Faculty & Staff Bios

Sandra L. Burton

Lipp Family Director of Dance

MFA in Choreography/Dance, Bennington College

1983 - Present: Sandra L. Burton is a dancer, choreographer, educator and arts presenter. Her choreography for theater from1982-2004 includes Williamstown Theater Festival (A Raisin in the Sun, We Were Dancing, Birdie Blue, The Cherry Orchard), Playmakers Repertory Theater ( Salome), the Goodman Theater( Joe Turner Come and Gone), Henry Street Settlement (Duet) and Williams College Theater Department (The Bacchae, Trojan Women, Tales from the Vienna Woods, A Tale of Mystery). As a member of the Chuck Davis Dance Company, Burton toured nationally for eleven years and was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as a dancer/educator for their national Artist in Education program serving from 1978-83. She was chosen as a finalist by the Massachusetts Cultural Council for excellence in choreography in 1994. Her work has been performed at Dance Theater Workshop, Judson Memorial Church, Theater 4/Negro Ensemble Company, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Williams College Museum of Art, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and at venues in Nicaragua, Brazil and Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. She continues to study, research and travel to learn more about the history and cultures of people from the African Diaspora. Her dance studies include study with the following teachers:

Modern Dance (Thelma Hill, Marjorie Perces, Martha Wittman, Betty Jones, Daniel Nagrin,James Truitte)

Ballet (Karl Shook, Florence Warren)

African Dance (Italo Zambo, Ibrahim Camara, Chuck Davis, Obo Addy, Titos Sompa)

Improvisation (Terry Creach, Susan Sgorbati, Penny Campbell)

Composition (Phyliss Lamhut, Daniel Nagrin, Anna Sokolow)

Acting (Charles Turner, Clebert Ford, Ron O’Neal)

Burton was appointed to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education’s Arts Curriculum Framework Committee from 1993-96. Current projects are with photographer/filmmaker Carrie Mae Weems, composer Craig Harris and a documentary on dancer/choreographer Chuck Davis with filmmaker Don Quinn Kelley.

Burton has lectured on dance history and African American culture at Williams, the Berkshire Museum, Jacobs’ Pillow, Boston’s Strand Theater and African Meeting House, The Flynn Theater in Vermont.

As an arts presenter at Williams College she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Ms. Burton has an MFA in choreography from Bennington College and is the Lipp Family Director of Dance at Williams College. She also serves on the boards of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and The New England Foundation for the Arts.

Holly Silva

Assistant Director of Dance

MFA in Dance, Smith College

1982 - 1985, 1990 - Assistant Director of Dance at Williams College, Artistic Director of The Williams College Dance Company and Founder and Director of INISH (the Irish Dance Ensemble).

Holly Silva co-directed and choreographed her own company before performing with two Boston dance companies, In Collusion and Benita Bike's Dance Art and City Dancers from Springfield. She has studied, among others, with Marcus Skulkind, Gemze de Lappe, Bessie Schonberg and members of the Paul Taylor Company.

Ms. Silva has an MFA from Smith College and is certified to teach Method Matwork, Joseph Pilates’ deep muscle training. In 2004 she studied and completed four grade levels of Traditional Irish Dance in Limerick, Ireland and continued training at BLAS: International Summer School for Irish Traditional Music and Dance at the University of Limerick in 2005. She also performed with Liz Lerman’s company in the site-specific installation of Ann Hamilton’s ‘Corpus’ at MassMoCA in North Adams, MA.

Holly teaches Ballet, Modern, Pilates, Irish Dance and basic Aerial Arts for the Williams College Dance Program and choreographes for the Dance Company and Inish. She has been on the faculty of the Boston Ballet Summer Youth Division for 2005 and 2006.

KweYao Agyapon

Musical Director, Dance Program

1981 - 1986, 1998 - Present: Resident Composer and Musical Director, Co-Director of Kusika

KweYao Agyapon performing. KweYao Agyapon, native of Barbados, BWI, and resident of New York City, has created the music for numerous major ballets with The Chuck Davis Dance Company, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company, and Gallman's Newark Dance Theatre. He also scored a musical version of Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by George C. Wolfe at New York's Public Theatre; Wole Soyinka's translation of Euripides' The Bachae, directed by Williams College's own Michael Knight at Adams Memorial Theatre; and many other theatrical productions. He has served as Composer and Musical Director for dance and theatre productions at venues like Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, the American Dance Festival, and the Apollo Theatre. Mr. Agyapon has recorded and performed various genres of music with popular artists like Ladji Camara, the Weather Girls, Peter Gabriel, Samite of Uganda, Arthur Prysock and Brooklyn Funk Essentials. He has served on the faculty of Jersey City State and Lehman Colleges, the American Dance Festival, the American College Dance Festival, and other similarly celebrated institutions. He was selected as a Master Teacher and Staff Developer by the Hero of Education organization, Artsgenesis, Inc. In these positions, he conducted staff development conferences, and served on the faculty of Artsgenesis' Summer Institute for classroom teachers and teaching artists.

Mary Pfister

Production Manager, Dance Program

BA, Theatre, Grinnell College
MEd, Education, Lesley University
MFA, Technical Theatre, U. of Iowa

Since 2003 – present, Production Manager for the Dance Program. Mary comes to the Dance Program with a background in technical theatre. In her previous positions she has worked on a variety of theatre productions ranging from professional programs (The Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Wagon Wheel Playhouse) to academic programs (Yale Dramat, U of Iowa Repertory Theatre) and community theatres in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. She is currently the Program Manager for the Williams College Summer Theatre Lab. In dance she has done technical work with such companies, as Alvin Ailey, Pilabolas, Ballet Folklorico, and the companies that have performed and been in residence at Williams College.

Ernest Brown

Professor of Music, Co-Director Kusika and Zambezi Marimba Band

Ernest D. Brown, Jr., professor of music, received the Ph.D. in music from the Ethnomusicology Program at the University of Washington in 1984. In 1969 he received the B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University. He also took graduate courses in ethnomusicology at UCLA. He is Co-Director of Kusika and Director of the Zambezi Marimba Band.

His research includes articles on music in Trinidad, Black children's gamesongs, and relationships between African and African-American musics. His dissertation was on Zambian royal xylophone and drum bands, and he is currently writing about the impact of African performers, such as Miriam Makeba, on American music in the1960s. He conducted research in Zambia in 1974-76, and received a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Zimbabwe in 1987. He conducts short-term research projects in Trinidad, Cuba, and Ghana.

He has been at Williams since 1988. Courses taught include "Music Cultures of the World," "History of Jazz," "History of African-American Music, and " Black Music and Post-modernism." Co-taught "Musics of the 20th Century." Brown has also taught at Harvard University, Mt. Holyoke College, and Northeastern University.

As a performer, he has studied Zimbabwean marimba and mbira music from Dumisani Maraire and Ephat Mujuru, and Ghanaian drumming with master drummer Obo Addy.

Rob Michelin

Visting Lecturer in Music and Director of Zambezi Marimba Band, Music Department

Matthew E. Adelson

Lighting Designer

Returns to Williams, where he previously designed the lighting for last season’s spring Dance Company and Kusika/Zambezi concerts. Additional credits include: Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Florida Studio Theatre, Shakespeare and Company, Portland Stage, Merrimack Rep, Burning Coal, Miniature Theatre of Chester, Yale Rep, American Music Theatre, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Berkshire Opera, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Joyce Theater, Hopkins Center, Lincoln Center and City Center, among many others. Matthew is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and is currently the Production Manager and Lighting Supervisor for the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, in Great Barrington.