Creative Aging Workshop for Teaching Artists

Melita Belgrave, Ph.D. MT-BC is an associate professor of music therapy at ASU. She has presented her research on older adults and intergenerational programming at regional, national, and international conferences. Prior to her appointment at Arizona State University, Belgrave taught in the music therapy program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. While at ASU, Belgrave currently teaches undergraduate and graduate music therapy courses, serves as the advisor for the music therapy student organization, and has been appointed as the administrator of the Arizona State University Music Therapy Clinic.

Trisha Burrough has been working in the visual arts since 1991. While working as an interior designer, she found herself drawn to clay. It was a natural transition for her to continue to combine color, texture and pattern together. Today, she uses clay as her primary language to express her appreciation for the beauty in nature that surrounds us. Trisha believes that nature is very healing and encourages us to stay in touch with our inner child.  As a visual arts teacher and Outreach facilitator, she enjoys exploring art with others as a road to empowerment.

Elizabeth Johnson is a choreographer, dancer, and educator with a focus in socially engaged dance practices. Elizabeth connects communities through choreography, creating dance that promotes civic dialogue, and designing participatory experiences that apply artistic practices in multiple contexts. She has a particular interest in working with youth and elders, developing embodied structures for science learning, and promoting leadership development through the arts. Elizabeth holds a BA in Dance with a minor in Theater from Connecticut College and a MFA from Arizona State University. She has studied at London Contemporary Dance School, taught and performed internationally, and was the Associate Artistic Director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in Metro DC for over a decade. She worked at Arizona State University for five years as the Coordinator of Socially Engaged Practice, collaborating with an interdisciplinary team to create new curricula focused on training artists to work in, and engage with, diverse communities. She is currently based in Chicago and working with Columbia College Chicago and Dance Exchange while doing projects with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Hubbard Street Dance, and Mesa Arts Center.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” and a 2011 United States Artists Ford Fellowship in Dance. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists, resulting in both research and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and led it until 2011. Her most recent work, Healing Wars, toured across the US in 2014-15. Liz conducts residencies on Critical Response Process, creative research, the intersection of art and science, and the building of narrative within dance performance at such institutions as Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the National Theatre Studio among others. Her third book, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer, was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press. As of 2016 she is an Institute Professor at Arizona State University. (Photo by Lise Metzger)

Jorge Merced is the Associate Artistic Director of Pregones Theater, and a company member since 1987. He is a graduate of City College-CUNY, and also studied at the Alvin Ailey School and EITALC (Cuba). Awards include numerous NY ACE and HOLA distinctions for outstanding performance and direction, El Diario/La Prensa’s EL Award, and the LP21 Maestro Award, among others. Jorge is currently a board member for the National Center for Creative Aging and has been instrumental in the development of the new Creative Caregiving Initiative.

Angelina Ramirez began studying Flamenco at the age of nine with Deanna Pierce and Olivia Rojo in Tucson, Arizona. At sixteen, she became a member of Rojo’s company, Flamenco y Mas and toured the US as a featured artist with the National Theater Company. She continued her studies at the National Institute of Flamenco Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico studying with Eva Encinias, Omayra Amaya and Marisol Encinias, and became an original member of Yjastros, the American Flamenco Repertory Company under the direction of Joaquin Encinias. In 2009, returning to Arizona, Angelina founded Flamenco Por La Vida, a performance company that has been continually performing throughout the Valley for the past eight years, and was the recipient of the 2014 Phoenix Mayor’s Arts Award for Best Dance Organization. Angelina produces two festivals in the Phoenix Community: Lluvia Flamenca in collaboration with Stateside Presents and The Phoenix Festival de España with The Phoenix Center for the Arts, and also tours with world-renowned, New York based company Noche Flamenca in their production of Antigone. Angelina was one of ten teaching artists to be selected to participate in the inaugural AZ Creative Aging Teaching Artist Institute, and she teaches flamenco to students ages 3-103 throughout the valley. 

Toni Robinson uses her experience as a performing artist and classroom teacher to inspire groups to make bold, balanced and meaningful changes in their personal and professional lives. She has a passion for designing and delivering interactive learning experiences that incorporate theater, movement, technology, and participant expertise.

Toni has acted in numerous plays,musicals, commercials, short films and industrial videos over the past two decades. She has performed on stages in Arizona for more than a decade, starring in numerous productions, including The Exonerated, The Appointment, Same Time Next Year and The Old Settler. Currently, she uses her talents as an educational professional and a performing artist to help educators shift their instruction to engage students in a meaningful way, and step into bold, new possibilities as they create more dynamic, student-centered learning environments in the classroom.

Visual artist Tessa Windt has worked with individuals aged 55 to 103, from active independent recent retirees to individuals facing physical and cognitive challenges, in settings as broad as senior centers, adult day programs, long-term care facilities, and arts venues; exploring the opportunities found within moments of creative engagement to build connection and address the isolation faced by many older adults. Windt has worked with the Mesa Arts Center on their Creative Aging Engagement program since 2011, developing and coordinating visual arts projects with older adults at several sites in Mesa. Projects commissioned by the Mesa Arts Center reconsider formal abstraction in relation to layering of material, creative process and the stories elicited by the process of making. Since 2015 Windt has been the Artist-in-Residence for the Phoenix Art Museum’s Arts Engagement Program, a program for older adults with memory loss and their care partners. In 2016 she served as a mentor artist to the Teaching Artist Institute for the Arizona Commission on the Arts’ AZ Creative Aging Initiative.