WHO WE ARE
Building Healthy Communities through Creative Expression
Turning the Wheel Productions is a national non profit arts and education organization dedicated to making body based creative expression and play accessible to individuals of all ages, experiences, genders, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. We are committed to being a contributing force in fostering vibrant, healthy communities nationwide.
We bring interactive and experiential arts programs using a unique model that builds our participants’ confidence in their own and each other’s creativity. Our programs build over a period of hours, days, weeks, semesters or a full year, so at the end of our time together, participants have joined their talents and visions to create a special performance for their peers and families.
“The workshops and residencies you have done here...have had remarkable results. Children who had never met before had fun as they successfully communicated, created and worked hard together to develop their performance pieces. They respected each others’ ideas and perspectives.”
- Elementary School Teacher, Boulder CO
Every Body Dances, Every Story Shines!
Turning the Wheel is an intergenerational dance/theater company committed to the collaborative creation of works of art that are rooted in and restorative for the communities in which we perform and teach. TTW is dedicated to making creative expression and art accessible to people of all ages, experience and cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Using a working model that is based on inclusiveness, community engagement and collaboration, Turning the Wheel seeks to reconnect youth and elders to their lives and society; to encourage a collective ethic of caring for others and ourselves and to be a contributing force in fostering healthy, creative communities.
OUR FOUNDER
Alana Shaw
Alana Shaw, founder and executive director of Turning the Wheel, is an inspiring and empowering speaker, teacher, and guide, Alana has facilitated joyful and healing movement events in cities in the US and Canada for over 30 years. Her dynamic and energetic presentation style is both humorous and transforming, and consistently positive and uplifting for her audiences.
She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado with a thesis on healing and reintegration through creative expression. Alana's books, "Dancing Our Way Home" and "The Body Now" catalyze her mission to inspire a new paradigm for inclusiveness, collaboration, and community engagement. Both books are available on Amazon. She is also a certified Hendricks Body/Mind Vibrance Coach.
“Everything we do in Turning the Wheel is an attempt to come back into relationship with our interdependence as human beings, and with the need for love, not power, to form the basis for how we live on the earth. We are passionately committed to building and sustaining transformative communities that are
inclusive of all people, and that reach for and model unconditional love and acceptance as the norm.”
- Alana Shaw
For individual work with Alana Shaw visit www.alanashaw.com
Team
Team
Abbey Dubois
National Program Coordinator
Abbey holds a BA in dance studies from Salem College. She works as the National Program Coordinator. During her time at Salem College, Abbey explored site-specific work and how to bring the community together through dance. She is passionate about serving our community and spreading joy to all people.
Suzanne Palmer
National Program Coordinator
Suzanne is a Certified Facilitator with Turning the Wheel. She was a city project manager in Wilmington, NC for 13 years, and Cedar Rapids, IA for 7 years. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado with a BA in Dance. Suzanne has served on the board of directors for many dance organizations and was a founding member of the Dance Cooperative in Wilmington, NC. She is a business owner, lifelong yoga teacher and dancer/performer.
Perry Smith
Wilmington Branch Director
Perry became the cofounder of the Wilmington chapter of Turning the Wheel in 1999, and facilitates and performs live music for events, workshops and trainings. He has been a core facilitator for the Turning the Wheel national organization since 2008.
Lizzi Juda
Lizzi founded Turning the Wheel Missoula in 2001 after discovering the national organization and its’ potent work in Boulder, CO. She is the Board President, a Master Facilitator for Turning the Wheel Missoula, and has been teaching improvisational movement classes and expressive arts groups for 25 years.
Andy MacDonald
Andy MacDonald is a teacher and performer based in Portland, Maine. He has been affiliated with Turning The Wheel since 1998. He received his BA in French Studies from Mount Allison University, and his MA and PhD in French Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is particularly fond of improvisational creation and performance through movement, sound and language.
Jesse Manno
Musician
Jesse plays vocal cords and a smattering of lutes, flutes, reeds, keyboard, and percussion instruments, sometimes as a one-man band, sometimes with a laptop, sometimes with friends. He has been Music Director of the University of Colorado, Boulder Dance Program since 1991, and accompanist/composer in residence at the Bates Dance Festival most years since 1998. As a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, he’s played for thousands of dance classes, and co-created hundreds of dance, theatre, circus art, site specific and film scores with a great variety of collaborators. He joyously embraces all kinds of musical/sonic inspiration, but he is especially steeped in Balkan and Middle Eastern music, and likes to improvise as much as to compose.
TTW also depends on volunteers and in-kind donations from TTW friends, collaborators, artists, producers, photographers, videographers, and facilitators around the country. HELP US OUT!
INTERESTED IN JOINING OUR TALENTED TEAM?