CDF 2026 Adjudication Panel

Dominic Moore-Dunson — 2025 Lloyd Richards New Futures Fellow (SDC Foundation) and Dance Magazine 25 to Watch — is an award-winning choreographer, director, and educator based in Akron, Ohio. He is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of MooreDunson Co., a family-led creative studio and consulting company that helps people move better — as artists, teams, and leaders.

Alongside his wife and co-founder, Ashley Moore-Dunson, Dominic leads the company’s growing slate of work, including THRIVE Leadership & Team Development.

Dominic’s work spans regional and commercial theater, dance, and immersive performance, creating emotionally resonant, culturally rooted experiences that explore memory, identity, safety, and belonging.

His choreographic voice is rooted in Urban Midwest Storytelling — a movement language shaped by improvisation, moving fluidly between pedestrian gesture and fully embodied expression — and is presented through a family-centered, intergenerational lens. Rather than traditional “family-friendly” programming, his work invites families into honest, layered experiences that honor complexity, loss, joy, and resilience.

His work has been presented nationally and featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS, and more. He is a 2024 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2024 Headlands Center for the Arts Fellow, Jacob’s Pillow Choreography Fellow and a former Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Dominic is the creator of signature works including the inCOPnegro Trilogy, The Remember Balloons National Tour, and The Block, a digital essay series blending storytelling, satire, and cultural reflection.

Across platforms, his work sparks dialogue on culture while building a creative ecosystem where movement, storytelling, and leadership intersect.

Sarah Ramey is a choreographer, performer and teacher who dances and makes dances with people of all ages and backgrounds. She joined the faculty of the School of Dance at Ohio University in 2025 as an Assistant Professor with a focus on dance and healthy aging. Her research explores the role dance plays as a physical, creative, and social practice to enhance the lives of older adults, and how dance can contribute to the flourishing of individuals at every stage of life. 

Sarah is the founder and co-director of Perennial Movement Group, a program of dance classes and performance opportunities for adults over age 50 that cultivates creativity, health and community involvement. Founded in 2015 in Columbus, Ohio, the program expanded in 2021 to include a performance ensemble (The Perennials) which has created and performed nine original works at venues ranging from retirement communities to dance festivals. PMG reaches over 200 seniors a year in Central Ohio through classes and events, including partnerships with the Ohio Veterans Administration and the Delaware County Jail.

Sarah began her professional dance career in 2007 with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, a multigenerational dance company founded in 1976. For six years, Sarah traveled around the US and internationally to perform, as well as teach and make dances with people of all ages and abilities. During her career, she had the privilege of dancing in works by Liz Lerman, Cassie Meador, Gesel Mason, Samantha Speis, Keith Thompson, Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig and Robert Battle. Her own work has been presented at venues ranging from small scale (her front yard) to large scale (The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts). Recent work includes “Inside Voices,” a collaborative evening- length work created in collaboration with four other artist-mothers, and “See Through,” an intergenerational dance work created in collaboration with Chloe Napoletano and a cast of 20 dancers ranging in age from 25-85.

Sarah trained at McDonogh School with Ilona Kessell, then went on to receive her BA in Dance from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University. She lives in Athens, Ohio, with her husband, musician Steve Ramey, and their two children.