BFA, The Julliard School. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College. An independent dance artist, choreographer, teacher and repetiteur, Williams guest-taught in a variety of settings in 2020-21, choreographed two films for the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and made two commissioned dance films for the Katonah (NY) Museum of Art, where she recently premiered a new site-adaptive work, “Beauty Persists.” Her choreography has been produced by 92nd St Y, DanceNOW NYC at Joe’s Pub and Dance Theater Workshop, 10Hairy Legs, as well as by the Rivertown Artist’s Workshop, Barnspace, MIXT Co., Purchase College, Marymount Manhattan College, Connecticut College, and Interlochen Arts Academy. In addition to performing her own work, Williams was recently dancing with choreographer Rebecca Stenn and in Netta Yurashalmy’s Paramodernities project. In the early ’80s, Williams performed and toured internationally with the companies of Laura Glenn, Ohad Naharin, and Mark Haim; and in 1988, she joined the Mark Morris Dance Group—dancing for 10 years, touring worldwide, teaching, and appearing in several films, including Falling Down Stairs (with YoYo Ma), The Hidden Soul of Harmony, The Hard Nut, and Dido and Aeneas. She continues her affiliation with Morris as a guest performer (creating the role of Lady Capulet in Morris's 2009 Romeo and Juliet: On Motifs of Shakespeare), guest rehearsal director, and content specialist in the MMDG archives. Williams has staged Morris's work on the Purchase Dance Company, Vassar Repertory Company, Fieldston Dance Company, the Boston Ballet, and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and on students at The Juilliard School, George Mason University, Les Étés de la Danse (Paris), among many others. Williams has been Morris’s assistant in a variety of settings, including ballet, Broadway, and television. From 2000-2013, she served on the modern dance faculty of the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, SUNY, and was a guest lecturer at Connecticut College from 2016-2018 and at Hunter College and Marymount Manhattan College in 2018-2019. She has taught Dance for Parkinson’s Disease in Rye, NY, since 2011 and is on the renowned Dance for PD flagship teaching team. She taught professional-level ballet at the Gibney Dance Center for the last four years and is currently teaching ballet at Sarah Lawrence College and a yoga-based somatic practice at Purchase College and at Tovami Studio. Williams founded Megan Williams Dance Projects (MWDP) in the summer of 2016. MWDP was a DANCE NOW Commissioned Artist in 2018, premiering Williams’s first full evening work, “One Woman Show,” to great acclaim at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in NYC. In September 2018, MWDP performed a work-in-progress at the 92nd St Y Fridays at Noon series in a shared bill with Molissa Fenley and Claire Porter. MWDP performed an encore of “One Woman Show” in January 2019 at Joe’s Pub and took it on the road in April 2019. MWDP was part of the Dance Off the Grid series at the Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck, NY, in May 2019. Williams was an Artistic Partnership Initiative (API) Fellow at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University in August/September 2019. MWDP’s evening-length work, in collaboration with composer Eve Beglarian at Danspace Project, NYC, was scheduled for a March 2020 debut but is being rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. SLC, 2019–
Undergraduate Courses 2024-2025
Dance
Ballet I
Open, Component—Fall and Spring
DNCE 5510
Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.
Faculty
Ballet II
Open, Component—Fall and Spring
DNCE 5512
Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.
Faculty
Cultivating a Teaching Practice: Dance Pedagogy Now
Advanced, Component—Fall
DNCE 5508
In this course, we will explore varied entry points toward the creation and practice of a personal dance teaching philosophy and pedagogy. We will interrogate our varied and unique histories, values, patterns, cultures, and aesthetic desires, observing how they illuminate or limit our teaching goals. Our experience and assumptions around teaching and being taught will help us amplify and name integral skills and tools that support our work in dance/body/movement-based classrooms. How do we build a class architecture that nurtures growth? How do we create a safe and equitable space for reciprocal learning? How do we find a balance between planning and improvising? How do we clarify and hone our intentions while using clear language and communication? These questions and many more will ignite us to observe, support, and inspire one another as we imagine new and engaged approaches to our teaching practices.
Faculty
Graduate Courses 2024-2025
MFA Dance
Ballet I
Component—Fall and Spring
5510
Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.
Faculty
Ballet II
Component—Fall and Spring
5512
Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.
Faculty
Cultivating a Teaching Practice: Dance Pedagogy Now
Component—Fall
In this course we will explore varied entry points toward the creation and practice of a personal dance teaching philosophy and pedagogy. We will interrogate our varied and unique histories, values, patterns, cultures and aesthetic desires, observing how they illuminate or limit our teaching goals. Our experience and assumptions around teaching and being taught will help us amplify and name integral skills and tools that support our work in dance/body/movement-based classrooms.
How do we build a class architecture that nurtures growth? How do we create a safe and equitable space for reciprocal learning? How do we find a balance between planning and improvising? How do we clarify and hone our intentions while using clear language and communication? These questions and many more will ignite us to observe, support and inspire one another as we imagine new and engaged approaches to our teaching practices.
Faculty
Previous Courses
MFA Dance
Ballet
Component—Year
Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.
Faculty
- Barbara Forbes
- Megan Williams