Angelia Leung appointed interim chair of the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
UCLA associate professor emerita Angelia Leung will return to UCLA to serve as interim chair of the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, effective July 1, 2021. She replaces Dan Froot, who served as chair for the past three years.
Leung steps in at a critical time for the department and the school, as students return to in-person learning after an incredibly challenging period of remote instruction. She brings with her many years of leadership experience, including nine years of previous service as WACD department chair.
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Angelia Leung |
“Dan has accomplished so much as chair and even as he has been working so diligently to get things done before stepping down, he has been taking time and great care in preparing me for the many priorities facing the department and campus. I look forward to meeting and working with the faculty, staff and all the students who make the department’s diverse programs as vibrant as they are,” Leung said. “I have seen (through Zoom and streaming services) creative, inventive, and thoughtful responses with which they have met the challenges of the pandemic.”
Leung joined UCLA in 1981 when the Department of Dance was housed in what was then the College of Fine Arts, and remained with the program through her retirement in 2017. In 1995, dance joined the newly established Department of World Arts and Cultures, now part of the School of the Arts and Architecture, and in 2011, the department was formally renamed World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Through nearly forty years of service to UCLA, Leung has accrued a tremendous depth and breadth of experience.
I look forward to meeting and working with the faculty, staff and all the students who make the department’s diverse programs as vibrant as they are. I have seen (through Zoom and streaming services) creative, inventive, and thoughtful responses with which they have met the challenges of the pandemic.
Angelia Leung
As a faculty member she has taught improvisation, choreography, movement analysis, fundamentals and modern dance technique, dance education, creative dance for children, and production management/administration. An independent choreographer and dancer who co-founded Chopsticks & Sneakers, a collective of Asian and Asian-American choreographers, Leung has also taught as a guest artist wherever her works have been presented throughout the United States and internationally. Whether at UCLA or across the globe, her teaching and creative work reflects her primary interest in creating bridges between intuition and the analytical, the theoretical and the practical, the conceptual and the physical.
Leung has served in numerous capacities and administrative roles for the department, school, and campus. She served as chair of WACD from 2006 to 2015 and, since 2010, has served on the faculty advisory board of the UCLA Visual and Performing Arts Education (VAPAE) program, including two stints as the board’s faculty chair from 2010-2014 and 2016-2017. In retirement, Leung has stayed involved at UCLA, promoting health and wellness for students, staff, and faculty. From 2013-2019, she served as co-chair on the UCLA Semel Healthy Campus Initiative (SHCI) Steering Committee’s Move Well Pod, where she developed and promoted research and interventions for making healthy decisions. And, until spring 2019, she taught CHS179, Life Skills for College Students, with co-facilitator Rena Ornstein, MPH, and funded in part by SHCI.
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