Shawn Roberts is very clear about the impact the arts have on the quality of people’s lives. Through her own journey as a dance educator and her work in the Puget Sound region for over 35 years, she has helped build local, national, and international dance, arts, and personal development programs from the ground up. In 2015, Shawn became the Director of STG AileyCamp, helping to launch the professional development and dance program in collaboration with Seattle Theatre Group and Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. Shawn is the former (founding) School and Education Director of Spectrum Dance Theater, under the Artistic Direction of Donald Byrd. In her 19 years at Spectrum, she taught, directed, produced student performances, and transformed the School of Spectrum Dance Theater from a community-based dance school, into a successful curriculum-based school with over 500 students and 68 classes a week in a variety of dance styles for beginning through pre-professional dancers. During her time as the School Director at Spectrum, she built the Academy Program, the pre-professional division of the school, that is still going strong today.
In 2008, Shawn completed the Mark Morris Dance Group, Dance for Parkinson’s (PD) introductory training, advanced trainings, and teacher certification, making her one of the first certified Dance for PD® teachers, outside of the founding directors, David Leventhal, John Heginbotham, and Misty Owens. Shawn has been teaching the classes for the past 17 years and was the Seattle program director for 15 years. She is now a Dance for Parkinson’s teacher trainer to support the training of Dance for PD® teachers locally, nationally, and internationally.
Shawn is a certified transformational life-coach and consultant. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and dance, and a Master of Arts in Social Sciences with a focus on Transpersonal Psychology from Antioch University.