Allison Beaty

Allison Beaty is a dance artist, choreographer, educator, and researcher currently based in Austin, TX. She holds an MFA in Dance (Choreography) from the University of North Carolina Greensboro where she presented her MFA thesis work, …(con)fabulate. She also holds a BA in Dance from Texas Tech University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with Highest Honors through her thesis work, Case Studies of Female Leaders in the Dance Field. Most recently, Allison has performed in works by choreographers such as Renay Aumiller, B.J. Sullivan, and Janet Lilly. Prior to moving to North Carolina, Allison performed, choreographed, and taught professionally throughout north, west, and central Texas. She was a performing company member and choreographer with Flatlands Dance Theatre based in Lubbock, TX, where she also served as the founding Company Council President. In addition, she has performed in various works by Ali Duffy, Brooklyn Draper, Trent D. Williams, Sarah Wildes Arnett, Amanda Jackson, Genevieve Durham DeCesaro, and Nicole Wesley, among many others. Her teaching and choreographic style is greatly informed by release techniques (most notably Safety Release Technique), somatic practice, and her love for psychology, anatomy, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Allison’s choreographic work is situated in the postmodern/contemporary genre with a focus on process, experimentation and chance, improvisation, and abstraction. Her concert and screen dance choreography has been presented at the Wicklow ScreenDance Laboratory (Ireland) Jacksonville Dance Film Festival (Florida), the International ScreenDance Festival (Iowa; Mexico), the 16th Annual Modern Dance Festival at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Texas), and the American College Dance Association Southcentral Conference (Texas), among numerous other concerts and festivals across the United States. Allison is immersed in creative and scholarly research at the intersection of artmaking, pedagogical practice, and scientific inquiry. Her choreographic research focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration with other dancers, composers, and multimedia artists in the exploration of scientific phenomena from the disciplines of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In addition, Allison’s research on collaborative choreographic practices and shared ownership in dance is published in Research in Dance Education and was presented at the 2019 NDEO National Conference in Miami, FL. She remains committed to this research trajectory, seeking to redefine traditional hierarchical power structures and foster a sense of community and shared ownership throughout her various choreographic processes. Alongside her creative and pedagogical practice, Allison is also engaged in quantitative research examining memory mechanisms for dance expertise in collaboration with Dr. Peter Delaney in the UNCG Department of Psychology.