Angelina DiFranco

Teaches: Beg/Int Contemporary

Angelina DiFranco is a dance artist, writer, and choreographer. She graduated from Kent State University with honors in May 2023 and holds a BFA in dance and a BA in English with a concentration in professional writing. Throughout her tenure at Kent State, Angelina has received the May O’Donnell Memorial Dance Award, the Eugenia V. Erdmann Dance Award, and the dance faculty award for outstanding achievement as an emerging artist and dance scholar for three consecutive years. She has attended summer intensives with Deeply Rooted, Koresh, Visceral, and LA Contemporary Dance Company and partaken in residencies with choreographers such as Gregory King, Amy Hall Garner, Hope Boykin, Stefanie Batten Bland, Laura Smyth, Staycee Pearl, and Tiffany Mills. As a choreographer, she was commissioned to choreograph for and dance in a film entitled Beauty of Violence, which won best overall at the Kent State Film Festival and best experimental film at the Highland Square Film Festival. Her own dance film Unscripted Puppet: The Staged Resurrection was nominated by Kent State faculty for the American College Dance Association and was selected to be presented for Cleveland Dance Festival’s Virtual Dance Film Gallery and Screening in 2022. Angelina’s piece Letters From a Monster was also selected to be presented for CDF’s Emerging Works Concert in 2022. Most recently, she was commissioned to choreograph for the Dancing Wheels Company. The piece, House of Glass, premiered in October of 2023 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland and was re-staged for OhioDance Festival in April of 2024. House of Glass will be performed again for Cleveland Dance Festival in November of 2024. Currently, Angelina is a company member and teacher in her third season with Dancing Wheels. Working with Dancing Wheels has given her the opportunity to earn The Dementia Friends Program Certificate and The Dancing Wheels Teacher Certification, providing her with the knowledge and certification to teach people with dementia/alzheimers and instruct in the Dancing Wheels’ method of physically integrated dance. Alongside her work as a dance artist, she took part in See Chicago Dance’s critical writing fellowship and has been published in See Chicago Dance, Luna Negra, and Brainchild.