The Mcculla Movement
The McCulla Movement seeks the soul of dance, creating work that expresses and celebrates the human condition. Founded by Artistic Director Katie McCulla following the 2016 premiere of Captive at The Broad Stage, the company was recognized as Best Emerging Artist at the 2018 Awakenings and Beginnings International Dance Festival.
McCulla’s training includes Westside School of Ballet, the School of American Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and ODC. She is certified in the American Ballet Theatre National Training Curriculum and brings more than 15 years of teaching experience. She has taught at Westside School of Ballet, California Dance Theatre, California Dance Arts, Industry Dance Company, and other dance institutions throughout Southern California.
Rooted in classical ballet, contemporary movement, structured improvisation, and emotionally driven storytelling, the McCulla Movement Technique encourages dancers to connect physical form with lived experience. In 2020, McCulla developed BodyMap, a somatic movement practice supported by a Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs grant. The work explores how memory, emotion, identity, and personal history are carried and expressed through the body.
McCulla’s teaching and community work include extensive experience with neurodivergent populations, and young people with learning differences. Her inclusive approach uses adaptable movement prompts, visual and sensory-based instruction, repetition, improvisation, and individualized pathways into choreography. Rather than asking every dancer to process or communicate movement in the same way, she creates space for different bodies, nervous systems, and ways of learning. This work has become an essential part of the McCulla Movement’s philosophy: each dancer’s unique physical and emotional experience is not an obstacle to the creative process, but a valuable source of artistic expression.
The company has created work for American Contemporary Ballet, California Contemporary Ballet, Disneyland’s Frozen, commercial music videos, LAUSD, Santa Monica College’s Synapse Dance Theatre, Global Motion Dance Company, and numerous Southern California festivals and performance spaces.
McCulla’s current research centers on motherhood in dance—particularly the physical, emotional, and artistic experiences of dancers who mother. Her evolving work examines how caregiving reshapes the dancer’s body, identity, creative voice, and relationship to performance.
