Alumni Spotlight: Joshua L. Peugh

Joshua L. Peugh (B.F.A. ’06) is this week’s featured alum in our new Alumni Spotlight series for the This Week at Meadows e-newsletter. Each week, a different Meadows alum will be highlighted for their accomplishments post-graduation.

Choreographer and stage director Joshua L. Peugh has built a multidisciplinary career combining movement, theatre, and literature, creating work for dance and theatre companies around the country. During his time in Meadows’ Division of Dance, he developed his artistry through the program’s rigorous training as well as the encouragement to explore new ways of creating and performing.

When Peugh arrived at Meadows, he envisioned a future primarily in ballet. Throughout the course of his education, however, exposure to different forms of dance and opportunities to create his own work began expanding his idea of what his career could become. He choreographed pieces for the Brown Bag dance series nearly every semester, eventually seeing one of those works performed onstage in the one of the Division’s biannual dance concerts.

“My time at Meadows helped me take off my blinders,” says Peugh, who double majored in dance and English. “I arrived at SMU with a narrow vision of myself as a classical ballet dancer, but over four years I discovered so many other beautiful and exciting forms of dance. Meadows also let me explore my passion for making things, giving me real opportunities to grow as a choreographer.”

Scenes from Peugh's adaptation of "Macbeth." Courtesy of Ballet Memphis.

Faculty members helped Peugh turn those classroom discoveries into professional opportunities. Chung Lin Tseng encouraged him to audition for Universal Ballet, leading to his first professional job after graduation and six years living and working in South Korea. The late Myra Woodruff championed his emerging interest in choreography while Shelley Berg encouraged Peugh to find connections between his dance and English degrees.

Those connections have come full circle in recent years as Peugh has turned toward adapting classic literature through movement. His studies in English provided an unexpected foundation for works inspired by Shakespeare and other literary classics. In May 2026, Newport Contemporary Ballet premiered Peugh’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a production that explored the play’s romance and humor while also examining its colonial themes through dance.

“Shakespeare’s language is meant to be on its feet, there’s so much kinetic energy in the poetry,” Peugh explains. “It lends itself naturally to dance and I’m also drawn to the messy humanity he explores. I love complicated, ambiguous characters, and Shakespeare is full of them.”

Peugh in rehearsal creating "Sweeney Todd" with Boston Dance Theatre. Courtesy of Boston Dance Theatre.

Peugh is continuing his exploration of literature and movement with an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which will receive its world premiere with Dance Kaleidoscope in Indianapolis this October. Other works inspired by Sweeney Todd, Frankenstein and Dracula are also among his developing projects, further extending the creative intersection between dance, theatre and literature that began taking shape during his time at Meadows.

For Peugh, the unexpected evolution of his own career is also at the heart of the advice he offers students beginning to find their artistic paths: “Follow your curiosity; delight-driven learning is the path to pleasure and fulfilling work down the road.”