2019-2020 Choreographers

Jordan Davis is originally from Albemarle, NC and now calls Durham home. This is her 7th year as an EC Teacher with Orange County Schools. Jordan has trained locally in ballet, jazz, modern, and hip hop styles. In 2013, she graduated from Appalachian State University as a Special Education Major and Dance Minor. She was a choreographer for the Freshman Showcase and dancer in the ADF Dance Ensemble and Horn in The West. Jordan has attended the American Dance Festival as a scholarship student in 2014 and 2018. Recently, she choreographed a contemporary piece for the ADF Student Showcase called “Hope Within One”.

Will Indermaur is a Swiss-American dancer based in Durham. They graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2015 with a BA in Dance Theory & Practice and Women’s & Gender Studies. After graduating, they joined the company at Greensboro Ballet and performed there for two years. Indermaur has also danced through NCDF, the Wake Forest Dance Festival, and the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. As a genderqueer person, Indermaur is passionate about breaking gender boundaries and binaries in dance and creating space for queer performers.

Nicole Lawson is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and activist. As a choreographer, her work investigates the pathways between injustice and hope. Nicole’s work has been presented throughout the North Carolina Piedmont Triad and Research Triangle. As a performer, Nicole has danced with Alex Warren and JOYEMOVEMENT Dance Company, Renay Aumiller Dances, the Carol Finley Dance Group, Kate Davis and the Continuum Collective, and other choreographers. In addition to her work as a dance instructor with Ballet and Performing Arts Center in Winston-Salem, Nicole also collaborates with North Carolina public schools as a guest artist.

Nancy Macasieb is a movement enthusiast and has cultivated a diverse movement background with training in martial arts, Kathak classical Indian dance, aerial arts, and yoga. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a RYT-200 hr certification in vinyasa yoga. Nancy has performed in her home state of North Carolina all the way to Perugia, Italy. Her original choreography was nominated for and performed at the ACDA Mid-Atlantic conference in 2015 at Towson University, Maryland. More recently, she has been commissioned to create soundscapes for Angie Yetzke, dance professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan and performed for Lindsay Winthrop as part of NC Dance Festival in Charlotte, NC

NC artist Michael Rank has spent the lion’s share of his life performing and recording as a singer-songwriter. With over twenty albums released and a noted history of sharing the stage as an opening act for the likes of Iggy Pop, The Ramones, and Soundgarden. Now selected as one of the featured choreographers in the upcoming 2020 season of Tobacco Road Dance Productions as well as a 2019 apprenticeship with Shaleigh Dance Works. His focal passions and inclinations are inspired by the movement language of Gaga, which he has studied under present and past members of Batsheva Dance Company.

Chris Strauss began dancing at an early age in their home state of Oklahoma. They graduate from the University of Oklahoma where they continued their study of dance and performed with Hartel Dance Group, directed by former Pilobolus artist, Austin Hartel. In 2017, Chris relocated to North Carolina to pursue a PhD in Quantitative Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, they attended the American Dance Festival where they performed Merce Cunningham repertory staged by Andrea Weber. Since then, they have performed locally and regionally with Tobacco Road Dance Productions, Megan Ross, and most recently, A+A Dance Company. They are thrilled to be a part of Tobacco Road’s 6th season.