Deric Kimler

Deric comes to Peoria from Williamsfield, Illinois. He received his bachelor’s degree in Music at Drake University and a master’s degree in non-profit leadership at Bradley University. Deric is the Executive Director of Central Illinois Friends, a local nonprofit in Central Illinois that helps people living with HIV and that provides completely free health and LGBTQ+ services. It’s the goal of the organization to end new HIV diagnoses and lower STI rates, the leading cause of seven of our most common cancers and infertility. On the side, he is very active in local theatre, coaches baseball, and is an avid, year-round follower of Major League Baseball. As all true baseball fans, he is a Cubs fan. “If you love baseball, there’s no other team to root for.”

Sarah Wilcoxon

Sarah is a Peoria-native now living in Springfield, Missouri and working as an Associate Professor of Dance at Missouri State University. In the Department of Theatre and Dance, she’s the coordinator of the Dance Program and the dance representative for the Musical Theatre Program. In live performance, Sarah primarily focuses on musical theatre direction and choreography at the collegiate and professional-regional levels. Her dance films, co-directed by fellow Peorian Quinlan Orear, have been accepted into numerous national and international film festivals and won a variety of awards. She’s recently been commissioned by the Springfield Art Museum to create a new dance film that will be on display as part of a new exhibit in 2023. Samples of Sarah’s work are available at vimeo.com/swilcoxon. In addition to her work in dance, Sarah is a fully certified Pilates instructor and in training to become a Pilates teacher trainer. She researches wellness and injury risk management for performers and has presented her work at the Pilates Method Alliance, the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science where she was nominated for Teacher of the Year in 2020, and the National Communication Association. Her work on dancer wellness has been featured in Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher Magazine and Authority Magazine.