Deborah McLaughlin joined the dance faculty at Radford University in August 2005 as
director of the Dance Education program. In addition to teaching dance pedagogy and
supervising the placements of Dance Education majors throughout the mid-Atlantic states,
Professor McLaughlin regularly teaches courses in improvisation, choreography, dance
history and philosophy, somatics, and dance production. She has been awarded several
faculty research grants for her choreographic work. The grants have funded the creation
of three evening-length interdisciplinary, multimedia pieces addressing both the beauty
of, and social justice issues in, Appalachia. These dance/theatre works have provided
opportunities for RU dance majors to tour out of state and Professor McLaughlin has
presented the research on which these pieces are based at several national conferences.
She recently facilitated a study abroad trip for dance majors to attend performances
and classes at the International Dublin Dance Festival and in London. Her current
research interests include dance for the camera, including both still photography
and video.
Professor McLaughlin performed with the Cincinnati Ballet before receiving her BFA
and MFA in Modern Dance, with choreographic emphasis, from the University of Utah.
She was the artistic director of her company, The Movement Society, for ten years
and presented site-specific works and concerts in New York City. She performed and
taught workshops in choreography with the late New York-based multimedia artist, Lee
Nagrin.
Professor McLaughlin’s free-lance work as a dance artist/educator includes teaching
for several years at Primary Children’s residential psychiatric program for severely
abused children, Children’s Dance Theatre, and Westminster College in Salt Lake City,
as an artist-in-residence in inner city schools in New York City, and for elders in
senior centers and nursing homes in both cities. She was the movement specialist
at Bank Street School for Children, the laboratory school for Bank Street College
of Education and an adjunct faculty member at the State University of New York’s FIT.