Judith M. Scalin, Co-Chair and Director of Dance
Judy Scalin is a graduate of UCLA (BA in Dance, California State Secondary Credential) and Mills College (MA in Dance). She has danced with local dance companies in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. She has taught at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Scripps College, and Loyola Marymount University where she has been the Director of Dance for the past 29 years. As Director of Dance at Loyola Marymount University, she has established programs that enliven the connection of the University with the Los Angeles Dance community. Out of this on-going work has grown a number of residencies, dance works, master classes, and other significant linkages to local dance artists which benefit students and artists alike.
Very active in the Los Angeles dance community, Ms. Scalin has served on the Dance Resource Center Board of Directors and on adjudication panels for the Music Center Bravo Awards, the William Couser Awards, Kaleidoscope and In-the-Works. In the summer of 1994, she served as a writer for National Examinations for K-12 Arts Education Assessment and received the Lester Horton Award for Sustained Achievement in Dance from the Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles. In 1996, she taught for the Graduate School in Dance at CSULB, and was elected Policy Board Chair for the California Arts Project. In the spring of 1997, Judy was awarded the Lester Horton Award for Distinguished Teaching. In addition, Ms. Scalin has served as the Chair of the Arts Steering Committee for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, where she currently works as a consultant. She has been the president of the California Dance Educators Association and is now serving as curriculum writer for the California Arts Project. Judy also currently serves on the National Association of Schools of Dance Executive Board as chair of the Commission on Accreditation. Most recently, Ms. Scalin received the Teacher of the Year Award from the California Dance Educators Association for 2001-2002 and the Loyola Marymount University President’s Fritz B. Burns Distinguished Teaching Award for 2003.
Teresa Heiland, Assistant Professor of Dance
Teresa Heiland is a graduate of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (BFA Communication), New York University (Ph.D, MA Dance Education), and University of Utah’s Integrated Movement Studies Program (CLMA), Language of Dance Center (LODIII). In her early years, she danced in Pennsylvania with a small lyrical jazz dance company and with her local ballet studio before being invited to tour the mid-Atlantic states with Moving Target, a modern dance company rooted in Wigman and Holm technique. The years of performing modern dance with Moving Target were the beginnings of a life-long curiosity of human movement.
She has taught at Hempfield Dance Center in PA, Seward Park High School on the lower east side of NYC, New York University, Columbia University, Marymount Manhattan College of NYC, and Grinnell College of Iowa where she directed the college dance program for six years. While teaching at Grinnell College, she encouraged professionalism and refinement in the understanding and consideration of dancers and their craft while she developed a curriculum and a highly focused college dance company.
Before dancing her way into the heartland, Dr. Heiland was active as a choreographer and dancer in NYC. She co-created a collaborative performing and visual arts pick-up company that performed in festival venues and special events around the city. Her work has been presented in NY, PA, IA, WI, LA, as well as Italy, Japan and China. She also performed intensively with the New York New Music and Dance Ensemble, a troupe of musicians and dancers who perform to sometimes discordant and chromatic “New” music and loosely structured improvised dancing—musicians and dancers often interacting. This period of her life was an emotional and physical unleashing. The director of this company wanted raw, emotional, yet technical performing. To keep in touch with her structured design background, she continued to assist in the creation of artwork for dance advertising and was also a busy costume designer for dance, being hired by college dance departments and private choreographers.
Before dancing her way into California, Dr. Heiland explored dance from the inside and the outside. For a year, she focused outward to Indonesia where she studied Yogya style dance—a form she learned in Iowa—with the great masters of Javanese dance. She also studied Labanotation and Motif Writing and is completing a teaching training course. Subsequently, she searched deeply inward—and studied for her Laban Bartenieff Movement Analyst certification to refine how she sees, analyzes, and coaches movement. She has completed her dancing lemniscate and has landed at home base in California, meanwhile gathering inspirations and focus as she shares and integrates with us.
Scott Heinzerling, Professor of Dance
Scott Heinzerling, Professor of Dance, teaches ballet and modern dance techniques, dance composition, and history. Mr. Heinzerling received his MFA in Choreography in 1991, from Ohio State University. His professional choreographic works have been presented at UCLA, CSULB, Moorpark College, Riverside Community College, "Dancers for Life" AIDS Benefits Concerts, University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, University of Arizona at Tucson, Emory University in Atlanta, the Melrose Series #5, the Los Angeles John Anson Ford Amphitheater, Los Angeles Dance Kaleidoscope Festivals, the Theatre Regard du Cygne in Paris, France, and at the 1998 Festival of Theatre and Dance in Avignon, France.
As a professional dancer (1973-1988) he performed in France, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Central America, Mexico, and throughout the United States with the Ohio Ballet Company and Dennis Wayne and Dancers. He has performed classical ballet and modern dance repertoire by George Balanchine, John Taras, Gerald Arpino, Heinz Poll, Ruthanna Boris, Anna Sokolow, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Laura Dean, and Pilobolus.
Mr. Heinzerling has been the recipient of several LMU Summer Research Grants. In 1998 Professor Heinzerling was co-recipient of the Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and Arts Grant. He presently serves as adjudicating panelist for the Los Angeles Music Center’s Spotlight Awards, the Los Angeles Dance Kaleidoscope Festivals, and the Los Angeles Dance Resource Center's Lester Horton Awards Reviewing Committee.
Patrick Damon Rago, Assistant Professor of Dance
Patrick Damon Rago, Assistant Professor, began his formal dance training at California State University, Fullerton. After receiving his BA in Theatre Arts, he went on to graduate school at the Universityof Utah. While there, he was the assistant artistic director of Performing Dance Company and won the Dee R. Winterton Award for Outstanding Achievement.
In 1996, after completing his MFA in Modern Dance, Mr. Rago was asked to join the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. As a member of RWDC, he performed and taught choreographic workshops throughout the western states. He has worked with Murray Louis, Joe Goode, Della Davidson, Janis Brenner, Creach and Koester, Keith Johnson, Scott Heinzerling, and Douglas Nielsen, and has performed in works by Doug Varone, Laura Dean, Ann Carlson, Moses Pendalton, and Allison Chase. From 1998 through 2002, Damon was a member of the contemporary dance company TONGUE.
Damon is artistic director for Palindrome Performance Group, a contemporary dance company. He also continues to freelance as a performer throughout California. He received the Lester Horton Award for Outstanding Male Performance for his work with Joe Goode.
Damon is also the Artistic Director of Palindrome Performance Group.
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