About NRDC

Roxann Morgan Rowley is the artistic director for Next Reflex Dance Collective. Since 2006 she has been producing dance work in the DC Metro Region. Her work has been showcased in productions at Dance Place and Joy of Motion, Dancing Across the Virginias, the Charlotte Dance Festival, The Goose Route Dance Festival, White Wave CoolNYC Festival, The Velocity DC Dance Festival, John F. Kennedy Center, and the Harman Shakespeare Theater. She has choreographed for The American Century Theater. Her work has also been presented at James Madison University, George Mason University, and The University of Mary Washington.

An artist and performer, she has had the opportunity to work artists and companies including MansurDance, Clancy Works, Steven Mazolla, Daniel Burkholder and the Playground, Dakshina Dance Company, Anomosmotion, Peter DiMuro, Jane Jerardi and Jane Franklin Dance Company. Ms. Morgan Rowley holds an MFA from George Mason University and a BA from George Washington University studying under national and international faculty members.

Outside of NRDC Ms. Morgan Rowley has taught for James Madison University and Fairfax County Public Schools Institute for the Arts and Joy of Motion. Currently Ms. Morgan Rowley teaches for University of Mary Washington, George Mason University and Northern VA Community College.

Sara Cooper is a recent graduate of Radford University with double major in dance and english. She has worked with Horizon Nomadic Artists and apprenticed with Roanoke City Ballet.

Virginia Driggers' dance education began at the age of 8 in the genres of Ballet, Pointe, Lyrical, Contemporary, Jazz, Tap, and Hip Hop. She went on to dance in events such as the DC Cherry Blossom Parade, and college bowl halftime shows as a back up performer for artists, Jake Owens and Nico&Vinz. She also choreographed for numerous high school choral and musical theatre productions. She graduated from James Madison University in 2020 with a BA in Dance. Since graduating she has began teaching a variety of dance styles at Dance Etc. School of the Arts in Woodbridge, VA. She has also choreographed for PWC events. She feels very blessed to be a company dancer in both Next Reflex Dance Collective and the Claytor Company.

Carly Johnson grew up dancing in Vienna, Virginia at Cuppett Performing Arts Center, where she was trained in ballet, tap, jazz, musical theatre, and modern. After deciding that she wanted to pursue dance as a career, she took classes at Fairfax Academy for the Communications and Arts in. There, her piece "Popular" won the Black and Blue Choreography Showcase, and the award for Most Outstanding Signature Project in the Dance Academy. She is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Dance and Choreography, a minor in General Business, and an Honors degree. While at VCU she had the pleasure of performing in pieces choreographed by her peers, faculty members, and guest artists at VCU such as Stephanie Martinez and Doug Varone. She has also worked with professionals in the Richmond community such as Pamela England and the Lyric Opera of Virginia. Carly is currently a performing artist with Next Reflex Dance Collective and Jane Franklin Dance.

Brittney Leasure is a graduate from the University of Florida, with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Education. She is from Orlando, Florida where she trained at the Orlando Ballet School Academy during her high school career. Brittney has studied with Parsons Dance Company, Gibney Dance, and Urbanity Dance Company throughout their summer programs. In Fall of 2019, Brittney studied with FSU, in the Arts in NYC program, working an internship with Town Stages and taking full-time academic classes in New York City. Currently, Brittney is dancing with Revision Dance Company, UpRooted Dance Company and Next Reflex Dance Collective on their current projects.

Grace Mayer graduated from James Madison University with a BA in dance and geographic science in 2020, where she was part of the Virginia Repertory Dance Company and the Contemporary Dance Ensemble. Since then Grace has worked with Dance Matrix and Fredericksburg Ballet Center, and has been dancing with NRDC since the spring of 2021.

Victoria Unterberger has over 20 years of dance experience that began at Dance Etc. School of the Arts in Northern Virginia. Her initial dance background was in contemporary, ballet, tap and jazz. Prior to college Tori performed at the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Russell Athletic Bowl, and Holiday Bowl halftimes having the opportunity to work with Bonny Story, Mandy Moore, and Chris Judd. A highlight was being a Cappy Dancer performing at the Kennedy Center at 16. She is a BFA Dance performance graduate from Radford University with minors in Theater and Business Administration studying directly under dana bella, Amy VanKirk, Inessa and Aleksey Plekhanova, Wesley Young, and Jieun Lee. She graduated with honors and summa cum laude, running student organizations and large benefit concerts during her time in undergrad. During college she participated in dance intensives with Christopher K. Morgan & Artist and was selected for New York City's STEPS on Broadway Summer Intensive under Mindy Jackson. Her main focus in dance then transitioned to modern, jazz, and choreography while maintaining her ballet studies. She has choreographed over 10 original works, directed an hour length one act, multiple scenes and is still creating work. Tori has extensive background in musical theater holding 2 professional credits from Theater West Virginia, Footloose (Cowgirl) and Hatfields & McCoys (Nancy McCoy) and starred in Oklahoma! as Ado Annie Carnes. Other credits include: Anything Goes (Angel), Cat in The Hat (Mom & Ensemble) and premiered Keep This for Me (ensemble), an original musical written by Amy VanKirk and Tommy Iafrante. This is her third season with Next Reflex Dance Collective and is currently in graduate school receiving her Masters in Arts Management from George Mason University.

