Association regional gatherings.
Peter was named a White House Millennial Artist in 2000, a 1995 Mayor of Boston/ProArts Public Service in the Arts Award recipient, and has received grants from the National Performance Network, the Artists’ Foundation and Cultural Council, both of Massachusetts, the National Endowment for the Arts. He received an MFA in Dance from Connecticut College under Martha Myers; a BFA in Theatre from Drake University, with continued study in New York, Boston and at the American Dance Festival.
Originally from Round Lake, IL (population, circa 1970: 250), he is the youngest of three children, the son of the Chief of Police (Dad) and a machinist /gal Friday (Mom). He has a niece named for the Crayola crayon, Sienna. He lives in Washington, DC.
Cheryl is a professional dancer and event coordinator. She holds a degree in Communication Arts from Salisbury State University. She worked as a Conference Coordinator for Marymount University for five years and helped entertain prestigious clients including Oscar de la Renta, Kay Unger, Carolina Herrera, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, and Helen Thomas among many other speakers, honorees, poets and guest lecturers. For the past 9 years, Cheryl has studied Turkish Oriental, Turkish Romani and Arabic dance. She currently dances and teaches in the DC metro area. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the World Music Folklife Center and has been involved as a volunteer and advocate in many arts & humanitarian organizations.
Cheryl is our Program Associate of External Communications, joining Dance/MetroDC in the late fall of 2008.
Programs Associate
Roxann Morgan Rowley completed her MFA in dance at George Mason University and her BA in dance at George Washington University. She has worked in the DC Metro area as an artist, performer, teacher and administrator for the last ten years. Along with being the current Project Assistant at Dance/Metro DC she also teaches for Joy of Motion Dance Center and is co-Artistic Director of Next Reflex Dance Collective with Erika Schonemann Surma.