Artistic Director and Choreographer, is the recipient of The Arida Foundation’s 2004 NC Artist of the Year award. She trained on a Ford Foundation scholarship at the School of American Ballet, official school of the New York City Ballet, and with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Ted Shawn, and Margaret Craske. She performed with the The Hartford Ballet and was Sugar Plum Fairy in New York Public TV’s 1964 “Nutcracker.” She has received over $100,000 in grants and awards, primarily for new choreography, including funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NC Arts Council and Arts Exchange.

She has served as Artist-In-Schools, Dance Education Consultant, and a grant panelist in Indiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. She has been a member of the board of directors of arts organizations and arts councils since 1976. Her poetry and articles on dance history and appreciation have been published by such houses as Doubleday and Green River. Her two books of poems are available at amazon.com, from Urthona Press and in local bookstores.

She has performed her original solo and group work on the NC Writers and Readers circuit, on scholarship at Jacob’s Pillow New Dance Workshop, Yale University, New York, around the US and in Italy. Dunn holds a BS in Shakespearian Studies, a Masters in Liberal Arts, and has completed coursework for a Ph.D. in the literature of the English and Italian Renaissance. Dunn owns Fletcher School of Dance and teaches Humanities at UNCA. She has five children and five grandchildren.