Rachael McClellan Leonard was born and raised in Massachusetts and now resides on the east coast of Florida with her husband and two children. She received her BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah and her MFA in Dance Choreography from Jacksonville University/White Oak as a Howard Gilman Fellow. Rachael is co-founder and Artistic Director of Surfscape Contemporary Dance Theatre in Volusia County, Florida, where she has been awarded multiple corporate and governmental grants and developed over ninety original dance works. Rachael is a part-time Professor of Movement at Stetson University and a certified Pilates, Yoga, and wellness instructor. She is also a recurring Adjudicator for the American College Dance Festival Association (ACDFA), a Master Artist in Residence for Very Special Arts, an Artist in Residence with the National Park service, an internationally published author of dance-related articles and papers, and the Modern Dance Faculty for the United States International Ballet Competition. Companies and colleges throughout the United States have performed her choreography and, more recently, she presented her work at Sadler’s Wells in London, England. Her most recent projects include a choreographic and performing residency at The Great Friends Dance Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, a choreographic commission for Columbia City Ballet in Columbia, South Carolina, a Dance for Film project at Big Cypress National Preserve, the presentation of a new duet at create.DANCE.Florida in the Duncan Theatre in West Palm Beach, a re-staging of a collaborative dance/rock opera with co-director, Kristin Polizzi, at both Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and the Orlando Fringe Festival, a touring collaborative art/dance/film installation with visual artist, Bryce Hammond and digital artist, Greg Cole, and the development of new and reconfigured choreography for her company’s tenth anniversary gala performance. Rachael is honored to reside at Marble House Project… and to use the time to slow down, breathe, meet other artists, and to delve into movement. She will be examining how the enigmatic layers of perception, intuition, inference, coalescence, and transference that inform choreographic development also can be incorporated into movement philosophy and the physiological preparation for performative exchange.
