Debra McCall is one of the most wonderful and bright scholars of culture I have had the pleasure to travel with. Her infectious wit combined with deep knowledge and genuine exuberance make her a truly unique guide.
M. Turpan Los Angeles, California
With Bharatanatyam dancer Kamalakshi Rupini at Thillai Nataraja Temple, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu 2018
With Vice-Chancellor S. Manian as Honorary Guest, International Movement Analysis Workshop, Annamalai University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu 2018
With staff of The Bangala Chettinad Cuisine Masterclass, Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu 2019
FOUNDER AND TOUR ORGANIZER
Debra McCall has led cultural research trips to Oman, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, Istanbul, southern Spain, Polynesia, India, the Caribbean, and Abu Dhabi. A recipient of a 2017-18 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award Fellowship, she documented ancient dance reliefs at the Thillai Nataraja temple in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, while affiliated with Annamalai University. Debra has served on the graduate faculties of New York University and Pratt Institute as well as Art Therapy Italiana in Bologna and Rome, Italy.
Debra is best known for her reconstructions of the 1920s Bauhaus Dances of Oskar Schlemmer. Curious about the roots of avant-garde dance and performance art during the downtown New York zeitgeist of the 1970s and 80s, she collaborated with the last surviving performer of those dances, Andreas Weininger, who challenged her to find Schlemmer’s original notes and sketches believed lost in WWII. After succeeding in this unlikely challenge and walking the stage of the then recently renovated Dessau Bauhaus in East Germany, the reconstructions premiered at The Kitchen and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and toured Europe, the US and Japan to wide acclaim, including the First Biennale de la Danse in Lyon. This venture in “dance archaeology” next took her to Rome for several years. As the 1988-89 Fellow in Advanced Design at the American Academy in Rome, she researched rare art and artifacts in southern Italy, Sicily and Egypt to choreograph an onsite performance of Psyche’s Last Task, inspired by the second century novel Metamorphoses of Apuleius. While in Rome she also developed Art Therapy Italiana’s post-graduate clinical movement therapy training program and deepened her work in archetypal psychology, collaborating with the psychoanalyst James Hillman in a series of workshops on The Body of Myth, presented in Italy, the US, and Canada.
From 1995-2019, Debra played an instrumental role in the development and implementation of the innovative Evolution of Consciousness Spiral Curriculum at the Ross School, East Hampton, NY where she was Head of School, Dean of Cultural History, and Director of Curriculum for Upper School. She taught courses in Cultural History, World Dance, Choreography, Women’s Global Movements, and The Arab Spring. She now spends time in Chidambaram exploring Tamil culture and researching the story of the devadasis (sacred dancers), the subjects of her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, in preparation for an exhibition catalogue of her photography. Debra is also the recipient of Choreography Fellowships and an Inter-Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and the Rome Prize Fellowship in Advanced Design at the American Academy in Rome. She has lectured at Cooper Union, Goethe House New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Watermill Center, Temple University, Annamalai University, and Harvard University.