About NRDC

Roxann Morgan Rowley is the artistic director for Next Reflex Dance Collective. Since 2006 she has been producing dance work in the DC Metro Region. Her work has been showcased in productions at Dance Place and Joy of Motion, Dancing Across the Virginias, the Charlotte Dance Festival, The Goose Route Dance Festival, White Wave CoolNYC Festival, The Velocity DC Dance Festival, John F. Kennedy Center, and the Harman Shakespeare Theater. She has choreographed for The American Century Theater. Her work has also been presented at James Madison University, George Mason University, and The University of Mary Washington.

An artist and performer, she has had the opportunity to work artists and companies including MansurDance, Clancy Works, Steven Mazolla, Daniel Burkholder and the Playground, Dakshina Dance Company, Anomosmotion, Peter DiMuro, Jane Jerardi and Jane Franklin Dance Company. Ms. Morgan Rowley holds an MFA from George Mason University and a BA from George Washington University studying under national and international faculty members.

Outside of NRDC Ms. Morgan Rowley has taught for James Madison University and Fairfax County Public Schools Institute for the Arts and Joy of Motion. Currently Ms. Morgan Rowley teaches for University of Mary Washington, George Mason University and Northern VA Community College.

Sara Cooper is a recent graduate of Radford University with double major in dance and english. She has worked with Horizon Nomadic Artists and apprenticed with Roanoke City Ballet.

Sara Grace completed her BFA in Dance and Choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University and looks forward to attending the University of Chichester to receive her MSc in Dance Science Biomechanics. She currently dances with Roxann Morgan Rowley's company, Next Reflex Dance Collective, and Angela Dice Nguyen's company, The MoveMessangers. She has performed at many venues in Fairfax Virginia as well as performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Sarah also teaches at the Lasley Centre for the Performing Arts in Vint Hill Virginia. There she teaches many ages, skill levels and genres. She has also won multiple awards for her choreography.

Grace Mayer graduated from James Madison University with a BA in dance and geographic science in 2020, where she was part of the Virginia Repertory Dance Company and the Contemporary Dance Ensemble. Since then Grace has worked with Dance Matrix and Fredericksburg Ballet Center, and has been dancing with NRDC since the spring of 2021.

Zena Nguon started her dance career at the age of 6, having trained in ballet, jazz, modern, and tap. She graduated from James Madison University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a Teaching Licensure in Dance Education. Since then, she has taught and choreographed around the DMV area for multiple schools, developed arts and communication programs at Inquisiminds Enrichment School, and taken on the role of studio manager at C4 Performing Arts. She is currently the musical choreographer for Luther Jackson Middle School and a dancer for Claytor Company and Next Reflex Dance Collective. Being an NRDC member has been an amazing and enlightening experience for her. She is excited for what the future has in store for the company and cannot wait to share their works with the world.

Symphony Orchestra of Northern VA SONOVA, provides high-quality classical music to Northern Virginia and the surrounding area. With every concert, our dedicated musicians strive to entertain and educate as we bring affordable, accessible classical music to audiences in the region.

We began as a small, government-funded orchestra in Arlington County, Virginia. In 2011, SONOVA’s founder, Maestro Jeffrey Dokken, and a group of committed musicians established a large, independent, professional-quality symphony orchestra.

Our home theater is the beautiful George Washington Masonic Memorial Theater. Over the years, SONOVA has been invited to perform throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with arts organizations as wide ranging as renaissance choirs, tap dance companies, symphonic choirs, and Broadway artists. Additionally, SONOVA has performed at such venues as Arlington’s Spectrum Theater, The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, DE, the historic Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C., the White House, and Colonial Williamsburg’s historic Bruton Parish.

We routinely perform with world-class guest artists, conductors, and musicians. We have been joined onstage by world-renowned soloists and conductors Jorge Saade-Scaaf, Sofya Gulyak, Juan Carlos Escudero, Krystal Rickard-McCoy, Jackson Caesar, Laura Wehrmeyer, Bakaari Wilder, David Timpane, Barry Hemphill, and many others.

We also place special importance on collaborations and American and world premieres. Over the years, SONOVA has given premieres of works by Brian Wilbur Grundstrom, Peter Rauch, Paul Leavitt, Michael Ream, and William Burdett.

SONOVA welcomes Ethan Lolley as the second ever music director of the orchestra, beginning with the 2023-2024 season.

Ben Irwin has been playing drum set for 10 years. He has played in jazz combos and the big band jazz band at JMU, where he will be a senior this fall. Ben has also played drums with the Lorton Workhouse for Rocky Horror Picture Show (fall 2016), Cabaret and Avenue Q.

Charlie Maybee is a dancer, musician, and writer currently based in Winchester, Virginia who specializes in tap dance. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) with a certificate in Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and a BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

As an educator, Charlie has taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, American University, and is currently on faculty at the Shenandoah Conservatory (SU) where he primarily teaches tap dance technique, choreography, history and improvisation.

As a musician, he is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter for a variety of projects. In 2019 he founded the DMV rock band, The Aftershakes, and in 2020 he began a solo music project, Nox Eterna. Over the last 7 years, he has also played drums, guitar, and piano as an accompanist for dance classes at various universities and festivals such as the UIUC, SU, American College Dance Association Conferences (ACDA), and Regional/National High School Dance Festivals.

In 2014, he founded Polymath Performance Project (PPP); a collective of dancers, musicians, and actors who make interdisciplinary performances that highlight experimental approaches to tap dance technique and composition. His current choreographic research explores hybrid identities and object-oriented ontology from a tap dancer’s perspective. This coming October he will be presenting his first professional research paper titled “Tap Dancing Cyborgs: An Object-Oriented Approach to Performance” at the 2021 Dance Studies Association Conference. In February 2021, PPP will present it’s first commissioned work for the annual BlackLight Summit at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Giorgio Mazzarelli Giorgio has been in the preforming arts for about 20 years as an actor, singer, and drag performer. He has attended AMDA Academy for the Performing Arts in Manhattan NY. Theater highlights include "Big River" (musical adaptation of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn), two runs as Riff Raff in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Agatha Christie's "The Unexpected Guest," "The Odd Couple," "The Drowsy Chaperone," "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," and "Cabaret." He was also a cast member of the local "Rocky Horror Picture Show" shadow cast for 10 years.

As a drag performer (Lips Maccin) he is known as a campy dark lady. He was a cast member of Freddie’s Beach Bar’s monthly zodiac show for two years. He is a cast member of the Dragulishous company and hosted drag bingo night, brunches and dinner shows and currently hosting drag bingo night twice a month at Clare & Don’s Beach Shack in Falls church. He also has a YouTube horror film hosting show (Lips Maccin’s Freak flicks). He is also know as DC’s only tap dancing drag queen.

Nova Ren is a musician and composer living in Newport News, VA. Nova has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mary Washington, where she studied Jazz, composition, and electronic music production. In 2013, while at UMW, Nova had the great pleasure of collaborating with Roxann Morgan Rowley for the first time. Since then, Nova has collaborated on many exciting projects with Roxann and Next Reflex Dance Collective. Nova enjoys a good cup of coffee and playing board games with her wife and daughter.