ABOUT STEPHAN KOPLOWITZ (press, one page bio)
Stephan Koplowitz is an award-winning director/choreographer/media artist known for his work on stage, film, and site. His site work aims to alter people’s perspectives of place, site, and scale, all infused with a sense of the human condition and is concerned with the intersection of natural, social, and cultural ecologies within urban and natural environments. Since 1984 he has created 92 works and has been awarded 65 commissions. He is the recipient of a 2017 Rockefeller Bellagio Fellowship, 2014 Hewlett-Gerbode Choreographic Fellowship, 2004 Alpert Award in the Arts (Dance), a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography in addition to a 2000 New York Dance and Performance Award, “Bessie” for “Sustained Achievement” in Choreography. Koplowitz is also the recipient of six National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships from (1988-97). In 1996, his site-specific work Genesis Canyon, commissioned by the Dance Umbrella Festival for the Natural History Museum in London, won Time Out Magazine’s Award for “Best Dance Production of 1996”. He is the recipient of two Distinguished Alumni Awards, from Wesleyan University (awarded 1994), where he received his BA in Music Composition and from the University of Utah College of Fine Arts (awarded 2010), where he received his MFA in Choreography.
His choreography and company, Stephan Koplowitz & Company (Kop Art, Inc.), have been produced repeatedly by internationally recognized performing arts venues domestically and abroad. After living in New York City for 23 years, Koplowitz, in 2006, was appointed dean and faculty of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts, Los Angeles). He served in that capacity for ten years until 2016. In 2022, Oxford University Press will publish his first book On Site: Methods for Creating Site-Specific Performance.
Recent projects include:
In July 2021, he premiered Passage Home, commissioned by the Wooden Floor in Santa Ana, Ca. consisting of nine dance works and ten films, and a cast of 80 young performers (12-18 years old) in a live site-specific event designed to operate within the current health protocols. In 2018, Koplowitz launched his largest and most ambitious project, The Northfield Experience, an immersive site event (consisting of eleven different works of dance, theater, media, and music) throughout the city of Northfield, MN. 2017, saw three premieres. The Bates Dance Festival commissioned Mill Town (2017), a media and performance work inspired by the historic mills in Lewiston, ME. Occupy was commissioned by the mixed-ability AXIS Dance Company at the Yerba Buena Gardens, SF (2017). In 2015 he premiered Play(as) commissioned for the 2015 edition of Trolley Dances in San Diego. In 2014, commissioned by The Ohio State University, he premiered Sullivant Travels featuring 11 different site-specific dance, interactive media, film, theater, and aerial dance for the re-opening of Sullivant Hall. Columbus Alive named it one of the 2014 “best” dance events.
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(a list of awards and fellowships can be found below and more specific information on many of his works for site, stage and media, including specific bios for site, visual/media, and education can be found in the dropdown menu above)
AWARDS
2017
Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Fellowship, for work on book project: Creating Site-Specific Performance Works: Strategies on Creative and Production Techniques
2014
The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Choreographic Commission for work with Axis Dance
ColumbusAlive.com Best Dance of 2014 (Sullivant’s Travels)
2013
Winner (with KBAS) public art commission- Utah Arts Council -Light Camera Action for the Center for New Media, Salt Lake City
Houston Press, Best Ensemble Production (Natural Acts in Artificial Water)
2010
Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Modern Dance
2007
Boston Globe, Ten Best Dance Works of 2007, (iseea)
2003
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Choreography
Artist Resource and Media Laboratory Fellowship, Jerome Foundation, Dance Theater Workshop
2000
New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for Sustained Achievement in Choreography
1997
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship
The Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund (Webbed Feats, Bryant Park)
1996
First Light Choreographic Commission Award-Joyce- Mertz Gilmore Foundation
Time Out Magazine, London, England, Best Dance Production (Genesis Canyon)
1995
Arts Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts
First Light Choreographic Commission Award-Joyce- Mertz Gilmore Foundation
1994
Distinguished Alumnus Award, Wesleyan University
1993-4
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship
1993
First Light Choreographic Commission Award-Joyce- Mertz Gilmore Foundation
1991-2
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship
1990
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship
Frank L. Babbott Chair of Literature and Arts Packer Collegiate Institute
1989
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship
First Light Choreographic Commission Award-Joyce- Mertz Gilmore Foundation
Frank L. Babbott Chair of Literature and Arts Packer Collegiate Institute.
1988
National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship
First Light Choreographic Commission Award-Joyce- Mertz Gilmore Foundation
1987
First Light Choreographic Commission Award-Joyce- Mertz Gilmore Foundation