Vincent Thomas

Vincent E. Thomas (dancer/choreographer/teacher) received his MFA in Dance from Florida State University and a BME in Music from the University of South Carolina. He has danced with Dance Repertory Theatre (FSU), Randy James Dance Works (NY/NJ), EDGEWORKS Dance Theater (DC), and Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (MD). His choreography has been presented at various national and international venues including DUMBO Festival (NY), Velocity Festival (DC), Modern Moves Festival (DC), Philly Fringe (PA), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK-Scotland), Barcelona and Madrid, Spain, Avignon, France, Athens, Greece, Bari, Italy, Copenhagen, Denmark, Shanghai, Taipei, and Singapore. He received rave reviews for his performance of Come Change (2012) and iWitness (2014) in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland). Theater credits: Movement Coach/Choreographer for Everyman Theater’s Brother’s Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney in Baltimore, MD (2012), Mosaic Theatre’s Unexplored Interior by Jay Sander in Washington, DC (2015), and Everyman Theater’s Los Otros by Ellen Fitzhugh in Baltimore, MD (2017), and Associate Choreographer/Movement Coach for Williamstown Theater Festival’s Most Happy in Concert in Williamstown, MA (2022) directed by Daniel Fish. He is the Artistic Director/Choreographer of the national touring What’s Going On project. Vincent was awarded the 2011-2012 Towson University Student Government Association Faculty Member of the Year, a 2014-2015 NextLook Artist for the University of Maryland College Park and Joe’s Movement Emporium, a 2012-13 American Dance Institute Incubator Artist (MD), the 2017 Pola Nirenska Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance (DC), the 2019 University System of Maryland Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity, the 2020 MDEA Living Legacy Award, a 2021 William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund Awardee, a 2016, 2022 and 2025 Baker Award Finalist, and a 2023 Black History Month Honoree for Richland District II (SC). Vincent is the Associate Choreographer for the INTELLIGENCE Opera, written and conceived by Jake Heggie, Gene Sheer, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, premiere at Houston Grand Opera. He is the co-choreographer for SCAT! The Complex Lives of Al and Dot- Dot and Al Zollar with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. He is an Urban Bush Women BOLD Facilitator, faculty member for the UBW Summer Institutes (NY), a Certified Practitioner of Critical Response Process, and Professor of Dance at Towson University (MD). 

His multi-dimensional company VTDance builds on the use of contemporary dance, improvisation, text/ movement, a variety of sound sources, and collaborations with other artists, including dancers, musicians, poets, visual artists, and others [to be discovered]. These ideas coupled with witty, poignant, athletic and gestural movement are the rich palette for VTDance. www.vtdance.org 

The School of Performing Arts is excited to welcome amazing guest artist and Critical Response Process® facilitator, Vincent Thomas, to WSU for an innovative, community workshop. The Critical Response Process® approach to works in progress was created by Liz Lerman and has been an impactful approach to group dialogue and discussing works in progress across multiple career fields since 1990.
About Critical Response Process®
“Through the supportive structure of its four core steps, Critical Response Process® combines the power of questions with the focus and challenge of informed dialogue. The Process offers makers an active role in the critique of their own work. It gives creatives a way to rehearse the connections they seek when art meets its audience, or a product meets its purpose.
Critical Response Process® instills ways of thinking, communicating and being that enhance all kinds of human interactions, from coaching to community dialogue, from artistic collaboration to family conversations.”

Vincent Thomas

School of Performing Arts

1845 Fairmount St.
Wichita, Kansas 67260
performingarts@wichita.edu