Michele Hanlon serves as the Associate Dean for the Arts in the School of Arts and Humanities. She teaches modern dance, ballet, composition, conditioning, and related academic courses. She is the founding instructor for the dance area at UTD. She has directed the UT Dallas Dance Ensemble and has organized and overseen many choreographic residencies with national and international dance figures such as Renana Raz (Tel Aviv, Israel), Birgitt Bodingbauer and Simone Grindel (Berlin, Germany), Anne Bunker of O.T.O. Dance (Hawaii and Tucson, AZ), Pilobolus Too (CT), and more. Seeing students grow in their ability and understanding of dance is a great source of inspiration for her. Helping individuals to create and build upon connections between dance and other academic areas is a focus in her work as an educator.

Michele Hanlon is co-director of Dallas based Elledanceworks Dance Company. She has been a dance performer, choreographer, and teacher in Texas and throughout the region since 1988. Her credits include Performing and choreographing with ORTS Dance Theater and 10th Street Dance Works in Tucson, AZ and The Dance Consortium in North Texas. She was a company member of Dancers unlimited Repertory Company in Dallas and Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth. Her master classes have been presented by Collin College, Demi- Dance workshop for Las Cruces (NM), Chamber Ballet School, and in company classes for several dance companies.

She is an active choreographer. Among organizations who have commissioned or purchased her works are The Dallas Museum of Art, Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth, Collin County Community College, Pieces Dance Company, Newman Smith High School, and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Her most recent commission from the Dallas Museum of Art, Characters in Colour: Movement, is a tribute to the work of Marc Chagall was presented on the DMA’s Arts and Letters Live series in spring of 2013. Her work In My Way performed by Elledanceworks at Out of the Loop Fringe Festival was lauded as one of the “Top Ten Dance Events of 2012” by the Dallas Morning News.

Hanlon has a growing interest in dance on the screen. Her video work The Guitarist, a response to Picasso’s painting of the same title, was one of seven works nominated for the 5th International Internet Dance Festival and has since been screened in Düsseldorf, Germany and at the Scandinavian Dance Conference in Kedja, Norway.

Hanlon has also performed solo work internationally at the Stadt Museum in Düsseldorf, Germany and has had commissioned work performed in Belgium.