Donna Mejia

My Warm Greetings to You, 

I’m CU Boulder Associate Professor Donna Mejia. I serve as the Inaugural Chancellor's Scholar of Health and Wellness for the Crown Wellness Institute, and am a member of the Theatre & Dance Department. I am also affiliate faculty for Women & Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, and the Center for Teaching & Learning. I serve as the first tenured faculty globally for Transcultural Fusion Dance (TcFD), a hybrid tradition that dialogs dances of the African and Arab Diasporas with American Hip Hop and Contemporary Dance. I am also authorized as an instructor of Rosangela Silvestre’s contemporary technique, and danced professionally in both African Diasporic (Harambee African Dancers and Drummers, 12 years) and Mexican Folklorico (Quinto Sol, 4 years) companies. My 30+ years of study in ethnography, dance, yoga, meditation, justice, and somatic studies continue to be central, and deeply inspired by my mentor, CU Boulder Instructor Emerita, Letitia Williams. This interdisciplinary work and my performances, approached through the vantage point of my multi-heritage identity, have inspired connections to many astonishing people and fields of study, taken me around the world for solo performances, instigated a life-long devotion to learning, and inspired my efforts towards upliftment of others through education. I am most proud of how my community talks, writings, performances, and advocacy work in TcFD created a cascade of decolonization practices and language in the genre. As a Crown Institute Faculty Fellow, I serve as Faculty Director of research programs focusing onembodiment and trauma-informed somatic additions to programming, cultural retentions and innovations, intersectionality, anti-bias and anti-racism efforts, gender equity, healing and well-being through the arts.  

My recent awards include: 

• 2021 Legends of Dance Award by the Carson Brierly Dance Library 
• 2021 CU Graduate Student Mentor Award 
• Membership to the 2021 Excellence in Leadership Cohort by CU 4-Campus Systems Office 
• 2022 CU President's DEI award for Faculty across four campuses.  
• My scholarship merging the study of cultural retention, colonial imperialism, gender representation, and digital globalization received the 2011 Selma Jean Cohen Fulbright Honor for International Dance Scholarship.  

My current projects include directing the TcFD Gather at the Delta Initiative, collaborating with my friend and research partner Dr. Valerie Joseph, developing my instructional knowledge of somatics, yoga and mindfulness, contributing to world heritage exploration, preservation, and innovation projects,  collaborating with composer Saunt EP on my solo choreography projects, collaborating with the Denver Art Museum’s curatorial team in public programming, sharing my anti-bias tool kit Fumble Forward with the public near and far, serving as a member of the Provost’s task force addressing and preventing sexual Mmisdemeanors, bringing cultural dimensionality to clinical medical research and chronic pain management with collaborator Dr. Yoni Ashar (CU Medical School), directing the Dalai Lama Fellows Program CU Boulder Cohort, designing electronic music, sewing, curating art-infused works and environments, and writing. My most recent writings on anti-bias pedagogy can be found in the anthology Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning (edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus).  

For more information about my publications, performances, endeavors, interdisciplinary nerdom, and adventures, I welcome you to please visit: https://donnainthedance.com/