LUANA holds a BA in Dance from The College of Saint Theresa in Minnesota and a MA in Dance from Mills College in Oakland, California. Luana is currently a tenured professor at City College of San Francisco teaching Dance Production, Dance History, African-American Aesthetics, Choreography, Modern and Jazz technique, and runs the Repertory Dance Company. She is a co-coordinator the dance program, which is one of the largest college dance programs in the United States. She has taught at Mills College, Laney Community College, JFK University, and is presently a lecturer at Dominican University in the LINES BFA program. Before teaching at the collegiate level she taught academics through dance for 15 years at the K-12 level. She has been acknowledged for her teaching and mentoring by her peers, and the CCSF Dance Program, in which she has worked for the past 25 years, has won the prestigious Izzy Award for lifetime achievement. In addition to her teaching career, Luana successfully performed in the U.S. and in Europe. Currently she is researching the role of the African-American aesthetic as it has informed the American aesthetic and will publish her findings in two books: What Makes That Black? The African American Aesthetic and What Makes That Black? The African American Aesthetic in American Expressive Culture. Her research has applications in art criticism, anthropology and education. Luana is an avid gardener, neophyte bocce player, and a long-standing student of theoretical quantum physics.
What Makes That Black?