Program Director, Dance for PD® | Mark Morris Dance Group
David Leventhal is a founding teacher and Program Director for Dance for PD®, a program of the Mark Morris Dance Group that has now been used as a model for classes in more than 300 communities in 25 countries. He leads classes for people with Parkinson's disease around the world and trains other teachers in the Dance for PD® approach around the world. He's conceived and co-produced five volumes of a successful At Home instructional video series for the program and has been instrumental in initiating and designing innovative projects involving live streaming and Moving Through Glass, a dance-based Google Glass App for people with Parkinson's. Leventhal designed and currently teaches a pioneering dance-based elective course that is part of the Narrative Medicine curriculum at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He's featured in the award-winning 2014 documentary Capturing Grace directed by Dave Iverson. Leventhal serves on the Board of Directors of the Davis Phinney Foundation and Dance & Creative Wellness Foundation and on the Advisory Board for the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center Arts & Humanities Program. He's a charter member of IADMS' Dance for Health Committee.
As a dancer, he performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group from 1997-2011, appearing in principal roles in Mark Morris' The Hard Nut, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare. Leventhal received a 2010 Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for his performing career with Mark Morris. He graduated from Brown University with honors in English Literature.