Baltimore Dance Project

Co-Artistic Director of BDP, Doug Hamby has extensive experience as a dancer, choreographer and educator.  He has performed in dance companies directed by martha Graham, May O'Donnell, Rachel Lampert, Elizabeth Keen, Pearl Lang and Normal Walker, as well as Doug Hamby Dance. He specializes in works created in collaboration with dancers, composers, visual artists and other creative people.  Hamby's work has been presented in New York City at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Riverside Dance Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, and in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. His work has also been seen at Fringe Festivals in Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Scotland and Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as Anchorage, Alaska, performed by the Alaska Dance Theatre.  He has received choreography awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, New York State Council for the Arts, Arts Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, and the Baltimore Mayor's Advisory Committee on Arts and Culture.  He holds a BS in Biological Science from Michigan State, and MFA from Temple University and is an Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC.) During his current sabbatical, he is working on a project to archive and edit the dance films of Martha Graham dancer Helen McGeehee (with the assistance of Elena Consoli) for submission to the Library of Congress.  He has also appeared on national television as a giant slice of American Cheese.

Co-Artistic Director of BDP, Carol Hess was born in New York City where she trained as a dancer.  She received her BA in Dance from Barnard College and her MA in Dance Education from Columbia University Teachers College, where she studied dance composition with Robert Ellis Dunn, whose approach to the choreographic process has had a profound effect on her creative work. In New York, she performed with Hannah Kahn and Dancers, The Rondo Dance Theater, and DANCES/Janet Soares.  Also a tap soloist, she appeared on television and in solo concerts in the United States and Europe. She was featured in the film Dancing's All of You, directed by Tony diNonno, with Alfredo Gustar, who had danced with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Her mother, renowned tap dancer and teacher Mary Jane Brown also greatly influenced her work in tap dance.  Her choreography has been presented in New York at The Cubiculo, Dance Theater Workshop, The Grand Finale, the New York Fringe Festival, and in Germany and The Netherlands.  For over ten years, her work has focused on the interaction between dance and video.  Many of her dances for the stage feature the use of live camera feeds and/or pre-recorded images.  Her dance films have been screened at film and video festivals in the United States and abroad.  Substrata, a dance film set to music by the metalcore band Dillinger Escape Plan, was screened at the Maryland Film Festival 2006, Artscape 2006, Tucson Shortfest, the Dallas Video Festival, and the 2007 Rosebud Festival.  In November 2008 she received the Outstanding Service to Dance award from the Maryland Council for Dance.  She coordinates the company's outreach program and chairs the Dance Department at UMBC, where she has taught since 1982.