Fac Chats

In this Fac Chat, three Performing Arts faculty members from the Dance Program, Associate Professor Rogelio Lopez Garcia, Associate Professor Jia Wu, and Adjunct Associate Professor Shaunna Vella, will discuss their work around dance, social and cultural identities, diversity, social justice and embodiment. This will be an interactive workshop that will invite participants into a creative process investigating these embodied areas of research and study. 

Associate Professor Rogelio Lopez is a dancer, choreographer, educator, costume/ set and lighting designer. His voice stems from his Queer, Immigrant, Mexican-American, “lower class background”, that neither denies, nor engulfs the person and artist that he is.  He established his dance company, Rogelio Lopez and Dancer (RL&D) in 2015. Rogelio Lopez believes that dance speaks a universal language that pulls at the core of human existence.  By letting the body speak, we create a “body literacy” that generates a real and present connection between people.

Associate Professor Jia Wu (She/her/hers) is choreographer, performer and dance filmmaker.  Her daring kinetics and provocative works apply Asian dance vocabularies and aesthetics to explore modern issues such as diaspora, feminism, and multiculturalism.

Adjunct Associate Professor Shaunna Vella (She/her/hers) is a queer-femme artist and educator that works from an embodied praxis of intersectional queer feminist theory and popular culture performance studies. Her performance creations, teaching and community building center on radical queer identities that subvert and challenge outdated and binary ideologies around gender, sexuality, and personal expression. She holds a Master’s of Fine Arts in Dance: Creative Practice and Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology and Performing Arts from Saint Mary’s College of California.