ARKANSAS DANCE NETWORK BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Arkansas Dance Network is a nonprofit organization governed by a board of directors with directors serving two-year terms. The 2020 board is as follows: 

BOARD MEMBERS                                                       CONTACT US - CLICK HERE TO EMAIL ADN

Amy Bramlett Turner, President
Amy Bramlett Turner (Hot Springs, AR) received her early training from Andrea Pierkowski and Edmond Cooper. She completed her BFAs in Ballet and Modern Dance as a Nordan Fine Arts Scholar at Texas Christian University in 2011 and her Masters of Arts in Dance Education at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro in 2019. Amy has been the Director for Hot Springs School District’s 7-12 Dance Program since 2014.  She founded the Hot Springs Dance Troupe in 2015, and has trained and led this student company to perform all over the state and fundraise over $40,000 to perform in Austria with the Stars of Tomorrow tour in 2018. She has had the opportunity to perform and study all over the world with several international choreographers and dancers including performing with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Young Tanzsommer, and studying dance abroad in England. She has been a guest artist with North Arkansas Dance Theatre and Hot Springs Children’s Dance Theatre, and was resident choreographer and principal dancer with the Muses Creative Project (2014-2018). Amy is a four-time Oaklawn Foundation Scholar (2016-2019), was nominated for the 2015 Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce Young Professional of the Year, and awarded the Avant-Garde Honoree Award by ACANSA Arts Festival (2015). Amy earned the title of 2019 Teacher of the Year for Hot Springs World Class High School and was most recently nominated for the 2019 Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce Woman of the Year. She is now a board member for the Women’s Chamber of Commerce of Hot Springs and the President of the Arkansas Dance Network (NDEO State Affiliate) where she helped establish the first Arkansas High School Dance Festival & Dance Teacher Professional Development. Amy truly believes movement has the power to create change and works tirelessly to use dance education to build community and student, organization, and community partnerships within the state of Arkansas. 
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Christen Pitts, Vice President
Christen Burke Pitts has been a dance instructor in central Arkansas for more than 30 years and is Founder/Director of the Theatre Dance Program and Dance Troupe at North Little Rock High School where she has taught since 1996. Christen is also a Teaching Artist for the Arkansas Arts Council.  She is the 2019 recipient of the inaugural Argenta Community Theater Award for Excellence in Arts Education. She received the Governor’s Arts in Education Award from the Arkansas Arts Council and was named the Arkansas Communication and Theatre Arts Association Teacher of the Year in 2012. Christen holds an MEd from UALR and a BA in Drama/minor in Dance Performance from the U of A. She has performed and danced professionally in more than 50 shows, plays, and musicals.  She appeared on both the Disney and Family Channel and in numerous commercials, films, and shows. She is a board member/co-founder of the Arkansas Dance Network, Argenta Community Theater, Acansa Arts Festival, TeeBoDans, and Untapped. Christen has choreographed more than 65 musicals and is thrilled to continue to support and promote dance in education in Arkansas! She is married to Kyle Pitts and has two children, Grace and Corbin, who all share in her love of the arts!
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Lee Ann Danner, Secretary
LeeAnn started dancing at the age of four with Dot Callahan. She continued dancing throughout high school at Ed’s School of Dance. LeeAnn danced after college taking classes at Ballet Memphis. While living in Memphis, she performed in the Nutcracker. She has been teaching tap, ballet, hip hop, and musical theatre in Little Rock since 2002 at different Central Arkansas studios. LeeAnn served as the local coordinator for the Moscow Ballet from 2008-2014. She owned DanceArts studio in Hot Springs, AR for seven years, where she taught both recreational and competitive classes. Her competitive students won numerous awards, with LeeAnn being the most proud of all the judges’ choice awards earned. LeeAnn is a member of Southern Association of Dance Masters and Chicago National Association of Dance Masters. She is a certified Progressive Ballet instructor and Dance2Fit instructor. LeeAnn is a Registered Nurse with a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy and a Doctorate in Education. When she isn’t working as a Trauma Outcomes Coordinator you will find her teaching at DanceArts, the Vibe, or headed to Louisiana to work with the Golden Girls dance team.
Stephanie Thibeault, Treasurer/Past President
Stephanie Thibeault, M.F.A., Associate Professor of Dance at UA Little Rock, worked in the DC/Baltimore area, as a professional dancer, choreographer, and dance educator, before serving as a dance faculty member at several institutions, including University of Maryland, Dickinson College, and Wichita State University. She danced professionally for Kinetics Dance Theatre and SURGE Dance Company of Baltimore, and has worked with Deborah Hay, Joe Goode, Doug Varone, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Parsons Dance Company. Thibeault’s teaching and choreography have taken her from the U.S. East Coast to Canada and Europe, and from the American Midwest to Hawaii and Taiwan. 



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Amy Kessler Weber, NHSDA Representative
Amy Kessler-Weber is currently a dance teacher at Arkansas Arts Academy High School. She has over 25 years of teaching experience including The New School (Fayetteville, Ar) and Shreveport Dance Academy. (Shreveport, LA) She is a certified ballet teacher with the American Academy of Ballet and trained with Kansas City Ballet School, Tulsa Ballet Center for Dance Education, Jacob’s Pillow (Lee, MA) and Webster University (St. Louis,MO). Her performing background includes Ozark Dance Theatre, Louisiana Dance Theater, Intercity Row Modern Dance Company, and Springfield Ballet.







