Taryn Brown

Taryn Brown, nee Packheiser, was born in central Illinois. She performed children's theater, took gymnastics and violin lessons, and was taught to appreciate performing arts from a young age. Brown became a dance team member and cheerleader in middle/high school, and chose to study and earn a BFA in Contemporary Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She then lived in New York City and worked professionally with hip hop (Urban Impact) and modern dance (Elinor Coleman) companies, while producing her own work. Taryn also spent a lot of time watching her friends and roommates do stand-up, sketch, and improvisational comedy in NYC. After New York, she attended the University of Colorado at Boulder in the MFA Choreography and Performance track. At CU, she started to incorporate performance art and multimedia into her artwork. Taryn has taught movement-based courses at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Shelton State Community College, Iowa State University, and the National University of Costa Rica (among others). Since 2016, she has shifted from an emphasis on dancing performance, and teaching in academia, into film, television, and general media creative and production. Her work spans from editing to acting, writing to directing, and producing for small indie projects.