Dr. Calvano explores movement-based performance in the classroom, as a Director and Intimacy Choreographer at UofL, and in their professional artistic practice. Their classroom approach facilitates an active physical exploration of identity, expression, and vulnerability. This is achieved through a variety of movement lenses, including yoga, Grotowski-based, Laban, and Bartenieff approaches. They actively seek to challenge colonialism and their white gaze, especially within a period movement context.

On campus, they collaborate with students and colleagues to create performance that sparks joy and challenges assumptions through embodied action. Their UofL intimacy work includes A Raisin in the Sun, Six Degrees of Separation, Miss Holmes, and Clydes'. Dr. Calvano directs often at UofL past productions include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Taming of the Shrew, a version of Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion entitled [re]Fashion, and an adaptation of Carlo Gozzi's The Love of Three Oranges that included elements of live action Japense Anime. They additionally directed a production Fires in the Mirror at UofL which was featured at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Region IV Festival in Spartanburg, SC in February of 2020.

They earned their PhD in Theatre, with a dissertation focused on movement pedagogy, from the University of Colorado Boulder.  They hold Bachelor's Degrees in History from The University of Maryland and Fine and Performing Arts from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.