Founder and CoDirector of Community Engagement
JUDY BEJARANO
Artistic Director
Judy founded IMPACT Dance in 1995. Since that time she has received many grants and awards for her work, including funding from Colorado Creative Industries, Bohemian Foundation, City of Fort Collins, OtterCares Foundation, Target, Wells Fargo and many others. Judy and IMPACT received the Ace Gillette’s “People’s Choice Award” (2015), the Colorado Dance Alliance “Cutting Edge” Award (2006) and the Arts Alive Fellowship (2004), all for outstanding quality and innovation in the field. She is a member of the Colorado State University (CSU) dance faculty where she teaches Choreography, Modern Dance Technique, Repertory, Contemporary Dance Pedagogy and Improvisation. Her work often explores “life issues” and uses personal narrative to explore universal experience. Topics for IMPACT projects have included immigration, body image, identity, grief, loss and finding home. She also enjoys working with the company to create work that is quirky and oddly humorous, and finds great beauty in the awkwardness that can exist when examining the human experience through movement and spoken word. Her work has been commissioned and performed throughout the region and has been described as “...existing in the poignant space where comedy and tragedy intersect.” She continues to be commissioned to teach and set work on companies and at festivals throughout Colorado, including Canyon Concert Ballet, Colorado State University, the University of Northern Colorado, the Colorado Dance Festival, Contemporary Dance Wyoming and at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, among many others. Her work has been presented in Vail, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, as well as in Alaska, New York, Texas and Wyoming.