The Shazam/Isis Podcast: Episode 17 - Joanna Pang Atkins

Our series of interviews continues as we near the start of our reviews of the first season of The Secrets of Isis.  Joining us for this episode is actress, dancer, teacher Joanna Pang Atkins who played Cindy Lee on the first season of the show.  Joanna talks about her career leading up to her appearing onIsis, her memories of the episodes and her co-stars, and her career following her departure.

 

Joanna Pang Atkins has a unique perspective gained from a fascinating lifetime of experience. Since she was a young girl, Joanna has traveled the world over, performing as an actress and dancer on stage, television and film. As a natural progression, she began producing and directing theater for teens and now brings her experience into schools with multi-cultural dance assemblies and residencies.

 

   From her starring role as a teenage idol on CBS’ top-rated children's show The Secrets of ISIS, which recently came out on dvd, Joanna's TV appearances have varied as widely as Saturday Night Live, numerous daytime soap operas, The Lawrence Welk Show, and dozens of TV commercials.

 

   Joanna's stage performances have taken her throughout the country, touring in well-known musicals including West Side Story, South Pacific, Music Man, and The King and I, as well as close to home in the world premiere production of Sayonara at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. Performing with an Asian touring dance company carried her to the far reaches of Europe, South America, Canada and the U.S.A.

 

   Her professional teaching background is in dance, ranging from ballet to jazz to folk. She teaches all ages from kindergarten through adult. Her special rapport with children has her teaching them on TV and as far afield as California studios, a school in Budapest, and right at home in New Jersey. At many schools, Joanna’s World Dance residencies have become an annual tradition. For over ten years, she has also been a teaching artist for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC).  Joanna Pang Atkins was honored as the Outstanding Arts Educator for 2014 by Morris Arts of NJ.

 

   In addition to her own performing, Joanna has traveled extensively with her husband, Dick Atkins, a producer and writer of television and feature films, and their son Davy, to movie locations from Los Angeles, Georgia and Vermont in the U.S., to Africa, Budapest, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

 

   Joanna’s biography has been published in Who’s Who in the World andWho’s Who of American Women.