Heather Castillo is performer, dance-maker, scholar, educator, mom, and producer. She is currently an Associate Professor of Performing Arts, Dance Studies at CSU Channel Islands and recently established the new Dance Studies Degree launched Fall 2022. 

Heather’s career as a commercial dancer spans working with pop-stars ranging from Andy Williams to Selena Gomez. She has experience in corporate entertainment with companies such as Disney, Saban, Universal, and American Express performing  and assisting in television specials, industrials, and theme parks. She continues to be active in the industry as both performer and choreographer. She has won Broadway World’s award for Best Choreography of  a Regional Equity Musical in Southern California for her work on Suessical at Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities. Her choreography on Loving Repeating helped the musical earn an LA Critics pick and Drama Desk Nomination. And finally, her work on the Sound of Music at Cabrillo Music Theatre contributed to the production’s nomination for an Ovation award. 

She graduated from UC Irvine with the goal of broadening jazz dance practices and research within Higher Education. Her original research focused on establishing labor practices for ensemble dancers during the “golden age of movie musicals” 1943-1965. Her current research focuses on excavating and identifying the roots of commercial lyrical jazz and its alignment with the AIDS crisis. Her experiences as a commercial dancer along with her interest in labor practices, economics, social movements, and technology as they relate to the development and preconceived values of dance, dance education, and dance studies within the United States and global community continue to inform her art making and research. 

At CSU Channel Islands Professor Castillo produces Arts Under The Stars, a campus-wide multimedia extravaganza modeled after her experiences doing awards shows and industrials. In 2018 she won CSUCI’s President’s award for Teaching and Learning Innovation for producing the event and her efforts to decolonize the online Dance History course. She and MiRi Park have been honored with the Schlundt Lecture in dance from UC Riverside and Faculty Innovation and Leadership Award from the CSU Chancellor’s Office for providing guidance and leadership in the field of dance as it transitioned to online delivery in March 2020. They also produced with BAEZONE the Readin Series, an online reading marathon of 34 Black actors from across stage and screen featuring W.E.B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction in America. 

She has also been awarded several national titles as performer, choreographer, and coach within the dance team circuit, has often served as a judge and was on the board to the California Dance and Drill Team Association. She was on the board of the California Dance Education Association and was actively involved in California acquiring the Dance Credential that is currently coming online in the state. She currently serves as the chair of the Dance History Teachers working group for the Dance Studies Association. 

To contact Professor Castillo email heather.castillo@csuci.edu

Bonnie Lavin-Hughes began her dance journey at Cabrillo College where she earned an associate degree in Physical Education in 1977. She graduated with a B.F.A. in dance from Ohio University in 1982. She moved back to the west coast, specifically Los Angeles, in 1984 to accept a teaching assistantship within the master’s program at U.C.L.A. Upon completing her master’s in dance at U.C.L.A., Bonnie began to choreograph and perform throughout California with a diverse array of west coast choreographers.

Bonnie is the mother of two grown children, Vera Camille and Evan Dakota Hughes, who live in Los Angeles and who own and run a neighborhood bar in Los Angeles with their dad, Robert Hughes, Bonnie’s husband of 34 years. Back in the day, before creating her family, Bonnie created and performed throughout the Pacific Northwest with a modern dance repertory company, The Pacific Dance Ensemble. The company was funded through various grants the most supportive being through the Harkness foundation. During this time, Bonnie also presented her work at venues such as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, (L.A.C.E.), The Los Angeles Theatre Center, (L.A.T.C.), The L.A. Fringe Festival, The Downtown Artists’ Lofts District, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, and in the Kaleidoscope Dance Festivals. 

In 1987, Bonnie leaped upon a great opportunity to accept a dance education position at Brentwood School, a college preparatory private school in west L.A. Bonnie wrote, implemented, and developed the curriculum for the Brentwood School, choreographing and teaching there for 27 years. As an active member of the National Dance Educators Organization (NDEO) since 2006, Bonnie has volunteered her time and energy to advocate for dance to be integrated and taught at all levels in California schools. In addition, she served for three years, as the secretary on the Executive Board, for the state affiliate organization, the (CDEA), California Dance Education Association.

In 2017, Bonnie began teaching as a lecturer in dance within the performing arts department at CSU, Channel Islands. There is more to this story, but in short, Bonnie is and has been a dedicated dance educator, dance artist, and arts activist for the past forty years. She is steadfast in her belief that creating access to the expressive, communal, and healing powers of dance for people (young, old, and in between) everywhere is crucial for goodwill, peace, and sustainability as a species on this planet. 

MiRi Park is a b-girl, choreographer, performer, producer, scholar and mother based in Thousand Oaks, CA. She spent 15 years living, working and performing in New York City where she learned the art of b-girling and other underground dance forms. She is on faculty in the newly launched Dance Studies program at Cal State Channel Islands and is currently a PhD candidate at UCLA WAC/D where she focuses on Asian American corporealities in hip hop dance. Her current research areas also include dance studies, oral history, neoliberalism, postcolonialism, trauma, feminism, African American studies, and Asian American studies. MiRi’s previous scholarly work focused on the oral histories of NYC b-girls in the 1990s. MiRi is a recipient of the UCR Christena Lindborg Schlundt Lecture Series in Dance Studies and the CSU Faculty Innovation and Leadership Awards.

MiRi’s scholarly work can be seen in the Oxford Handbook on Hip Hop Dance Studies, Dance Research Journal,  and Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations, and Practices. She, along with dr. grace shinhae jun, is a guest co-editor of the Dance Studies Association’s  Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies latest issue. MiRi is also a co-editor of a special edition of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s publication that focuses on dance and protest. She also serves as the Artist Liaison to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library’s Street Dance Oral History Project. MiRi is a member of the Hip Hip Initiative and the the Hip Hop Studies Working Group at UCLA, and currently serves as the Graduate Student Representative to the Board of Directors of the Dance Studies Association (DSA).

In the artistic realm, MiRi is a dramaturg and producer of  This One Then, a screendance choreographed and produced by Charlotte Griffin. MiRi recently served as the Associate Choreographer of the 20th Anniversary tour of RENT. Some of her notable performances include the Bessie Award-nominated evening-length piece  A Single Ride by choreographer Ephrat Asherie, RENT  at the Hollywood Bowl (Dir., Neil Patrick Harris), and the final Broadway tour of RENT (Dir., Michael Greif). She has also worked with choreographers Maura Nguyen Donohue/inmixedcompany, Doug Elkins, Marlies Yearby, Nia Love, Rennie Harris, and actor/producer Kate Rigg. MiRi was the B-Boy Consultant on the Sony Screen Gems feature film Battle of the Year 3D (Dir., Benson Lee).

In the capacity of arts and academic administration, MiRi served as Producer/Curator and Marketing Director at Dance New Amsterdam (formerly Dance Space Center). She later helped launch Columbia University’s Oral History Master’s Program (OHMA) as Program Coordinator, under MA advisor and OHMA/Columbia Center for Oral History and Research (CCOHR) Director Mary Marshall Clark.

MiRi’s activism efforts can be seen in the work of the  Street Dance Activism collective, and in the educational activism project  The ReadIn Series in which she, Heather Castillo and BAZEONE, produced an online reading marathon of 34 Black actors from across stage and screen to read W.E.B. DuBois’s  Black Reconstruction in America.

MiRi holds a BFA in Dance and a BA in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, and an MA in American Studies from Columbia University.