Meet our Founding Artistic Director

Megan Brandel comes from a family of kind, creative, motorcycle riding welders.  She does with dance what her mom does with acrylic and watercolor paints - and what her grandmas did with wit, poetry, bread dough, and potato lefse.  These facts remain the best explanations for her creative tendencies and relational instincts. Megan believes everyone’s creative voice matters and she values meaningful human connections.  She first developed her love of dance in Boise, ID with Kathy Lee and she has deep gratitude for every teacher, colleague, and collaborator, continuing through today, who helps her explore, play, and create with movement in new ways.

 As a dance educator teaching in schools and community centers, Megan is strongly committed to reaching populations not typically involved in dance and helping them move in ways that are joyful, empowering, collaborative, and community building.  In 2008, funded by a grant from the Boise City Department of Arts and History, she founded Open Arms Dance Project, which is an expression of all she believes in as a person and artist – everyone deserves to create, connect with others, and be seen.  Learn more about the origin of Megan’s philosophies in this Creators, Makers, & Doers blog, with interview and photos by Brooke Burton.  

Megan is the recipient of the 2022 Idaho Governor's Award in the Arts.  She was also awarded an Alexa Rose Foundation grant supporting her yearlong course of study with Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion Institute (2020/21) and was an Artist in Residence at  Surel’s Place (2020). Open Arms Dance Project was featured in the 2021 Boise Mayor’s Appreciation for Arts, History, and Culture and was an LED Artist Haven resident in January 2022.

Megan earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Modern Dance choreography and performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005.  She has also trained extensively in Integrated Dance, yoga instruction, and studied Elementary and Special Education.  To enrich her teaching of all ages and abilities of dancers, Megan has trained in Brain-Compatible Dance Education with Anne Green Gilbert (2012), Integrated Dance with Jurg Koch (2013), the Dance for Parkinson's Disease program (2014), the AXIS Dance Company Integrated Dance Summer Intensive (2016), and an adaptive dance teacher training in Sun Valley led by Boston Ballet (2019).