Dive in, dissect, create, uncover, grow + MOVE with us this summer.
SPRINGBOARD
a three-day deep dive into WHO you are as a mover + artist
June 20-22, 2025
Alexander Brest Dance Pavilion
Jacksonville University / Jacksonville, FL
Friday, June 20
10 am - 5 pm
10-11:30 am - Muller Technique with Lana Heylock
11:30-1pm - Contemporary Technique with Emily Cargill
1-2:00 pm - LUNCH BREAK
2-3:30 pm - Acting for Movers with Barbara Colaciello
3:30-5 pm - ECD Rep/Partnering with Emily Cargill + Dancers
Saturday, June 21
10 am - 5 pm
10-11:30 - Ballet for Contemporary Movers with Michelle Ottley Fisher
11:30-1pm - Contemporary Technique with Emily Cargill
1-2pm - LUNCH BREAK
2-3:30 pm - Muller Technique with Lana Heylock
3:30-5 pm - Improvisation/Composition Tools with Emily Cargill
Sunday, June 22
10 am - 5 pm
10-11:30 am - Contemporary Technique with Xan Burley
11:30-1 pm - Contemporary Technique with Alex Springer
1-2 pm LUNCH BREAK
2-3:30 pm - Improvisation/Partnering with Xan Burley and Alex Springer
3:30-4:30 - Acting for Movers with Barbara Colaciello
4:30-5 pm - Jam Sesh/Wrap UP with Emily Cargill
Emily Cargill is the Founder and Artistic Director of Emily Cargill & Dancers. Her work has been presented at venues and festivals all across the East Coast, including the High Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, Art on the Atlanta Beltline, Richmond’s 15th Annual Mid-Atlantic Choreographic Showcase, North Carolina Dance Festival, LadyfestCLT, Skwhirlhaus Theatre, Richmond’s Dogtown Dance Theatre’s Touring Artist Series, Emory University’s Performing Arts Studio, Dance Canvas’ Emerging Choreographer Initiative, New Grounds Dance Festival, New Seeds Festival, OneSpark Festival, Modern Atlanta Dance Festival, Richmond Dance Festival, Detroit Dance City Festival, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival, NYC10 Dance Festival, Versatility Dance Festival, Charlotte Dance Festival, Moving the Margins/The Jessie, WhiteWave Dance Festival and the Women Arts Exchange. Emily has also been commissioned to set work by Staibdance, Jacksonville Dance Theatre, Braided Light Dance Project, Kennesaw State University, Georgia College and State University, James Madison University, Washington and Lee University, Belmont Abbey College and Winthrop University.
Emily is one of 60 Jacksonville artists who have recently been awarded the inaugural 2024-2025 Individual Artist Grant from the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. This historic new grant program aims to serve local individual working artists in Duval County.
Emily is also a 2023 recipient of the Community Foundation of Jacksonville’s Art Ventures Individual Artist Grant. This grant assisted in the creation process of bone memory, which premiered at the 2nd Annual Women Arts Exchange in April 2024.
Emily was a founding member of the Atlanta-based modern dance company, Staibdance, as well as dancing in works by Gregory Catellier, Corian Ellisor, Kathleen Wessel, David Dorfman, Jacksonville Dance Theatre and Braided Light Dance Project. Emily has her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University and her BA in Dance from James Madison University.
In 2011, Emily traveled to Sorrento, Italy as a company member and teaching artist with Staibdance, both performing and teaching abroad during the two-week summer dance intensive. In 2013, Emily was a choreographer-in-residence at the Florida Dance Festival in Tampa, FL. In 2015, Emily was featured as a Small Plates Artist, a teaching residency sponsored by the Atlanta Ballet and Zoetic Dance Ensemble. In 2019, Emily was commissioned to create a new dance installation at the Mint Museum-Uptown Charlotte, as their featured artist for the city-wide Connect with Culture Day.
Emily has taught modern, ballet and jazz technique, improvisation, dance history, and choreography courses at Winthrop University, Spelman College, Kennesaw State University and Georgia College and State University. Emily has also been on faculty at the Atlanta Ballet, Georgia Ballet, Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, and the Performing Arts Center of Tallahassee.
Emily is currently an adjunct professor of dance at Jacksonville University, teaching all levels of contemporary technique within the dance department.
EMILY CARGILL
Multi-faceted artist Barbara Colaciello began her career as the Advertising Director of Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine at The Factory in New York City. For over two decades, Barbara has written, directed, produced, and performed socially engaged theater that contributes to vital conversations in the Jacksonville community. Her studio BABS’LAB located at the CoRk Arts District is home to monthly Story Slams. It’s a space for experimentation, training, and performance, a place where the community comes together to witness work that uplifts, breaks barriers, and crosses lines.
A 2013 TEDxJacksonville Speaker, Barbara was voted Best Actor by Folio Weekly’s 2016 Best of Jax readership. A recipient of a 2020 Art Ventures Individual Artist Grant from the Community Foundation for Northeast Florida to write a site-specific solo performance piece that investigates the subjects of care giving, and women’s heart health. She is currently the Artistic Director of Untold Stories, a series produced by the Florida Theatre featuring Northeast Florida storytellers. Now in its fourth season, Barbara casts, coaches the speakers, and hosts the quarterly story evenings. Most recently, she received an Individual Artist Pilot Program grant award funded by the City of Jacksonville and administered by the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville.
BARBARA COLACIELLO
Lana Carroll Heylock is an accomplished teacher, choreographer, and interdisciplinary collaborative artist with a dynamic career spanning performance, education, and global artistic partnerships. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Akron and an MFA in Choreography from Jacksonville University, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Dance.
