BA Dance, Butler University
Additional Information:
Teaching Areas: Musical Theatre, Jazz, Tap
Full Time contract faculty
Date of Hire: June 1990
Biography
Michael Worcel has been on the dance faculty at Ball State University since 1992 and on the faculty of Anderson Young Ballet since 1990. His responsibilities at Ball State include teaching jazz, musical theatre dance, tap, dance history, directing/choreographing musicals, and choreographing for Ball State Dance Theatre. He is an honors graduate in dance from Butler University and former member of the professional contemporary dance company Dance Kaleidoscope. He has also danced professionally for Starlight Musicals, Equity Dinner Theatres and summer stock, NCL cruise lines, and for eighteen months with the original Broadway First National Tour of 42nd Street.
To date he has choreographed over fifty musicals. In 2010 he restaged the original Bob Fosse choreography of Chicago for Actors Theatre of Indiana, the resident professional company at the Carmel Performing Arts Center. Tom Alvarez of the Examiner wrote “adapted by Michael Worcel, Fosse’s distinctive work is still fresh and is the real star of the show.”
Other directing and choreography credits include Indianapolis Civic Theatre, Ball State Theatre, Beef N Boards Dinner Theatre, Equity summer stock, theme parks, and revues for NCL cruise lines.
In 1999 he directed/choreographed the full length liturgical ballet Le Voyage in live concert with recording artist Sandi Patty. He has had numerous concert dance pieces adjudicated and chosen for performance at Midstates Regional Dance Festivals as part of Regional Dance America. In both 1994 and 1999, Michael was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Choreography from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for his work on Ball State’s production of Company, which was chosen for performance at the American College Theatre Festival Regional Division and for 42nd Street which was part of the 1999 Ball State University Theatre season.
Michael was the recipient of the Ball State University College of Fine Arts Dean’s Teaching Award for excellence in teaching in 2002.