Gerri Houlihan began her professional training at the Juilliard School, studying with Antony Tudor, Alfredo Corvino, and members of the Martha Graham and Jose Limon dance companies. She performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the Paul Sanasardo Dance Company and spent five years as a soloist with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company touring extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Ms. Houlihan has taught or choreographed for such institutions as N. Y.’s High School of the Performing Arts, the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, the Bates Dance Festival, the Boston Ballet, the Harvard Summer Dance Center, Meredith College, the University of South Florida, North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of Richmond, the University of North Carolina- Greensboro and Virginia Commonwealth University. From 1984-1987 she directed her own school and company, the Boston Dance Project. She was one of five finalists in the Boston Ballet’s International Choreography Competition.

From 1988-1999, Ms. Houlihan was on the faculty of New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida. During that time, she was also the artistic director of Houlihan and Dancers. The recipient of two Florida Individual Artist Fellowships in Dance/Choreography in 1991-92 and 1996-97, Houlihan and Dancers was on the touring roster for the state of Florida. She recently became a member of the board of directors for the Florida Dance Association and also for the American College Dance Association.

Ms. Houlihan has been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival from 1981-1983, and from 1987 to the present. As an international representative for ADF she has participated in eighteen international linkages, teaching in Korea, China, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Estonia, Poland, the Philippines, Moscow and Mongolia. She is the 2005 recipient of the Balasaraswati, Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching, and received her MFA degree in 2007 from the Hollins University/American Dance Festival MFA program. She is currently a professor at Florida State University.

Dr. James Frazier (artist, educator, administrator) is the Co-Dean of the American Dance Festival and Chair of the Department of Dance and Choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where he is a tenured Associate Professor.  Frazier is the President of the Council of Dance Administrators.  He is on the national board of the American College Dance Festival and serves as a Visiting Evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Dance, the US accrediting body for professional schools and degree granting programs in dance.As a professional performer, Frazier was a member of Kokuma Dance Theatre Company (England), Dallas Black Dance Theatre (Texas), and was a founding member of Edgeworks Dance Theater (Washington, DC).  In addition, he has worked as a guest or creative collaborator with many others.  Frazier also appeared in the stage production St. Louis Woman, choreographed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.  His own choreography has been presented in numerous venues, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Concert Hall and Millennium Stage). 

He is a past recipient of the Virginia Commission for the Arts Choreographic Fellowship, and in 2009 he was commissioned to create a new ballet on the Richmond Ballet Company.  He has taught master classes in dance technique at many festivals, in summer intensive programs and private schools around the country.  Past appointments include:  Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance History, Florida State University; Associate Artistic Director, Dance Institute of Washington (District of Columbia); and Publicity Coordinator for the Urban Bush Women Summer Dance Institute (1998 and 1999); and several adjunct appointments at colleges and universities, in Pennsylvania, Florida and Maryland. 

Frazier’s academic credentials include a Doctorate of Education in Dance from Temple University and both a Master of Fine Arts in Dance and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Florida State University.  In 2008, he was a member of the graduating class of VCU’s Grace E. Harris Leadership Institute, and he was a selected participant in the mentoring program of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans, for which served as Co-Chair of the Diversity Task Force.  For the Virginia Commission for the Arts he has frequently served as a panelist, reviewing grant applications.