Director BIO: Cheyla Clawson, Bret Jones (SHE MOVED THE PRAIRIE)

Cheyla Clawson Chandler, MFA/MA (University of Oklahoma/Wichita State University)
Cheyla has instructed dance at several colleges including the University of Oklahoma, Wichita State University, and Barton County College. Her modern dance research is focused on Horton Technique and she attended the Horton Certificate Program 2013-2016 and 2020 at The Ailey School in NYC. As a choreographer, her two duets, Anam Chara (2014) and nosuchSymbiosis (2016) were invited to The American College Dance Association National Festival at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Cheyla presented her latest scholarly research focused on community integration curriculum in dance performance degrees at The American Dance Symposium 2020 through The Joyce Education Program/NYU in 2020 (NYC) and is invited to present at the International Arts in Society Conference in 2021 (Australia).

She directed the dance film She Moved the Prairie focused on female Kansas farm labor practices in the early 20th century supported as a Tallgrass National Artist 2020. Cheyla is also working in collaboration with Dr. Twyla Hill (WSU Sociology Department) on two funded research projects, Kansas Lineage – focused on memories of home of Kansas women in assisted living communities in the Wichita, Kansas area and the Ulrich Museum’s Solving for X Series – Matrilineal Memories at WSU – focused on the WSU campus community memories of their mother’s and grandmother’s homes. Chandler’s current embodied research is with collaborator Mina Estrada and is focused on mining cellular, embodied history of their Mexican lineage through their fathers’ ancestry.

As a faculty of color, Cheyla is chairing the Wichita State University School of Performing Arts Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Alliance (IDEA). She was invited to share this work for the American College Dance Association’s virtual “Dance and…” series in March of 2021 and is an audit work group member of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) for the National Dance Education Organization. Cheyla is the Associate Director of the School of Performing Arts and Assistant Professor of Dance at Wichita State University.