An award-winning actress, dancer, director and writer, Professor Anita Gonzalez specializes in race, gender and performance, and has taught at colleges throughout the country and around the world. At SUNY New Paltz, she provides her students with models of how the arts can be used to enhance global communication.

“I believe that the arts are an ideal way of learning about historical events, social movements and cultural communities,” said Gonzalez.

Gonzalez’s professional career in the performing arts began in 1984 when she was a founding member of the internationally recognized dance and theatre company, Urban Bush Women. As a member of the company, she toured Europe and the United States. After retiring from the troupe, Gonzalez moved on to create theatre and dance works that have been performed at such sites as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and Honduras.

Since then, Gonzalez has received several grants and fellowships and published numerous articles and creative works, including her book, Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance. In 2002, she received a grant for a residency in Bellagio, Italy, at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Villa Serbelloni, where she developed her play, “Cigar Memories,” about the Afro-Cuban cigar workers of Tampa, Fla. She was then awarded a Fulbright residency in 2004 to work at the University of Rafael Landivar Institute of Dance and Research in Guatemala City.

 “I worked with modern dance choreographers and teachers on developing a choreographic repertoire and I coached dancers at the national dance school,” said Gonzalez.

Why New Paltz? Gonzalez enjoyed the idea teaching of at a smaller college and appreciated that the SUNY New Paltz arts community was “well-versed in theatre.”

Hobbies: “Walking in the mountains and observing nature,” said Gonzalez.

Goals: To keep writing

Little-known fact: She speaks on cruise ships about Caribbean culture and female pirates.