Donna Faye Burchfield Headshot
Leadership

Donna Faye Burchfield, professor and dean of the School of Dance, arrived at University of the Arts in 2010. Before her arrival, she served as dean of the American Dance Festival (ADF), Durham, North Carolina (2000–2010), and professor of dance at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia (1993–2010). In 2022, she was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre Des Arts Des Lettres by the French government.

Biography

While at UArts in 2019, Donna Faye Burchfield worked alongside Lauren Bakst to develop the Pew Center–supported platform The School for Temporary Liveness, which premiered that fall at the Philadelphia Art Alliance at UArts. In summer 2018, she launched the first summer of UArts’ internationally situated MFA program in Montpellier, France. This was coupled with the inaugural Study Cycle, hosted in Paris, Dancing Politics, Moving Performance: Conversations at the Edges of Choreography, which took place at the CND (Centre National de la Danse).

Additionally, Burchfield formed a three-year-long working relationship with the artistic staff at the Painted Bride Arts Center as an artistic advisor to guide the Bride’s 2016 Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia Project with support from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Returning to Seoul for the fourth time, she was a juror for the 2016 Seoul International Choreography Festival. She also served on the Dance/USA Philadelphia’s Advisory Committee and as co-chair for the national conference for Dance/USA (June 2013). In addition, Burchfield co-chaired and hosted the Society for Dance History Scholars conference Dance and the Social City (June 2012) at UArts.

While at Hollins, Burchfield authored and directed the Hollins MFA program in collaboration with the ADF (2006–2010). She also hosted the American College Dance Festival on two occasions, as well as the 2008 Congress on Research in Dance conference, Dance Studies and Global Feminisms.

Experience

  • Burchfield served as dean of the American Dance Festival (ADF), Durham, North Carolina (2000–2010), and professor of dance at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia (1993–2010).

  • She has worked generously across the U.S. and around the world as an educational leader in the field of dance, developing curriculum, managing international programs, hiring and recruiting faculty, and leading national and international recruitment efforts. Her service to the field extends to decades of work on a multitude of panels and organizations around the globe in support of dance and students.

  • Burchfield’s in-depth work and teaching of dance in countries around the world include China, Hong Kong, England, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Tunisia, Italy and Cuba. She taught, managed, designed and curated the teaching platforms for the ADF International Linkages in Moscow (U.S. State Department–supported, 2000), Seoul and Shanghai. Burchfield holds a BFA and an MFA from Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, where she studied with Jerry Bywaters Cochran.

Awards & Accolades

  • In 2022, she was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre Des Arts Des Lettres by the French government.

  • In May 2014, Burchfield received a distinguished honorary fellowship from Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Israel. The award is given to distinguished artists whose artistic and educational visions have made a remarkable contribution to the fields of music and dance.

  • She was awarded the esteemed Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Award and Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching at the 2011 American Dance Festival at Duke University.

  • Burchfield received the 2009 Hollins Herta Freitag Faculty Legacy Award for Distinguished Service.

  • In 2006, she received the North Carolina School for the Arts (NCSA) Outstanding Teacher in Performance Award for contributions to the Dance program at NCSA and to the state of North Carolina.