Bobbie Wynn Bolden
Bobbie Wynn Bolden, UC Davis Department of Theatre & Dance professor and the godmother of the university’s dance program, retired in 2003 after 18 years of teaching. She will always be remembered for dancing to the beat of her own drummer.

When she first came to UC Davis in 1985 to teach dance, those classes were offered only through the physical education department. Bolden, along with the late Jere Curry, each taught half a dozen dance classes per quarter including tap, jazz, and Irish folk dance. But her students’ demand for more serious exploration into the world of dance led Bolden to break away from physical education and establish dance as its own major.

Bolden’s legacy is apparent in the number of students who have planted themselves firmly in the dance world. Many have continued to dance with major companies including The Alvin Ailey Dance Company, The Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Dance Theater of Harlem. A few have even assembled their own dance companies. In addition to challenging her students in their various dance repertoires, Bolden also provided them with an African American perspective on dance. Bolden continues to teach special classes and workshops in the Davis area.

Bolden taught modern dance, jazz dance, and dance composition and directed the annual student dance concert, Dance Collage. She was for many years the faculty advisor for the UCD-affiliated student dance companies, Nexus Dance Collective and the Black Repertoire Dance Company. A joint professor in the Theatre and Dance and African American and African Studies departments, she currently teaches dance composition, history of African-American dance, Afro-Caribbean dance and culture, and African dance in the Diaspora. She has traveled to Cuba and Barbados researching and studying indigenous secular and sacred dance forms. Prior to her appointment at UC Davis, Bolden was for six years the founder and Artistic Director of Bobbie Wynn and Company in San Jose. During this time she created more than 15 works, both for the proscenium stage and for site-specific events. Bolden has won numerous awards, including a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence grant. Her credits include Roots Suite; An Experimental Dance Program Celebrating the Alexander Calder Exhibit; Harlem Renaissance Revisited; and Fireworks Rag. Bolden was a featured artist on the television programs Three Black Artists and Tapestry and Talent Highlights. Recent works are Mid-Life Mourning, Quilt Dreaming, and Childhood Stages. A past-president of the California Dance Educators Association, Bolden has a BA in modern languages (Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama), and an MA in Theater Arts (San Jose State University). She also studied at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, the Dance Theater of Harlem, and with Bella Lewitsky and Jennifer Scanlon.

Ruby Cohn

Harry Johnson

William E. Kleb
William E. Kleb taught theatre history, critical theory and playwriting in the Department of Theatre & Dance from 1974 to 1994, when he retired. During that time, he served on numerous department and university administrative committees and chaired the graduate program. Prior to that he taught in and chaired the Creative Arts Interdisciplinary Program at San Francisco State University, and, simultaneously, chaired the Film Department there (1971-74). He has taught at other institutions, including Yale University where he began his career as a Carnegie Teaching Fellow in the English Department (1961-62); he received his B.A. from Yale (1961) and a DFA from the Yale School of Drama (1970).

During the 1970s, Professor Kleb was active in the avant-garde theatre scene in San Francisco, writing about performance art in numerous publications including Alternative Theatre, Artweek, and Performing Arts Journal. At UCD, he focused on theatre history and criticism, specializing in the plays of Sam Shepard. Among the journals in which he has published articles and reviews are Theatre Survey, Theatre History Studies, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Contemporary Theatre Review and [Yale] Theatre (for which he served as contributing editor). His essays have appeared in edited books such as American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard, American Playwrights Since 1945: A Guide to Scholarship, Criticism and Performance, and Confronting Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire: Essays in Critical Pluralism.

Kleb’s chief interest throughout his career was (and remains) his students and classroom teaching.

Since his retirement, Professor Kleb has lived in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He returned to San Francisco in 2006 where he now resides.

Phyliss Kress

Barbara Sellers-Young
Barbara Sellers-Young, PhD, taught movement, acting and Asian theatre at the Department of Theatre & Dance from 1993 to 2008. She served on various university committees at UC Davis, taught as a member of the Davis Honors program and was Chair of Theatre & Dance from summer 2001 through spring 2006. She also served as Interim Executive Director of the Mondavi Center from April 2005 until June 2006.

Dr. Sellers-Young has also taught at universities in England, China, and Australia and has given invited lectures at other institutions in the United States and elsewhere. Her research projects on the intersection of dance, body, and globalization have taken place in Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Nepal, China, England, and Australia.

Her articles can be found in The Journal of Popular Culture, Theatre Topics, Asian Theatre Journal, Dance Research Journal and several edited volumes. She is the author of three books: Teaching Personality with Gracefulness, Breathing, Movement, Exploration and an edited volume titled Bellydance: Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy.

Professor Sellers-Young’s research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Centre for Cultural Research into Risk, Charles Sturt University, Australia, as well as numerous grants, including a Davis Humanities Fellowship and a Pacific Rim Planning Grant. She was for two years the convener of the International Federation of Theatre Research Working Group: Theory and Practice of Performing and is President-elect of the Congress on Research in Dance.

Theodore Shank 

Alan Stambusky