The Program 60 team and the College of Arts and Sciences selected MFA Student Shaela Davis for the 2026 Friend of Program 60 Award. This award, its inaugural year, is being granted to five outstanding instructors who were nominated by Program 60 students. Davis was nominated for the award by a student in her Dance 1111: Ballet 1 class. 

Davis is a dance artist, educator, and researcher whose work moves between the stage, classroom, and the community. She earned her BFA in Dance Performance with a K–12 Teaching Certification from Towson University, where she performed with the TU Dance Company and choreographed for the 2013 American College Dance Association in Virginia. On scholarship at the American Dance Festival, she appeared in Footprints and in repertory by Abby Zbikowski.

As a performer, Davis has worked with Abby Z and the New Utility, Christopher K. Morgan & Artists, Company E, Full Circle Dance Company, and collaborated with vocalists Thomas Beard and Carolyn Black-Sotir. Her performances have taken her to venues and festivals including Jacob’s Pillow, NY Live Arts, The Kennedy Center, Fusebox Festival, and the 92nd Street Y. Her choreography has been featured in the Baltimore Black Choreographers Festival, Peabody Dance! Festival, and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. She has also taught at numerous dance institutions across Maryland and Ohio.

Currently pursuing her MFA in Dance at The Ohio State University, Shaela is developing research on social dance practices rooted in her identity as a Jamaican American Black Woman. At Ohio State, her self-choreographed solo Habitual Roots was featured in the Autumn concert Uprising. She performed in Ronald K. Brown’s Four Corners, and served as rehearsal director for its restaging. She is a 2025 recipient of Ohio State Dance’s Semester Funding Initiative Award.