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Our Pre/Professional Dance Intensive offers a full weekend of classes designed for professional dancers and pre-professional dancers alike. Dance teachers are also welcome! Each day will consist of technique classes, Q&A sessions, networking, and more. The day will run generally 9-5 Saturday and Sunday. This intensive is aimed at Intermediate to Advanced dancers ages 13+. Find full schedule details below!
Click “Classes” and scroll down to the list to find the Pre-Pro registration on Studio Pro.
Saturday + Sunday
Saturday + Sunday
Teacher can take classes free
8:30am | Check-in
9-10:15am | Contemporary Ballet with Kendall Teague
10:15-11:45am | Contemporary with Kendall Ramirez
11:45am-12:45pm | Lunch
12:45-1:30pm | Q&A with intensive artists
1:30-2:45pm | Jazz with Maurice Watson
2:45-4pm | Contemporary Partnering with Stewart/Owen Dance
4:00-5:15pm | Dance Play with LBMA (Laban) with Carrie Plew
8:30am | Check in
9-10:15am | Contemporary Warm-Up and Conditioning with Kendall Teague
10:15-11:45am | Contemporary Rep with Stewart/Owen Dance
11:45am-12:30pm | NCDF Q&A/Meet the Artists
12:30-1:15pm | Lunch
1:15-2:15pm | House with Eli Motley
2:15-3:45pm | Improvisation and Composition with Kendall Ramirez
3:45-4:45 | Injury Prevention and Wellness (Teacher TBA)
4:45-5:15pm | The Dance Photography Experience with Andrew Bowen
Saturday + Sunday
Saturday + Sunday
Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are the founding directors of Asheville’s Stewart/Owen Dance. As choreographers and performers, they create intimate, dynamic contemporary work shaped by curiosity and craft. Since 2014, the husband-and-wife choreographic duo has toured nationally and internationally, earning commissions from the American Dance Festival and the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts, and collaborating with artists like Moses Sumney and Sylvan Esso. The pair leads ongoing community classes in Asheville and hosts two annual intensive programs. In 2024 they were featured in Dance Magazine’s “Homegrown Heroes’. Through movement, Stewart and Owen continue to explore how dance can foster connection and reflect the nuance of shared human experience.
Stewart/Owen Dance is a 501(c)(3) contemporary dance company based in Asheville, North Carolina, co-founded and led by husband-and-wife choreographers Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen. Known for work described as “intimate and intricate” (Washington Post) and “humorous, elegant, and wild” (Seattle Dances), the company produces stage works and immersive performances alongside community classes and educational outreach programs.
Kendall Ramirez is a dance-based performer, improviser, and maker. She received her B.F.A. in Contemporary Dance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Cascading up and down the east coast Kendall has been informed by a delightful range of processes and ways into embodiment. They are a featured artist in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” for 2025.She has performed in works by Taryn Griggs, Chris Yon, Janice Lancaster, Kimberly Bartosik, George Staib, Isa Newport, Annalee Traylor, Danielle Swatzie, Lucy Tozzi, and Marielis Garcia. Kendall was most recently a guest artist at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, generating iterations of their work on students for the spring 2025 semester. Kendall sustains her interest in being a total nerd for experimentation, collaboration, and seeking collective effervescence in performance and community spaces.
Kendall Teague was raised in the mountains of Western North Carolina and attended the South Carolina Governors School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, SC. Teague began his career in the Bay Area in 2008 as a corps de ballet member of San Francisco Ballet. He has since worked with North Carolina Dance Theater, Complexions Contemporary Ballet under Dwight Rhoden, Ballet San Jose, Alonzo Kings Lines Ballet, ODC/Dance and Kate Weare Company.
Elijah (Eli) Motley (Greensboro, NC) is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and MFA Graduate of Dance and Choreography. Eli holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and Theatre and a Bachelor of Science in Civil/Environmental Engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and an MFA in Dance from UNC-Greensboro. In 2015, Elijah joined a Hip Hop company called Baila Fusion where he began learning Breaking, Popping, House, and Krump. His studies took him to Israel for a summer semester to Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and New York City to study Gaga movement. After graduation he performed three seasons as a company dancer for Chicago Dance Crash and became a freelance performer/ choreographer in the Chicago area. Eli also taught Breaking, Popping, House, Modern and yoga at various studios in the city and conventions around the country. He has been commissioned to set choreography by various companies, taught at studios and public schools in Chicago, and co-founded a dance collective called Concepts Dances. In addition to performing, he teaches dance in university, private studio, grade school, and festival settings.
Carrie Plew received her BFA in choreography and dance performance from UNC-Greensboro. She also trained at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, Western Australia. Carrie is proud of the early dance education she received at Walkerdance Ballet Theater and Burlington Academy of Dance Arts in Burlington, NC. Currently, Carrie is Certified in Laban Movement Analysis through the Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies in Brooklyn, NY. As a choreographer, Carrie enjoys the challenges of site specific work and has created and performed installation dances for several NYC organizations- No Longer Empty, Flowers Art Gallery, Dance New Amsterdam and FIGMENT NYC. Her musical theater choreography has been seen in the New York Fringe Festival (The NEW Hopeville Comics), through Broadway Training Center (New York) and on several stages across North Carolina. She is the founder of Danceploration Expedition, a panoramic, improvisational, traveling, movement experience in which the participants become the performers in an outdoor dance safari. Carrie has performed as a singer with Terese Genecco and Her Little Big Band (Iridium Cafe, New York City), Witches in Bikinis (New York City) and John Gamble’s Gate City Remnants (North Carolina). She was featured as an actor in an award-winning independent film titled The Fear Inside (Director: Rick Hamilton). NC Dance credits include: John Gamble Dance Theater, Jan Van Dyke Dance Group, Horn in the West, X Factor and Centennial Station Dinner Theater. NY Dance credits include: Maverick Dance Experience, INSPIRIT (Rehearsal Director and Company member), Malleable Dance Theater and Sydnie L Mosley Dances. Carrie has a wealth of experience teaching, choreographing and directing children of all ages and is thrilled to currently be on faculty at Dance Project: The School.
Andrew Bowen is a photographer who works exclusively with dancers. He creates a space where dancers are respected and supported, given the time they need for their creative process, and have the dedication they deserve from their photographer.
Beyond the dance community, images that Andrew creates with his dancers have received accolades from professional photography associations. Andrew is a master photographer through the Professional Photographers of America and a master portrait photographer through Master Photographers International. His work has been accepted at multiple gallery shows and recently earned third place in the portrait category of the International Image Competition.
Accolades aside, Andrew believes that the dancer is the most important artist in his studio. He avoids the term “photoshoot,” preferring to consider time with a dancer as a creative dance retreat where dancers can explore their art in a safe and supportive environment.
Dance Project is a non-profit resident organization of the Greensboro Cultural Center, made possible by a significant in-kind contribution from Creative Greensboro, the City of Greensboro’s office for arts & culture.
Dance Project is a non-profit resident organization of the Greensboro Cultural Center, made possible by a significant in-kind contribution from Creative Greensboro, the City of Greensboro’s office for arts & culture.