Ms. Heylock's professional career includes over fourteen years with Jennifer Muller/The Works Dance Company in New York City, where she served as a principal dancer, rehearsal director, and special projects director. During her tenure, she worked closely with Jennifer Muller, assisting in restaging the company's renowned repertory on stages worldwide. Following Jennifer Muller's passing in 2023, Ms. Heylock was honored to be named Legacy Artistic Advisor for the continuing Muller/Works Dance Company, a testament to her pivotal role in the company's history and legacy.
A master teacher with an international reputation, Ms. Heylock has taught at prestigious professional dance companies, universities, schools, and festivals around the globe. Her expertise spans a variety of dance styles and her ability to inspire dancers at all levels has made her a sought-after educator.
Before joining Jacksonville University, Ms. Heylock served as full-time faculty and Head of the Dance Institute at the University of Akron for over a decade. At Jacksonville University, she has spearheaded several innovative, multicultural initiatives for dance students. These include an intensive choreography workshop in Pontlevoy, France, and an interdisciplinary cultural immersion program for dance, music, and vocal students in Shanghai and Hangzhou, China. With a strong passion for collaborative work, she initiated a groundbreaking project that brought together MFA in Choreography graduate students from Jacksonville University and pre-professional dancers from the Institute of Classical and Modern Dance in Mumbai, India, deepening her commitment to fostering global artistic exchange. In addition, she served as the director of the Myths & Legends Collaborative Project at Jacksonville University, a multidisciplinary endeavor that united over 40 dancers, 65 vocalists, 5 musicians, and 2 actors, showcasing her ability to integrate diverse creative talents in large-scale performances.
LANA HEYLOCK
Michelle J. Ottley-Fisher, a native of the US Virgin Islands, began her dance training with the Theatre Dance Company of St. Croix. Now in her 33rd year in public education, she has been fortunate to have spent all of those teaching years at performing arts institutions.
Ms. Ottley began with an internship and then 4-year instructional start as an Earth Space Science and Dance instructor at the prestigious Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She then accepted the role of director of dance at what was then the Landon Middle School for the Arts and Academics. Prior to this she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Dance and Secondary Education from Jacksonville University where she was honored in 2017 as the university’s Distinguished Alumni in Theatre/Dance.
Since her arrival in 1987, Michelle has had the honor of a becoming a part of the Jacksonville and surrounding area dance and musical theatre community by way of such icons as the Theatre Jacksonville, Nancy Dance studio, Apex Theatre Studios, Dansations Performing Arts Center, Players By The Sea, St. Mary’s Dance Academy, Showtime Performing Arts and Pedro Menendezin St. Augustine, Edward Waters College, FSCJ Artist Series, Ballet Arts Centre, Arts Edge, The Florida Ballet, and the Jacksonville Centre for the Arts, DanceLook, LLC and many of the community's private and public school programs.
Momma O., as she's lovingly referred to by her many students and colleagues, is a full-time wife, the mother of three stunning women, and is currently the 25-year director of dance at the incredible LaVilla School of the Arts.
MICHELLE OTTLEY-FISHER
Xan Burley + Alex Springer are partners, parents, choreographers, performers, and educators who were formerly based on the unceded lands of the Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) from 2007-2018 and currently work in the traditional territories of the Potano people and inheritors of the Alachua tradition (known now as Gainesville, FL). Burley and Springer are Assistant Professors in Contemporary Dance at the University of Florida, a land-grant institution. Through collective visioning with multidisciplinary collaborators–under the moniker Every Body Meeting–they make texturally, sonically, and visually dense performances for the stage, camera, and alternative sites. Every Body Meeting co-opts the “general body meeting” as a site of inclusionary, hyper-collaborative creative process that positions the body-in-motion as its primary conduit. They ground creative inquiry in transdisciplinary and discursive methods and principles of pluralism and equity.
Xan and Alex’s work has been presented and supported by Treasure Hill Artist Village (Taipei, Taiwan), the American Dance Festival (NC), Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (MA), the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (MA), Women Arts Exchange 2023/24 (FL), and NYC-based venues Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church (multiple seasons), Danspace Project’s DraftWork Series, Triskelion Arts, New Dance Alliance Performance Mix Festival (2022/17), the Tank, and the 92Y, among others. Notable residencies and awards include AIR Taipei’s Treasure Hill Artist Village International Residency (Taipei), the Marble House Project (Dorset, VT), Jacob’s Pillow Research Fellowship and commissioned site-responsive project (MA), Center for Performance Research’s Technical & Production Residency and Artist-in-Residence, Gibney Space Grant, University Settlement Artist Residency (2013-14), and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grant (Fall 2010).
They have been commissioned to create work for over 15 repertory companies, youth ensembles, and university dance departments across the United States, including Zenon Dance (MN), Emory University (GA), Santa Fe College (FL), Smith College (MA), James Madison University (VA), Goucher College (MD), and the University of Michigan, among many others. In addition to their full-time tenure-track positions at the University of Florida, Xan and Alex have enjoyed teaching at various professional and collegiate institutions such as Gibney (NY), freeskewl (NY), the Bates Dance Festival (ME), SUNY Purchase (NY), the University of Maryland, Wesleyan University (CT), and Smith College.
Burley + Springer received Bachelor’s Degrees in Dance from the University of Michigan and MFAs in Choreography and Performance from Smith College. In addition, they both performed nationally and internationally with Doug Varone and Dancers, among many other NYC-based choreographers and artists. www.xanandalex.com
XAN BURLEY + ALEX SPRINGER