Dr. Donna Davenport photo: k.ryan
(She/they)
Creative Movement and Yoga
[email protected]
Donna brings decades of experience as a performer, choreographer, dance professor, and teacher of improvisation, integrated arts and social justice to a new career in wellness. Crossbridge Wellness provides a special space for Donna to teach creative movement (with a yoga warm-up and cool-down) and offer private yoga sessions.
She has been teaching Hatha Yoga at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva since 2018, offering Community Yoga, Breathe & Stretch classes, Yoga for Athletes, and college courses that utilize the practice and philosophy of yoga to teach embodied awareness. Donna’s yoga style can be characterized as Vinyasa, slower in pace, with a focus on alignment, breath, personal agency, ease and self-acceptance. She is devoted to helping others find liberation in movement.
She holds 200 and 300-hour yoga teacher training certificates from May 2018 and Sept 2024. She began her yoga journey with Dr. Monica Lesslie in Geneva, NY in 2013 and continued her training with expert teachers, Aimee Senise (SHRI Vinyasa Yoga) and Jesse Amesmith (YogaVibe) in Rochester. As a teacher of creative movement, Donna hopes to inspire and encourage free expression.
After living her life as a dancer, performing choreography, Donna’s heart has shifted to Yoga due to its healing properties and the power of regular mindful practice to encourage deep connection, build peaceful resolve and enhance embodied awareness of Self, others, and the space around us. She prefers a style of yoga that necessitates close listening to verbal cues of the teacher and your body’s responses, rather than memorized sequences.
Her academic background includes doctoral and master’s degrees in Education; a BFA in Dance; a bachelor’s degree in Psychology; myriad leadership positions as an administrator in higher education; an endowed professorship; publications; and national conference presentations.
Donna lives in Rochester, co-directs an annual contemporary dance festival, Dances at MuCCC: Moving Margins to the Center, with Nanako Horikawa Mandrino, and takes kickboxing classes at LA Fitness. She is most grateful for her daughter, Kaylee, in Colorado; her twin brother, Aaron, in Virginia; and her family, dear friends and former students all over the world.
Donna offers group classes and workshops, as well as private lessons.
PRIVATES: One-on-one sessions in yoga / personal fitness for 50 min. are $60.00. The first session includes a 10-min. intake chat (for appointments contact: [email protected]).
photo: C. Huang
Avoiding Self-Censorship while Moving Freely Workshop
2:00-3:30 Sunday March 29 and May 17
Experience safe, freestyle movement in an encouraging, open space.
Drops-ins welcome.
Cost: $20 per workshop. Cash, Venmo (@Donna-Davenport-10), or check to Donna Davenport.
PRICING: Drop-In/Workshops $20 (1.5 hrs); Privates $60 (50 min.); Cash, Venmo (@Donna-Davenport-10), or check to Donna Davenport.
