Renata Sheppard is an interdisciplinary artist with a strong focus in dance and formal training in visual and digital arts. With a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) she makes performance-based choreographic works with a dynamic sculptural quality often incorporating technology-based elements and structures. She continues collaborative research in computer science with Klara Nahrstedt at UIUC and Ruzena Bajcsy at UC Berkeley (with Lisa Wymore) in Tele-immersive environments, exploring interactive movement in virtual space with a remote partner. She has presented this research internationally in Germany, Canada, and the United States. Renata’s choreography has been presented at the White Wave Dumbo Dance Festival in New York, in Chicago at Links Hall, Silverspace, and the Chicago Cultural Center (2008 LinkUp and 2009 DanceBridge artist-in-residence) and as a 2006 Choreographic Fellow at Summer Stages Dance, Concord, Massachusetts. She is the 2007 recipient of the Kate Neal Kinley Scholarship which has fully funded her certification in Laban Movement Analysis at LIMS in NYC and was awarded a 2009 Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. As an MFA candidate, she received recognition with an Emerging Choreographic Voice Award and the Moe Family Dance Award for outstanding potential and creativity. As one of ten international residents at Dance Omi Collective 2006 she performed in the DanceNow Festival at DTW. She has performed in the work of Chamecki/Lerner, Merce Cunningham, Stephan Koplowitz, David Parker/Sara Hook, Erika Randall, Stephen Koester, Margi Cole and Rachel Thorne Germond among others and currently performs with RTG Dance.