Rosemary Johnson

Executive Director

Rosemary W. Johnson is Executive Director of the Alabama Dance Council, a statewide dance service organization working in partnership with the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Dr. Johnson has a 26-year history as a performing arts presenter – 10 years as a multidisciplinary presenter and 16 years as a dance presenter and producer of the Alabama Dance Festival. She is the 2017 recipient of South Arts’ Mary Beth Treen Award, which is presented annually during the Performing Arts Exchange to a respected member of the performing arts presenting and touring community. Dr. Johnson is currently serving as the lead consultant/facilitator for the South Arts’ Dance Touring Initiative, a three-year program offering professional development and block-booking opportunities to dance presenters in the Southeast. She is past Chair of the Service Organization Council for Dance/USA and currently serves on the Dance/USA Board of Trustees. Dr. Johnson has served on the Board of Trustees for the Alabama School of Fine Arts and as administrative consultant for the Alabama Ballet. She was a participant in the 2004 Leadership Forum at Jacob’s Pillow and regularly attends the National Performance Network’s Annual Meeting as a colleague. Dr. Johnson was recipient of the 2004 Artist Fellowship in Arts Administration from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and has served on the NEA’s grant review panel for dance, and on grant panels for South Arts, Alabama State Council on the Arts, and 3Arts in Chicago.

In addition to her arts administration experience, Dr. Johnson is a professional music educator and performer with a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance. Before coming to the Alabama Dance Council in 2002, Dr. Johnson served as Fine Arts Director and music instructor at Wallace Community College in Selma, Alabama. After opening a new theatre at the college in 1992, she founded WCCSpresents, a multi-disciplinary season of artist residency programs that promoted arts education and community arts development. She was selected in 1998 as a host coordinator for one of eight national sites in Chamber Music America’s Chamber Music Rural Residencies Program, which placed talented, emerging artists in rural communities for nine-month residencies for three consecutive years.

Kerri-Noelle Humphrey

Director, Programming

Kerri-Noelle Humphrey is a 2022 Arts Educator Fellowship Recipient. She is the former Co-Artistic Director of AAA Dance at the Academy for Academics and Arts. In 2019, she was selected as the AAA Middle School Teacher of the Year. She is the founder of Dance Africa, a free educational outreach dance festival that exposes young children to the diaspora of West African dance and the connection to American Tap, Jazz and Hip Hop dance. This program is funded through a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2020, she was awarded a grant from the Arts Education License Plate Advisory Committee to develop curriculum to teach young children about the significance of technology in the arts and to expose them to careers in the arts. Her current research Dancing the Diaspora: Discovering the Influence of Traditional and Tribal African dance in the History of African-American Social and Concert Dance in the Caribbean and the United States explores the unintentional exportation of African/Africanist movement during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and presents the findings as a middle school dance education curriculum unit. Her research was featured on DanceTeacher.com and DanceMagazine.com. In 2018, she was awarded a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts to develop Dance Your Voice, a free community dance festival featuring cultural/world dance genres. She continues to be a presenter at the National Dance Education Organization’s national conference.

Her educational achievements include a BS in Mathematics from Howard University, an MBA from Barry University, and an MA in Dance Education from the University of Northern Colorado.

Rachel Singletary Gates

Program Associate

Rachel Singletary is a dance artist who loves engaging in her local arts community in a variety of ways. A graduate of the University of Utah, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Studies and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ballet. Rachel spent one season dancing with Nashville Ballet 2, five seasons dancing with the Alabama Ballet, and two seasons dancing with AROVA Contemporary Ballet, where she also served as Managing Director. Most recently, Rachel completed Zena Rommett Floor-Barre® Technique Certification, first level.  She is also trained in Revolutionary Principles of Movement, based on the syllabus of Master Teacher Ruth Petrinovic, and Dance for Parkinson’s Disease by the Mark Morris Dance Group.  Rachel currently enjoys serving as Administrative Assistant for the Alabama Dance Council, as well as on faculty at NS Dance Studio, Beverly’s Dance Unlimited, and as a guest teacher around the Southeast!