Denise Urban is from Alexandria, Virginia and began her dance training at Chris Collins Dance Studio. She has studied all styles of dance and passed Cecchetti exams up to Grade 6. She attended Radford University where she studied under danah bella, Ji-Eun Lee, Deborah McLaughlin, Inessa Plekhanova, Aleksey Plekhanov, and Amy VanKirk. She has represented Radford at American College Dance Association conferences, performed faculty work at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and performed in the NASA Langley Centennial Celebration. She has worked with guest artists such as Jenai Cutcher-West, Stuart Pimsler, and MacArthur Fellow, Kyle Abraham. She has performed in Radford University's Nutcracker productions (Clara's Friend, Soldier, Snowflake, Marzipan) as well as in Roanoke Ballet Theater's Nutcracker (Nun, Flower). She has performed in musicals at Radford such as Anything Goes (Angel Purity) and Oklahoma! (Dream Laurey, Ensemble). Denise received her B.A. in Dance and B.B.A. in Economics in 2018. She performed various pieces by emerging choreographers in the 2019 Dance ICONS Thesis Concert. In Fall 2019, Denise returned to Chris Collins Dance Studio to teach and became a member of Next Reflex Dance Collective.

Ben Irwin has been playing drum set for 10 years. He has played in jazz combos and the big band jazz band at JMU, where he will be a senior this fall. Ben has also played drums with the Lorton Workhouse for Rocky Horror Picture Show (fall 2016), Cabaret and Avenue Q.

Charlie Maybee is a dancer, musician, and writer currently based in Winchester, Virginia who specializes in tap dance. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) with a certificate in Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and a BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

As an educator, Charlie has taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, American University, and is currently on faculty at the Shenandoah Conservatory (SU) where he primarily teaches tap dance technique, choreography, history and improvisation.

As a musician, he is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter for a variety of projects. In 2019 he founded the DMV rock band, The Aftershakes, and in 2020 he began a solo music project, Nox Eterna. Over the last 7 years, he has also played drums, guitar, and piano as an accompanist for dance classes at various universities and festivals such as the UIUC, SU, American College Dance Association Conferences (ACDA), and Regional/National High School Dance Festivals.

In 2014, he founded Polymath Performance Project (PPP); a collective of dancers, musicians, and actors who make interdisciplinary performances that highlight experimental approaches to tap dance technique and composition. His current choreographic research explores hybrid identities and object-oriented ontology from a tap dancer’s perspective. This coming October he will be presenting his first professional research paper titled “Tap Dancing Cyborgs: An Object-Oriented Approach to Performance” at the 2021 Dance Studies Association Conference. In February 2021, PPP will present it’s first commissioned work for the annual BlackLight Summit at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Giorgio Mazzarelli Giorgio has been in the preforming arts for about 20 years as an actor, singer, and drag performer. He has attended AMDA Academy for the Performing Arts in Manhattan NY. Theater highlights include "Big River" (musical adaptation of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn), two runs as Riff Raff in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Agatha Christie's "The Unexpected Guest," "The Odd Couple," "The Drowsy Chaperone," "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," and "Cabaret." He was also a cast member of the local "Rocky Horror Picture Show" shadow cast for 10 years.

As a drag performer (Lips Maccin) he is known as a campy dark lady. He was a cast member of Freddie’s Beach Bar’s monthly zodiac show for two years. He is a cast member of the Dragulishous company and hosted drag bingo night, brunches and dinner shows and currently hosting drag bingo night twice a month at Clare & Don’s Beach Shack in Falls church. He also has a YouTube horror film hosting show (Lips Maccin’s Freak flicks). He is also know as DC’s only tap dancing drag queen.

Nova Ren is a musician and composer living in Newport News, VA. Nova has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mary Washington, where she studied Jazz, composition, and electronic music production. In 2013, while at UMW, Nova had the great pleasure of collaborating with Roxann Morgan Rowley for the first time. Since then, Nova has collaborated on many exciting projects with Roxann and Next Reflex Dance Collective. Nova enjoys a good cup of coffee and playing board games with her wife and daughter.