Meet Our Team
Umbrella Arts’ staff and guest instructors are high caliber, experienced professionals with national and international performance, choreography, directorial, and educational credit and expertise. It is our privilege and passion to provide a unique, unparalleled and elite training experience for our community!
Angela Dennis, Artistic Director
Angela Dennis began her training under Miss Diane Lewis at the Hochstein School of Music and Dance in Rochester, NY.
Miss Dennis is the former Founding Artistic Director of Alchemy Dance Project (est.2003) and youth dance company, Red Stone Dance Initiative (est.2009).
Angela is a former member of Kitchen Sink Dance Company and West Virginia Dance Company.
Her choreography was selected for the 2006 AAPHERD National Dance Gala (Baltimore, MD), 2009 Create WV Conference (Snowshoe, WV), West Virginia State Dance Festival 2004-2017 (Charleston, WV) Big River Dance Festival 2015-2019 (Huntington, WV) and RADfest 2019 (Kalamazoo, MI).
Angela has been commissioned to create and perform works for a wide range of artistic projects including West Virginia Public Theatre, WVU Dance Now Concert 2016, WV Dance Company, Morgantown Theatre Co., M.T. Pockets Theatre Co, WVU Concert Choir, Fairmont State University and The New School in NYC.
Miss Dennis has an extensive catalog of career experience. She has been a staff member and guest instructor at educational dance organizations in Morgantown and spanning the state of West Virginia for over 20 years. Some institutions include ACDA 2016 Mid-Atlantic Conference, Big River Dance Festival, Trillium Performing Arts Collective, and part-time lecturer for the WVU Dance Department.
Elizabeth Braithwaite, Business Director, Musical Theater
Elizabeth is pleased to join the Umbrella Arts’ staff as the Business Director.
A graduate of California University of Pennsylvania with a degree in theater and minor in business, she pursued her career in theater with various production stage management projects and ultimately toured with the Missoula Children’s Theater (MCT).
While at MCT, Elizabeth worked as an actor, director and instructor, leading various acting workshops for children ages 5 to 18. She transitioned to the oil and gas industry following her tour with MCT.
Elizabeth started in the oil and gas industry with no previous experience and ultimately partnered with colleagues over the last 10 years to create their own land service brokerages.
Elizabeth is eager to combine her passion and training in theater and music with her real world business expertise to make Umbrella Arts a success.
Rob Summers, Visual Arts Educator
Rob Summers is a West Virginia native and multi-progressive artist.
Creating images from cartoons to fine art, he is constantly evolving into an all-aroundmulti-skilled image maker.
Formal training and years of self-taught experience has created a plentiful portfolio of work.
Rob is an Advertising graduate of WVU Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism with two years of art training and a second concentration in Art History.
He resides in Morgantown, WV and is one of the original administrators for the Artist Collective of West Virginia.
Sam Stebbins, Creative Writing
Sam Stebbins is a poet from Michigan and a current MFA student/Graduate Teaching Assistant at WVU. In the past, she worked with young students at the Creative Youth Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where students participated in a book club and creative writing instruction. She holds a BA in Writing from Grand Valley State University.
Kaitlin Slaney
Bio: see website: https://kaitlinslaney.com/about-ba
Sarah Beth Ealy, Acting
Sarah Beth Ealy is a graduate of the West Virginia University BFA Acting program. She is a WV native, and a cheerleader for the state. Sarah Beth is a member of the Rustic Mechanicals, West Virginia’s only professional touring Shakespeare Troupe. Past roles include Dromio in The Comedy of Errors and Maria in Twelfth Night. Additionally, Sarah Beth stars as Goneril in West Virginia Public Broadcasting and West Virginia University’s production of King Lear. She is also an avid poet, writer, and creator.
LPhotography courtesy of Moments Captured, LLC
Kadijiha Jones, Visual Arts Educator
Kadijiha is an art facilitator and community connector who has spent much of her life traveling the world, volunteering in diverse communities, and using art as a bridge for connection. Through her experiences in different cultures, Kadijiha has developed a wide range of creative methods to better connect with others and foster shared self-expression.
Sandy Cress, Art Exploration Educator
Sandy Cress has been an artist and explorer of materials since her early childhood experience of picking blackberries and strawberries with her mom and siblings. While picking the berries she discovered that ripe berries squish in your fingers when being pulled from the vine creating a sort of paint for painting on paper or the always present arms, legs and torso.
This desire to make marks has never ended. She still finds excitement in discovering new materials to make marks with, such as the time she was burning the dead trimmings of the zebra grasses in her yard and discovered their charred remnants were perfect charcoal sticks.
Sandy graduated from WVU with an art education certification to teach kindergarten through adults, in addition to a B.F.A. in visual arts with an emphasis in sculpture. She has taught at Morgantown Learning Academy, Monongalia County after school programs, Minnesota State University and Fairmont State University. She currently teaches on staff at BOPARC’s summer Art Programs, kindergarten through 8th grade in Marion County schools, and at Our Studio in Fairmont, WV.
Sandy believes that learning should be sometimes challenging, always fun and open to creative expression.
Two of her favorite quotes from student artists: “This class is like we are on The Magic School Bus, and you are Ms. Frizzle”, and, “You sound like Bob Ross.”
Heidi Dunkle, Music Exploration Educator
Heidi Dunkle is a teacher, facilitator, and mom with 26+ years experience teaching General Music K-5 in Monongalia County Public Schools in Morgantown, WV.
She specializes in K-5 General Music Education, Choir, and Multi-Cultural Ensemble work with an emphasis on the Orff-Schulwerk Approach to music teaching and learning. She has a focus on being trauma-informed and sensitive to social emotional development in children.
She presents workshops on the local, state and national level and has been published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, spring 2007.
Heidi serves as the Monongalia County General Music Facilitator and currently serves on the board of the Mountain Laurel Chapter of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association.
She establishes a classroom environment where students feel safe to be creative and explore the many ways we experience music in our lives and therefore, successfully progress to the best of their ability.
Anna Potter, Dance/Movement Educator
Anna Potter is an upbeat and out-of-the-box thinking modern dancer from Morgantown, West Virginia. She studied dance at University of North Carolina -Greensboro and West Virginia University.
Anna has extensively studied various Modern dance techniques, Ballet, Choreography, Improvisation, West African dance, Jazz and more.
Anna’s education also includes extensive cross-study into Theater, Makeup, Set Design, Costume Design, Alexander Technique, Laban Movement, Nutrition, and Anatomy.
She is a former member of Alchemy Dance Project (WV), Ethereum Dance Company (CO), The School of Disappearance (CO), and Cindy Brandle Dance Company (CO).
Anna loves to share her passion for movement and creation!