Tessa Chandler is a Birmingham, AL native, and she is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner(cm), performer, and dance teacher. She is a faculty member at New York's School for Film and Television and in the Dance Department at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches ballet and originated a for-credit course in Awareness Through Movement(cm) in 2005. Further teaching engagements with Feldenkrais have included the Paul Taylor Summer Dance Intensive, the New York in Naxos Festival (Greece), the Trisha Brown Dance Studio, and the Feldenkrais Institute of New York. Tessa graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Columbia University's School of General Studies, following a classical ballet career with the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, and the Dutch National Ballet. She has performed her own choreography and that of many independent dance and theater artists in New York since 1999, and from 2003-2006 she was a member of Molissa Fenley and Dancers. She maintains a private practice in Functional Integration(cm), the hands-on application of the Feldenkrais Method, at the Feldenkrais Institute of New York ( www.feldenkraisinstitute.com ), and offers movement direction, master classes, and coaching to theater and dance companies. In November, Tessa will give a workshop on Feldenkrais and Improvisation at the annual World Dance Alliance Americas General Assembly in Bahia, Brazil.