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​Karen Castleman
Karen Castleman is a dancer, choreographer and educator based in Rogers, AR. She holds a BA in dance from Belhaven University and has had the pleasure of performing all over the world with companies such as MOMIX, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and RUBBERBANDance Group. She has educated dancers in ballet, modern, jazz and contemporary dance at schools all over the country, including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Youth Education Department which she helped to create, and Loyola University Chicago. Karen currently teaches in the dance department at Arkansas Arts Academy High School, and at the Northwest Arkansas Conservatory of Classical Ballet, and serves on the board of directors of NWA Ballet Theater. She is a 2015 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship award for choreography and had the pleasure of creating an original ballet on the dancers of Tulsa Ballet II in the summer of 2017. In 2018, Karen was in the first cohort of artists to receive the Artists 360 grant, awarded by the Mid-America Art Alliance and the Walton Family Foundation.

Jennifer Maddox
Jennifer Maddox is currently Instructor of Dance at HSU. Since 1987 she has worked diligently and passionately to build the dance program; where she has been the program director, Instructor for the dance minor courses, and the Dance Company Director and Faculty Choreographer. She is also currently Instructor of Dance at OBU, teaching the dance technique courses for the BFA Musical Theatre degree program; and Movement Instructor for The Arkansas Arts Center Theatre Academy, where she helped to develop the movement class curriculum for the academy. Maddox was honored with The Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, recognizing her artistic ability in choreography. She has received several grants from the Arkansas Arts Council, and was instrumental in HSU receiving the NEA Choreography Initiative Grant for Arkansas. Maddox has devoted much of her career promoting the art of dance throughout the state of Arkansas. She has served on boards, and volunteered for, nonprofit art organizations around Arkansas. She has taught numerous workshops for students, educators, and professionals, across the state and the region. Maddox's proudest moments over the years have been to witness the power of dance and its transformative impact on students’ creative minds and bodies.


Lakeisha Sharpley
A native of North Little Rock, Lakeisha Sharpley received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts with an emphasis in Theatre and Dance from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is a proud dance educator of 24 years.
Her dance training began at the Centre for the Dans Arts of Little Rock, Arkansas directed by C. Michael Tidwell, where she served as instructor and choreographer. Her Ballet and Contemporary dance training continued at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Fine Arts/Dance Department under the instruction of Dorothy “Dot” Callanen-Gravett and Kathleen Majewska. She’s also received training from the Baton Rouge Ballet Theater, the American College Dance Festival and the Joe Terry Dance Theater.
Mrs.Sharpley has varied experience in the field of dance performance and instruction. As a student in college she founded her non-profit Danz Univerzity, Inc., an organization that provided free dance training and entertainment to underprivileged youth across the state of Arkansas. As she managed her organization she continued to perform with such groups as the Tidwell Project Dance Ensemble, Joe Terry Dance Theater, University of Arkansas at Little Rock DansCompany. Upon graduating, she continued to share her talents with the community by coordinating and facilitating dance classes and programs for children and youth at organizations such as the Better Community Developers, Inc., Dunbar Community Center, Millennium Music Foundation and Philander Smith College-Upward Bound. She served as instructor of dance for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Community School of the Arts, Adjunct-Instructor of Dance for the Fine Arts Department at Arkansas Baptist College, dance teacher for the North Little Rock School District, and Centre for the Dans Arts Dance Studio. She went on to open her own dance studio, The Movement Studio of Sherwood, Arkansas to provide quality dance training to local youth and adults. She also has completed two residencies as Guest Choreographer and Movement instructor for the Henderson State Dance Department and the Wildwood Park for Performing Arts Youth Opera. She is an active member and presenter for the National Dance Educators Organization.
Currently, Mrs. Sharpley is the Fine Arts Department chairperson and lead dance instructor for Horace Mann Middle Arts and Science Magnet School of the Little Rock School District where she trains over 150 male and female dance students in Ballet, Jazz and Performance Studies. Her curriculum includes learning strategies for students to learn literacy and math through the art of dance.
Recently, Mrs. Sharpley has been selected on a national platform as a 2020 Global Learning Fellow of the NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellowship. She will participate in a year of professional development on building a global learning classroom. The fellowship will convene with a field study Peru to study their culture and educational system.
She continuously facilitates workshops and classes for individuals and organizations locally and across the nation in hopes of continuing to educate on an international level. Her repertoire of dance includes Classical Ballet, Modern and Jazz.

Liz White, Newsletter
Liz started dancing at the age of two at Ms. Karen's Dance Studio in North Little Rock; she continued learning and performing throughout high school with the NLRHS Dance Troupe.  While in college at the University of Central Arkansas, Liz taught part time at Danceworks Studio in Maumelle. While at UCA, Liz volunteered her time choreographing dances for organizations including Alpha SIgma Alpha and the Boys and Girls Club. She continued her education at the University of Arkansas earning her M.A. in Communication and M.A.T. in Secondary Education. Once Liz moved to Northwest Arkansas, she worked as an instructor at the Academy of Dance in Springdale teaching ballet, tap, and jazz to students ages 18 months to adults.  Liz began teaching at Rogers High School in 2011 as a debate coach and oral communications teacher. In 2013, she created the Dance course and started teaching Dance I at both Rogers and Rogers Heritage High Schools. She now teaches Dance I-IV at RHS.