SHALEIGH COMERFORD, SHE/HER (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR), is a neurodiverse Irish and Native American choreographer and the Artistic Director of ShaLeigh Dance Works. Her work is driven by a desire to uplift powerful stories and voices that address the human condition in relation to inequalities and forces of erasure. She is a graduate of Hollins University with a master’s in Visual and Performing Arts. ShaLeigh began her formal dance training on scholarship with RBT and ADF and continued her training in NYC and at P.A.R.T.S in Brussels, Belgium. In 2011, she was personally invited to train in the Gaga movement language with Ohad Naharin and the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, Israel, for their inaugural teacher training program.
ShaLeigh was a principal dancer with the Roanoke Ballet Theatre, where she performed and toured with the company from 2000 to 2004. She performed leading roles with Virginia Ballet Academy and guest roles with Carolina Ballet and Cirque USA. She has also apprenticed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and has performed with Keigwin & Company, Tina Croll & Company, Dendy Dance Theater, Martha Clarke, and Rosie Herrera, as well as in a restaging of Batsheva’s Minus Sixteen and an Official Music Video for "Blind" by Christian Löffler.
ShaLeigh’s choreography and commissions have been presented throughout the US and abroad. She is a recipient of the 2023 Jan Van Dyke Legacy Award and the 2018 Ella Pratt Fountain Emerging Artist Award and was awarded winner in the 2013 Tokyo Experimental Festival of Sound, Art & Performance to design a performance installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art and International Cultural Exchange. ShaLeigh is also founder and practitioner of ShaGa Movement, a living movement practice based on the unity of energy consciousness and its relationship to health and disease. She currently serves as Adjunct Professor of Dance at Washington & Lee University. She is a member of the UpROOTing Ableism workgroup for Alternate ROOTS where she serves on the Executive Committee.