Deborah McLaughlin

Professor
B126 Peters Hall
(540) 831-5286
dmclaughl7@radford.edu

Deborah McLaughlin joined the dance faculty at Radford University in August 2005 as director of the Dance Education program. In addition to teaching dance pedagogy and supervising the placements of Dance Education majors throughout the mid-Atlantic states, Professor McLaughlin regularly teaches courses in improvisation, choreography, dance history and philosophy, somatics, and dance production. She has been awarded several faculty research grants for her choreographic work. The grants have funded the creation of three evening-length interdisciplinary, multimedia pieces addressing both the beauty of, and social justice issues in, Appalachia. These dance/theatre works have provided opportunities for RU dance majors to tour out of state and Professor McLaughlin has presented the research on which these pieces are based at several national conferences. She recently facilitated a study abroad trip for dance majors to attend performances and classes at the International Dublin Dance Festival and in London. Her current research interests include dance for the camera, including both still photography and video.

Professor McLaughlin performed with the Cincinnati Ballet before receiving her BFA and MFA in Modern Dance, with choreographic emphasis, from the University of Utah. She was the artistic director of her company, The Movement Society, for ten years and presented site-specific works and concerts in New York City. She performed and taught workshops in choreography with the late New York-based multimedia artist, Lee Nagrin.

Professor McLaughlin’s free-lance work as a dance artist/educator includes teaching for several years at Primary Children’s residential psychiatric program for severely abused children, Children’s Dance Theatre, and Westminster College in Salt Lake City, as an artist-in-residence in inner city schools in New York City, and for elders in senior centers and nursing homes in both cities.  She was the movement specialist at Bank Street School for Children, the laboratory school for Bank Street College of Education and an adjunct faculty member at the State University of New York’s FIT.