STEPHAN KOPLOWITZ

Stephan Koplowitz  is a multi-faceted artist who, over 35+ years, has created interactive media installations, site-specific and staged dance/theater performances, and short films. His site-based works shift perceptions of place, site, and scale, offering communities a chance to rediscover shared spaces through art. Since 1984, he has created 92 works and received 65 commissions. His honors include the 2017 Rockefeller Bellagio Fellowship, 2014 Hewlett-Gerbode Choreographic Fellowship, 2004 Alpert Award in the Arts (Dance), 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography, 2000 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Sustained Achievement in Choreography, and six National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships (1988–97). In 1996, his site-specific Genesis Canyon, commissioned for the Dance Umbrella Festival at London’s Natural History Museum, won Time Out Magazine’s Award for “Best Dance Production of 1996.” Koplowitz received Distinguished Alumni Awards from Wesleyan University (1994), where he earned his BA in Music Composition, and the University of Utah College of Fine Arts (2010), where he received his MFA in Choreography.

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His choreography and company, Stephan Koplowitz & Company (Kop Art, Inc.), have been presented by leading performing arts venues in the United States and abroad. After 23 years in New York City, Koplowitz was appointed dean and faculty member of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2006, a role he held for 10 years. In April 2022, Oxford University Press published his critically acclaimed book, On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation.

His online course, Creating Site-Specific Dance and Performance Works (2013–2016), was the first dance-related course on Coursera and the MOOC platform, attracting over 21,000 participants from 154 countries. Prior to that, he contributed a chapter for the first book on site-specific choreography published in the United States, Site Dance (University Press of Florida, 2009).

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Current projects: In 2026, the American Dance Festival has commissioned Koplowitz to create a new large-scale site-specific performance for its season at the iconic/historic Mutual Tower, in Durham, NC, as part of the ADF Footprints series, involving a core ensemble of 10–20 dancers and a cast of up to 30 performers that will include ADF students and members of the Durham community. From August 28 to October 18, 2026, the Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University (PA) will present a solo exhibition, Of Place and Passage: The Work of Stephan Koplowitz, which will feature his photography, film/media, and his site-based performance works, offering a view of his interdisciplinary visual art practice.

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Recent projects include Untamed Grace: A Performance Journey of Improv and Site, commissioned by Center Mouvement and presented on April 14, 2024, at St. John’s Grace (Episcopal Church) in Buffalo, NY, with fifteen performers and live gamelan music by Nusantara Arts. In 2024, he also created Four Frames/Four Landscapes: A Site-Specific Performance for Madong, commissioned by the Seoul Institute of the Arts during a March creative residency. His 1979 duet Abide (music by Richard Winslow), first performed at Wesleyan University (1979) and Symphony Space, New York City (1980), was reconstructed and reimagined in 2023 in collaboration with dance artist and choreographer Hari Krishnan. Passage Home (2021), commissioned by The Wooden Floor in Santa Ana, CA, comprised nine dance works, ten films, and a cast of 80 young performers (ages 12–18). Other major site-specific works include The Northfield Experience (2018), an immersive, city-wide, multi-arts event in Northfield, MN; Mill Town (2017), created for historic mills in Lewiston, ME, and commissioned by the Bates Dance Festival; and Occupy (2017), a large-scale site work for San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens commissioned by AXIS Dance Company.

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Additional projects include Play(as) (2015), commissioned for the 2015 edition of Trolley Dances in San Diego; Sullivant Travels (2014), commissioned by The Ohio State University for the reopening of Sullivant Hall and named one of Columbus Alive’s “best” dance events of 2014; and Stephan Koplowitz: Water Sight, Milwaukee (2013), a pair of site works for the Milwaukee Art Museum and the city’s historic water tower. His site-touring company, Stephan Koplowitz: TaskForce, launched in 2008 with creative residencies and performances in Idyllwild, CA, and Los Angeles, CA (2008), Plymouth, UK (2009), and Houston, TX (2012), ultimately generating more than 20 site-specific works in collaboration with over 30 artists from music, theater, visual arts, and media. The water-themed TaskForce project Natural Acts in Artificial Water premiered in Houston in May 2012, presented by DiverseWorks Art Center and hailed as “by far the most significant dance site-specific work in the city’s history” (Nancy Wozny, Arts+Culture Magazine); in 2013, it was named “Best Ensemble Production” by the Houston Press. His permanent public art installation Light Camera Action, created with architects KBAS after winning a national design competition, features three camera obscuras integrated into a media installation for The Center for New Media in Salt Lake City (2013). His location- and site-based films include Catching the 5:23 (2002, set in Grand Central Terminal), its sequel Catching the Game (2003, filmed at Shea Stadium with the cooperation of the New York Mets), and Chinatown:Watermark (2010), inspired by the locations of the film Chinatown; all three works have been screened at multiple festivals.

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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)