New Appointments in the Visual and Performing Arts Education Program
Kevin M. Kane and Laurel Butler take on new leadership roles
Kevin M. Kane has been appointed director of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture’s Visual and Performing Arts Education Program (VAPAE). Kane takes over from Associate Dean of Community Engagement Barbara Drucker, who stepped down in July after six years of dedicated leadership since the program’s establishment in 2010. Laurel Butler has been appointed to replace Kane as the associate director of VAPAE.
Kevin was born and raised in Philadelphia and began his career working internationally as a professional actor, dancer, singer, writer, director, and choreographer. He later earned his Ph.D. in cultural studies, with an emphasis in arts education, from Claremont Graduate University and his M.F.A. in dance choreography from the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (UCLA WACD). He is a long time instructor in UCLA WACD where he designed and directed the award winning summer High School Dance Theatre Intensive program from 2006-2013. Alongside Monica Horan Rosenthal, Kevin co-founded and served as executive director of The Flourish Foundation from 2005-2014, before joining the UCLA VAPAE Program as associate director and lecturer.
Throughout his extensive teaching career, including eight years as a credentialed teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Kevin has focused his research, practice, and activism on designing and implementing inclusive multidisciplinary performing arts programs for youth in the community. He is committed to using performing arts and arts education as a tool for individual and social transformation, creating student pipeline programs that allow youth of all backgrounds to feel connected and inspired through the arts, empowering young people to imagine and realize bright futures for themselves through the arts.
Laurel Butler received her M.A. in theater education and community outreach in 2010 from the University of New Mexico. Laurel comes to us with a depth and breadth of experience in arts education in Los Angeles, including having served as head of the dance program at St. James Episcopal School; service learning coordinator and social justice teacher at Windward School; performing arts specialist for the Los Angeles County Office of Education; and as a teaching artist with the Unusual Suspects Theater Company.
Prior to moving to Los Angeles, she served as youth arts manager and education specialist at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and adjunct professor in the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department at the University of San Francisco, and has held many other arts leadership and education positions for such institutions as Theater-in-the-Making, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Stanford University, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and numerous jails and detention centers.
Laurel’s research has been published in Theater Topics and the Journal of Museum Education and presented at national conferences including the Emerging Dance Audiences Learning Exchange, Dance USA, National Teens-in-the-Arts Convening, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and the Allied Media Conference Transformative Arts Practice Space. Her original performance work has premiered at prestigious venues including REDCAT, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the International Home Theater Festival. Her work is dedicated to facilitating artistic practice and discourse as catalysts for community building, critical awareness, transformative self empowerment, and social justice.