Brandee Williams Lara, Adjunct Faculty, Department of Dance.

Kudos go out to Chapman University’s adjunct dance faculty member Brandee Williams Lara, who has been named one of four 2015 Dance Teacher Award winners by Dance Teacher Magazine and featured in the July 2015 issue! The awards will be presented at the Dance Teacher Summit, July 28-30, 2015 in Long Beach, CA.

Each year, the Dance Teacher Awards honor four outstanding educators in the United States for their contributions to the field of dance. According to the magazine, “Recipients have included studio owners, professors, program directors and more whose specialties run the gamut of dance genres.” Professor Lara and her co-winners are noted as “remarkable educators who inspire us by nurturing their students’ love of dance, whether preparing them for success at competitions, paving pathways to professional careers or offering them an emotional outlet through movement.”

Lara earned a Master of Arts in Dance and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from California State University Long Beach. She has been teaching dance for nearly 28 years, and has taught tap at Chapman since 1997. She was named a Teacher of the Year in 1991 and appeared multiple times in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

She began her professional stage career regionally and on tour in such shows as 42nd Street, Anything Goes, and George M! Other performing credits include film (Pennies from Heaven), television (Days of Our Lives), and many industrials. She has enjoyed success as an award-winning director and choreographer in major regional productions of Man of La Mancha, West Side Story, Forever Plaid, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cabaret, and many more. She recently returned to the stage in George M! (opposite Tony Award-winner Sammy Williams), as the tap dancing Sister Mary Hubert in Nunsense, and as Mrs. Claus in Jolly Holly Holiday.

Professor Lara is the Orange County representative to the International Tap Association and a regular contributor to On Tap Magazine. Her own dance studies began in the Los Angeles area with Melvin Kaiser, Mary Lou Privette and Al Gilbert. She studied jazz with Jaime Rogers, among others, and had the opportunity to study rhythm tap privately with Maceo Anderson, of the legendary Four Step Brothers.