Founding Artistic Director
Kelly Archer was born with an urgency to create and to express herself through performance and movement. She began dancing at a young age, becoming serious about her training when her family moved to Southern California. She began her professional career while still in high school and after graduation was chosen to be part of the Edge Performing Arts Center’s scholarship program, which gave her the opportunity to study and perform movement with some of the most innovative choreographers in Los Angeles. Ms. Archer attended the University of Northern Colorado, where she was awarded both arts and academic scholarships, and earned a degree in theater with an emphasis in directing and a minor in dance. It was during her university training where she fell in love with concert dance.
In 2016, she founded Chadash Contemporary Dance Movement, an emerging professional company that creates unique dance experiences through telling original soul-stirring, thought-provoking, and transcendent stories primarily through dance, but also employing many other media, including original spoken word, film, visual art, photography, and music. The company premiered at its first concert, “A Life Song,” in Broomfield, Colorado in August of 2016. Their second concert, “Made For Another World,” premiered in August, 2017, and then toured to Northern California in January, 2018. Their most concert, Battle Cry premiered in Broomfield in August of 2018, and toured to Northern California this past January. Chadash was honored to be invited to perform excerpts of Battle Cry in March at The Breath & The Clay conference, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2018, Chadash was one of eight companies in Colorado to be selected for the “New and Now” formal showcase of the inaugural Presenting Dance Festival, where they created a new work, entitled: “Reaching For Hope: A Mountain of We.” Along with Judi Daniels, her artistic partner in crime, she is very passionate and excited about continuing to further Chadash’s mission statement: to stand in the ashes of the barn burned down, and point to the moon, one foot in suffering, one foot in hope.
Outside of Chadash, Ms. Archer’s work has most recently been seen at Jacob’s Pillow’s Inside/Outside Festival, the Inaugural Presenting Denver Dance Festival, the McCallum Theatre’s Choreography Festival in Palm Desert, and the Tanzsommer Festival in Austria. In 2011, she created and became the Artistic Director for Synthesis, a bi-annual event that celebrates collaborations between visual artists, dancers, choreographers, and musicians. She directed and choreographed for four Double Feature ballets from 2008-2014 for Northern California Dance Conservatory, all performed in Northern California.
Also passionate as a dance educator, she co-directed the Pre-Professional division at Northern California Dance Conservatory, since it’s opening in 2006 until 2014 when she relocated to Colorado. Prior to that, she co-directed iMPACT Dance Company, a non-profit, pre-professional program based in Northern California from 2004-2006. Ms. Archer’s students have gone on to dance professionally with some of the most prestigious companies in the world. Her students can be seen dancing with Nederland Dans Theatre, The Cullberg Ballet, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Szalt Dance, Eugene Ballet Company, State Street Ballet, the show “Hamilton” on Broadway, and the Rockettes, to name a few. Her students have received numerous scholarships and awards and have continued their studies at prestigious programs such as The Julliard School, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase, Boston Conservatory, SMU, London School of Contemporary Dance, Staatliche Balletschule Berlin, The Nederlands ArnemHogeschool, and more.
During her career as a choreographer, dance educator, and director she has become known for her unique ability to combine her skill and training in dance and theater in order to craft work that tells a story; cuts clean through and ultimately has something to say which perhaps could not be expressed in words. Her choreography explores themes of longing, hope, liberation, wonder, and compassion. It has been a great passion of Ms. Archer’s to provide inspirational, holistic, and aesthetic training for her students. Her choreography and classes emphasize a strong, technical base while cultivating contemporary fusion movement to create work that ultimately speaks to the human condition. She also feels the importance of fostering the creative soul within her students in order to develop their own voices to communicate through intentional movement. She is blessed to be able to do what she loves so much and to pass along what she has learned on her journey as an artist, dancer, choreographer, and educator.
Kelly has a burning passion for the arts and believes they hold a power that can heal, transform, and bring beauty into our world. This passion extends to nurturing the artist’s heart as she believes this is ultimately where all great art is conceived.
Artist in Residence
The late Judi Daniels was instrumental in the creation of Chadash and forever will be honored at the heart of all we do. Below is her bio so that you may know her and the role she played.
Judi Daniels is an actress, poet, painter, writer, and spoken word artist. Early on, she acted in community theatre at venues such as the Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City and the Stagedoor Comedy Playhouse in Sacramento and was a member of a traveling improv troupe based in Columbia, CA. She has a Masters degree in Theatre Arts with an emphasis on Film and another in Educational Administration. She taught Theatre Arts, Film Analysis and English Literature and Language classes for twenty-two years. She is currently serving as an Artist in Residence for Chadash, contributing story, poetry, and spoken word pieces as well as film and multi-media production and direction.
Judi has become part of the heart and soul of Chadash. She helps to conceptualize our stories, in part by writing the storyline for the shows, and she also contributes a theatrical perspective for how the dance and other artistic elements will connect and integrate to tell the stories. Through an evolving collaborative process, Judi and Kelly are combining their passions for dance, theater, and storytelling with the explicit goal of creating a process that is life-giving for our Chadash family and our audiences.
Costume Designer
Susan Parker-Broaddus began costuming at the age of 18 during her sophomore year of college before she knew how to sew. Her first effort, “Taming of the Shrew” won a college award for costume design. She has designed large shows for Capital Christian Center, Bayside Covenant Church and Granite Bay High School. She began costuming for dance in 2005 with Peter and the Wolf for which she was nominated for an Elly award. During her tenure as Costume Mistress/Designer with Northern California Dance Conservatory from 2006 to 2015 she won several costume awards including an award from Youth American Grand Prix for her costume for “Maze” which was a collaboration with Chadash Artistic Director, Kelly Archer.
She also had a costume travel to Moscow for the International Ballet Competition where the Dancer, Miko Forgarty won the Gold Medal. The costume was in collaboration with Choreographer Jen Bradford and titled, “Beneath the Façade.
Susan joined Chadash Contemporary Dance Movement as Costume Mistress/Designer in 2016 and costumed the premier show “A Life’s Song” as well as a film in collaboration with Kelly Archer, Johnny Clark and the Chadash Contemporary Dance Movement Dance Artists and is grateful for the opportunity to work with such people of wonderful character and talent.
Company Photographer
Valerie Febre-Yap is a professional portrait and dance photographer based in the Roseville-Rocklin area just outside of Sacramento, California. BUT, she has camera and will absolutely travel! She’s been awarded the Merit Award at the California State Fair Fine Art 2015 Awards. Her portraits have also been featured in Dance Magazine, Loomis Country Living Magazine, Highlands Neighbors Magazine, Bay Area Dance Watch, Dance Spirit Magazine’s “Photo of the Day” and Fractured Atlas‘ Image of the Month.
Valerie loves to photograph dancers. The human body is beautiful in the simplicity of its form as well as the complexity in its function. In the movement of dancers, she sees beautiful, simple, organic lines created the by the intricate stretching and flexing of the body’s musculature, the manipulation of is structure, the balance of mass—sometimes on its own and sometimes in concert with another; yin and yang in perfect representation.
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