has been making dances, and helping other people make their own dances, for three decades. Andrea is the creator of Moving Torah Workshops - a method for interpreting traditional Jewish texts using writing, movement and theater exercises alongside traditional study methods. In her work, Andrea draws principally on the techniques of community-based dance that she learned through the Liz Lerman Dance Exchangein Washington DC. In 2008 she was invited to the Dance Exchange as an Emerging Choreographer, and her work was presented at the National Building Museum in Washington DC as part of Muscle and Mortar: Animating Architecture at the Capitol Fringe Festival. Andrea has been an artist in residence in many settings in Southern CA and nationally, including a year-long residency as artist in residence at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles. During the HUC-JIR residency, Andrea established The Moving Torah Company and created a community-based piece with professional performers and rabbinic students called On Dry Ground: Faith, Fear and Transformation at the Edge of the Sea. This piece used performance to bring to life rabbinic commentaries on the Crossing of the Red Sea, and to explore the questions how and why we harness faith (religious or otherwise) to move forward through fear. A contemporary version of the piece was created for Doikayt -- the community arts seder co-produced by Yiddishkayt and the Jewish Artist's Initiative. She has collaborated with Nobuko Miyamoto of Great Leap on several interfaith projects. In graduate school, Andrea performed and taught with African-American/Jewish Ensemble Joshua's Wall Performance Company in Philadelphia, PA under the direction of Billy Yalowitz with whom she performed in both conventional and community-based settings. For several years she was part of the collaborative Mary R.Barnett/In Good Company ensemble in New Haven, CT. Together with Aliza Shapiro, she created an educational performance piece called, "Turn it Over, And . . .", which represented the process of traditional Jewish textual study. Andrea learned classical texts at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and performs a piece she created about her time there called, "Cutting My Hair in Jerusalem." Andrea received an M.Ed. in Dance Education from Temple University, where her thesis work was an integrated curriculum in biblical interpretation and interpretive movement. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Yale University.
In addition to being the director of Moving Torah, Andrea is also certified Pilates trainer, her private practice is called Moving Body Pilates. She received her training and certification through Body Arts and Science International. In the past year, Moving Body Pilates and the Invertigo Dance Theatre have collaborated to create a class called Dancing Through Parkinson's. Together they offer two weekly dance classes geared toward people with Parkinson's Disease.
Andrea lives in Los Angeles with her partner, Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature at American Jewish University. Together, they are among the founders of the Shtibl minyan. They have two children, Shachar, age 14 and Oryah, age 11.