In The Spotlight ...
Dr. Melinda Copel
Instructor of Dance
mcopel@mc3.edu
Dr. Melinda Copel is Coordinator of Dance at Montgomery County Community College. Copel holds a doctorate in dance from Temple University and certification in Elementary Labanotation from the Dance Notation Bureau. She has studied a broad range of dance styles including modern dance at the Martha Graham School and ballet at the Finis Jhung School of Ballet in New York City. She has performed with several dance companies and independent choreographers in Vermont and Massachusetts including Dana Holby, Patricia Wilson and Dancers, New Dance Theater, and Ray Evans Dance, Inc. While in Vermont, she continued her studies in choreography and performance at Smith College, and she performed in a reconstruction of Doris Humphrey’s Shakers restaged by Helen Priest Rogers.
Copel’s articles and reviews have been published in Choreography and Dance, Wesleyan University Press’s Studies in Dance History series, Dance Research Journal, the Pennsylvania Journal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance and the Philadelphia Dance Alliance Newsletter, and she has been invited to speak at Temple University and Drexel University.
She worked on the National Dance Education Organization's Research in Dance Education project and served as research consultant for the video documentary Limón: A Life Beyond Words which aired on PBS's American Masters series. Copel directed and choreographed for Escape Velocity Dance Theater at Ursinus College, and she founded and currently directs and choreographs for the Dance Performance Ensemble at Montgomery County Community College.
Copel received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the restaging of Yvonne Rainer’s “Chair/Pillow Dance” and “Couples” from Continuous Project Altered Daily, which will be performed at Montgomery County Community College in April 2009.
