Marilyn M. Sylla

Mrs. Sylla has been at Mt. Holyoke College since 1994 and Greenfield Community College since 1993 teaching African dance from a cultural perspective. She is currently teaching African dance at Smith College and Amherst College. Since 1987 she has taught and performed throughout New England and the United States including Jacobs Pillow, the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York and Kripalu Center in Massachusetts.

Marilyn studied Haitian Folkloric dance and taught West African dance in Port Au Prince, Haiti at the Ecole National Des Arts and in Mirebelais, Haiti at the Centre Cultural Alexandre Kenskoff in a collaborative exchange project with the director of Ballet Folklorique Tamboula D'Haiti, Inc., Peniel Guerrier. She also performed at the Theatre Nationale' in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with Ballet Folklorique Tamboula DHaiti, Inc., during March 2003. In addition she has performed and taught in Senegal and Guinea, West Africa and also taught African dance in Brazil at Malé deBalé and at the Universidade Federal da Bahia. She returns to Africa regularly to continue her studies of African dance and music.

In 1998 she received an award from the University of Massachusetts for "Outstanding Support to Women of Color."

In March 2007 Marilyn received a "Finer Womanhood" Award from the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. at the University of Mass.

Marilyn is a board member of Better Chance Program, in Amherst, MA