Molly Christie

Molly Christie González is an Assistant Professor in Dance/Dance Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and The Five College Dance Department.

She received her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography and an MA in Dance Education with Pre-K-12 Teacher Certification from the College at Brockport, and a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of the Arts. She is an artist/scholar/educator whose artistic practice and training is dually rooted in modern dance and traditional dance and music languages. She has taught extensively within elementary through university level school and community settings for over twenty years, designing curriculum and directing programs for children through adults within diverse dance educational and performance environments, as well as in the Pilates and HIV/AIDS risk reduction education fields.

Molly’s teaching philosophy, choreography and research is grounded in thirty years of experience in Katherine Dunham Technique and Philosophies. She was personally certified by Ms. Dunham in 2004 as a teacher, after having served as a technique demonstrator for her and other Dunham master teachers. Molly is on the board of the Institute for Dunham Technique Certification, an international teacher certification program, and is Chair of the Pedagogy and Academic Exam Committees. She has presented on Katherine Dunham’s legacy at the New York Dance Critics Association Conference and the Dance on Camera Festival, and has been on the faculty of both the Annual Dunham Technique Seminar and the Dunham Technique Certification Workshops. Molly is honored to carry on the Dunham legacy through her ongoing research examining the application and relevancy of Dunham’s methodologies within arts education, and as a choreographic model.

Molly has conducted dance and music research in Havana, Cuba, Rio De Janeiro and Salvador Bahia, Brazil, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in 2000 received a Leeway Foundation grant to study dance and music in Dakar, Senegal. She co-founded Trio Dourado Brazilian Dance Company and Cuban Latin Cabaret Productions, and has performed, choreographed, and costumed for a range of modern, Brazilian, Cuban and West African based companies. As an artist and scholar she has focused on the translation of traditional religious and social dance and music forms, as they transition from their original settings and functions to the presentational modern concert dance stage. She has been Guest Artist for the College at Brockport’s Sankofa African Dance and Drum Ensemble and at SUNY Geneseo.

Prior to joining the faculty at UMass and the Five College Dance Department, she was an adjunct professor at Morrisville State College, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and Bard Academy, and developed the middle and high school dance programs at an arts-integrated Expeditionary Learning school in Buffalo, NY.