2022 - 2023 dates:

Sunday, Nov 6, 2022
Sunday, Jan 15, 2023
Sunday, March 5, 2023

All Convention to be held at:
Twin Hills Country Club, 700 Wolfswamp Rd., Longmeadow, MA
 

Teachers for Sunday, January 15, 2023
 

Courtney Witham
Jazz

Miss Courtney Witham has been a dancer for over twenty years, studying all styles from ballet to Broadway tap. She was a competitive dancer for ten years and a member of the Saint Anselm College Dance Team and Dance Club, where she served as Dance Team Captain for the 2019-2020 season. Courtney is currently on staff at Grossi Dance & Performing Arts Academy, teaching everything from Creative Movement and coaching the Competition Team. Prior to being on staff full time, Courtney was a Senior Company Member at Grossi for four years and attended NADAA sessions while a Company member. She also was a Teaching Assistant for six years, and came back to teach Master Classes while in college. In 2014, she was elected as the National Youth Representative for the New England Chapter, the first representative for Grossi Dance. She attended Earl Mosley’s Institute of the Arts Summer Intensive in 2015 and continues to take classes to this day, ranging from Contemporary classes at Steps on Broadway, to classes with former Patriots Cheerleaders. Courtney loves teaching all styles of dance, but has found an extreme fondness for teaching jazz. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from Saint Anselm College in 2020, her first Master’s Degree from the University of Saint Joseph in Special Education Literacy in 2021, and is current working towards her Masters of Fine Arts from Fairfield University. She teaches 6th grade Language Arts and lives in Ellington, CT. 

Grace Maclachlan
Tap

Miss Grace is a native of Hebron, Connecticut and started her dance career at Dance Dynamics when she was five years old. There, she trained in all styles and competed at the regional and national levels with the original Dance Dynamics competition team. Under the direction of teachers Colleen Pattavina and Terri Thayer, she developed a particular affinity for classical tap. She then attended the University of Connecticut, where she captained the UConn Tap Team. There, she had the opportunity to learn from artists and educators like Charles Renato, Ryan Casey, and Michelle Dorrance. As team captain she also had the opportunity to lead practices, teach choreography, and develop both her teaching and leadership skills. She graduated from UConn with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing and now works as a registered nurse at Hartford Hospital. She loves her work as a nurse, but finds her second job far more rewarding--she has been back teaching at Dance Dynamics for four years now and works primarily with the competition teams. She encourages in her students discipline, work ethic, and a deep appreciation for dance and the joy it can bring. Miss Grace is so excited to be back at NADAA, as a teacher this time!

Jamal Ahamad
Hip Hop

Predominantly self-taught, Jamal Ahamad is a hip-hop dancer and choreographer from Berkshire County. Despite growing up immersed in both music and dance within his hometown of Brooklyn, NY, he had no skill nor talent for either of them. However, during his senior year of high school, he was convinced by his friends to join its dance company, Joe Ile Bailar, where he was exposed to a variety of Black cultural dance styles. He enjoyed it so much that he decided to continue dancing in college as a member of MCLA Dance Company at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts— he and his friends would spend hours creating together, teaching one another, learning from YouTube, and performing for their campus community. Jamal quickly and deeply fell in love with hip-hop for its history, freedom of expression, ability to bring people together, and its fun factor. His love for the art form has led him to being a faculty member at Berkshire Dance Theatre as well as a guest faculty member at a variety of studios in Berkshire County such as Olga Dunn, Funk Box, and Studio North Dance Arts. When he is not teaching dance, he is either performing with his friends at local events as part of dysFUNKcrew or capturing his students’ rehearsals and performances from behind one of his Nikons. He plans to continue dancing for as long as he can.

Ballet

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