Master teacher / Modern Dance and Ballet
Producer / Presenter / Arts Administrator

​About Joan

Joan served as Executive Director of Oakland Ballet, Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp (Steamboat Springs, CO), General Manager of Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center, and Executive Director of WestWave Dance, an annual festival of new choreography presented in San Francisco. She was capital campaign consultant for ODC/San Francisco’s expansion project in the Mission District, is former President of Dance Bay Area and served on the Steering Committee of Bay Area National Dance Week. 

As a dancer, Joan has performed with, or in the works of, Alonzo King, Cliff Keuter, Ellen Bromberg, Victoria Morgan, Krissy Keefer, Frank Shawl, Bill DeYoung, Toni Pimble, Richard Colton, Mary Miller, Kathleen McClintock, Sarah Bush, and Alan Ptashek, as well as being a member of Eugene Ballet (Oregon) and Jordan Ballet Company in Indianapolis. She was full-time faculty in Dance at the University of Oregon and Mills College, and taught at San Francisco Ballet, Dance Circle of Boston, The Princeton Ballet, RoCo Dance & Fitness, and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Joan co-authored the Dance Curriculum Guide adopted by the San Francisco Unified School District, and was the official choreographer for the San Francisco Embarcadero redesign in the wake of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.  She holds a B.A. in Psycholinguistics, a M.A. in Dance, and a M.A. in Arts Administration. She received Bay Area National Dance Week’s Contribution to the Field of Dance Award in 2006, and in 2012 she received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Sustained Achievement.  Joan was named “2011 Dance MVP” by The San Francisco Chronicle.