Education
M.F.A. Dance, UC Irvine, 2009
Biography
Heather Castillo is performer, dance-maker, scholar, educator, mom and an associate professor of Performing Arts, Dance at California State University Channel Islands. Heather began her career as a commercial dancer in Los Angeles performing in multiple television specials for Disney, industrial shows for brands such as American Express, and has performed with stars ranging from Andy Williams to Selena Gomez. She returned to school to complete her BFA and MFA in dance and choreography at UC Irvine with the goal of broadening jazz dance practices and research within Higher Education. In 2018 she won CSUCI’s President’s award for Teaching and Learning Innovation for her efforts to decolonize the online Dance History course and for her campus-wide multimedia event Arts Under The Stars that synthesizes the arts with various creative and research projects. In 2020 she and MiRi Park were awarded the Schlundt Lecture in dance from UC Riverside and Faculty Innovation and Leadership Award from the CSU Chancellor’s Office for providing guidance and leadership in the field of dance as it transitioned to online delivery in March 2020. In Summer of 2020 she co-produced with MiRi Park the Readin Series, a reading of W.E.B. DuBois’ Black Reconstruction. She has most recently written a new Dance Studies program for CSUCI launching in 2022-2023.
Scholarship
Keywords
Dance, Jazz, Modern, Commercial, Theatre, Tap, Lyrical, AIDS, Education, Community, African Diaspora