Deidre Cavazzi is a dance artist in Southern California, employed as the chair of the Dance Department at Saddleback College, where she also teaches in the Honors Humanities program and the college’s Yoga Teacher Training certification.  She received her MFA in Dance from the University of California at Irvine in June of 2006, and also holds a secondary-level California teaching credential in English with a supplement in Dance.  She is the founder, choreographer, and artistic director for ArchiTexture Dance Company, a contemporary dance theatre group located in Orange County.  In addition to teaching and choreographing both inside and outside of academia, she worked as a marine naturalist and a science curriculum writer for six years at the Ocean Institute, and also spent four years volunteering for the Marine Mammal Center and the American Cetacean Society; she has always been passionate about the arts and sciences, and strives to connect these worlds in her work.  She often invites students from her classes to join ensemble casts and be part of large scale company projects.  Deidre’s work explores the relationship between the arts & sciences through interdisciplinary collaborative projects, as well as the use of space and architecture within site specific choreography; she experiments with mixed media and dance installations to create environments for art and movement.  Her choreography often involves working with many people outside the dance community, and Deidre frequently meets with architects, engineers, electricians, scientists, city planners, and other visual and performing artists as she creates a new work. Deidre’s own background as a modern dancer includes study of Laban/Bartenieff fundamentals, release work, aerial dance, capoeira and yoga, and these influences are often seen in her choreography. 

In addition to choreography, Deidre also frequently writes papers about architecture and dance in site-specific choreography, the importance of arts-centered interdisciplinary projects in education, and the relationships between bodies and emerging technologies.  She has had the opportunity to present her work at several national and international conferences in recent years, and looks forward to continuing to explore practical and theoretical connections to art-making.  She has spoken at conferences for the National Popular Culture Association, the Society of Dance History Scholars, the International Federation for Theatre Research, and Dance Under Construction.