Michelle T. Summers, Ph.D., is an active dance scholar, educator, and practitioner located in Northwest Arkansas. Most recently she served as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies and the performance studies scholar-in-residence in the Center for Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union. She is currently on faculty at the Thaden School and the co-founder of Northwest Arkansas Dance Hub, an organization dedicated to promoting dance in the NWA region.
Originally from Arkansas,Summers' dancing has taken her across the U.S. as she completed her B.F.A. in Ballet and B.A. in English from Texas Christian University, and then received her M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University. She completed her Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside in 2014.
Summers has performed professionally with Montage Arts, Casa Manana Equity Theater, and Contemporary Ballet Dallas. Her choreography has been presented at the Culver Center for the Arts, Dance New Amsterdam, the Barefoot Brigade Festival, Dallas Dance for the Planet, Berkeley Ballet Theater, and Regional Dance America. She has also served on faculty at Santa Clara University, Texas Christian University, Berkeley Ballet Theater, the Bentley School, the American College Dance Festival, the Bay Area Dance Exchange, and the Pasadena Dance Festival.
Originally from Arkansas,Summers' dancing has taken her across the U.S. as she completed her B.F.A. in Ballet and B.A. in English from Texas Christian University, and then received her M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University. She completed her Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside in 2014.
Summers has performed professionally with Montage Arts, Casa Manana Equity Theater, and Contemporary Ballet Dallas. Her choreography has been presented at the Culver Center for the Arts, Dance New Amsterdam, the Barefoot Brigade Festival, Dallas Dance for the Planet, Berkeley Ballet Theater, and Regional Dance America. She has also served on faculty at Santa Clara University, Texas Christian University, Berkeley Ballet Theater, the Bentley School, the American College Dance Festival, the Bay Area Dance Exchange, and the Pasadena Dance Festival.
Summers has received multiple awards for her dance scholarship including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for Course Development from Cal Performances, UC Berkeley Professional Development Grant, the AAUW Dissertation Year Fellowship, the Center for Arts, Religion, and Education Grant (GTU), a Creative Capacity Fund Professional Development Grant from the Los Angeles Center for Cultural Innovation, the Sophia Scholar/Elise Lipscomb Ferguson Fellowship and the Louise Johnson Miller/Jean Johnson Smith Fellowship from the Kappa Alpha Foundation, a UCR Graduate Division Fellowship, a BYPED Grant, a Sacred Dance Guild Festival Scholarship, the UCR Humanities Research Grant, and a Gluck Fellowship, among others. She has been an invited participant at the Mellon Dance Studies Summer Seminar at Brown University and the Performance Studies Summer Institute at Northwestern.
Conference presentations include the Congress on Research in Dance’s Re-generations, Harvard's Body in History, Body in Space, the Society of Dance History Scholars' Dance and Spectacle, UCR's Dance Under Construction, and the UCLA's Thinking Gender. Michelle has publications in the Women and Performance Feminist Journal, UCLA’s Thinking Gender Papers, and the North Texas Dance Council’s DANCE magazine. She has been an invited guest speaker at Stanford University, the Graduate Theological Union, Camelot Prep's Exchange Program in China, the Montage Arts Scholarship Workshop, the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Dance Department, and at the Emerging Leaders in Arts Administration Panel at the Rose Marine Theater. She has also held arts administration positions at the Kennedy Center and the Fort Worth Symphony.
Conference presentations include the Congress on Research in Dance’s Re-generations, Harvard's Body in History, Body in Space, the Society of Dance History Scholars' Dance and Spectacle, UCR's Dance Under Construction, and the UCLA's Thinking Gender. Michelle has publications in the Women and Performance Feminist Journal, UCLA’s Thinking Gender Papers, and the North Texas Dance Council’s DANCE magazine. She has been an invited guest speaker at Stanford University, the Graduate Theological Union, Camelot Prep's Exchange Program in China, the Montage Arts Scholarship Workshop, the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Dance Department, and at the Emerging Leaders in Arts Administration Panel at the Rose Marine Theater. She has also held arts administration positions at the Kennedy Center and the Fort Worth Symphony.
