Della M. Cowall

About Della

Della M. Cowall is originally from Detroit, Michigan. She has been a Philadelphia-based creator/performer for more than ten years. As Founder/Artistic Director of Née Danse/Theatre, she has created evening-length productions (The Most Beautiful Village, Holding One’s Own: Stories about Living with Breast Cancer) for SoLow Fest and Fringearts Festivals, as well as the 2024 International Women’s Day An Unfinished Herstory; 2023 Putin’s-A-Fool Day! Philadelphia Artists Standing in Solidarity with Ukraine.

Cowall has performed with devised theatre companies Ping Chong & Co (Angels of Swedenborg), Pig Iron Theatre Company (99 Breakups), Nature Theatre of Oklahoma (NY)(Life & Times: Episodes 1-5). As a professor, she has taught in dance and theatre departments at Temple University, Slippery Rock University, Clarion University, Gettysburg College and Susquehanna University. Cowall has served on the faculty at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and The Milton Hershey School. She has choreographed 25 high school and university musicals, including Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors, Once on This Island, Chicago, and Fiddler on the Roof (performing the role of Fiddler).

Cowall was a rostered artist for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Artist-in-Education Program and conducted 20 dance residencies in urban and rural setting throughout Pennsylvania. She delighted in teaching dance at the Interlochen Arts Camp while her two daughters attended as campers.

 ". . . Della M. Cowall provides us with a gift of translating feelings into a theatrical language that is compelling and heartwarming. To watch "So Long Lives This: Parts One-Four," based on Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18," you will be impressed by the splendor of its minimalism. So very rarely is a performance so enchanting that you find yourself living from movement to movement, from gesture to gesture, in a trancelike state that is almost an out-of-body experience." - The Patriot-News