Kate Trammell

Kate believes that each individual is innately gifted with creativity, and she has proof — a wealth of experiences gained from teaching and performing throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to teaching modern dance and composition at JMU, Kate is the founding artistic director of the Virginia Repertory Dance Company, which is made up of upper-level JMU dance majors planning to pursue performance-related careers. She credits her experiences abroad, such as teaching dance improvisation in Krakow, Poland, and creative movement to children in Chinese orphanages for enhancing her work at JMU. For this professor, dance is an honorable art form that brings the teacher immense satisfaction and rewards the dancer with the indefinable "electricity" of the performance experience. Kate says her Madison colleagues are consummate collaborators, the perfect team for teaching dance and opening that creative well that all students can tap. Kate is a role model for transmitting life's energy through movement and has changed her community and the world with her love of artistic dance and her belief in its transformative power.

"I am convinced that all of us are constantly dancing throughout our lives — the infant wiggling with excitement at the mastery of her first successful rolling over, the schoolchild using movement to find an entrance into challenging academic material, the elder creating a gestural "hand-dance" that tells important life stories. I have witnessed amazing dances from people in all stages of life, dances that communicate deeply about the experience of being human."