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 87 works and has been awarded 60 commissions performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He is the recipient of an Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bessie Award for “Sustained Achievement” in Choreography, six NEA Choreography Fellowships (1988-97), and two distinguished alumni awards from his alma maters Wesleyan University (BA Music Composition) and the University of Utah (MFA Choreography).
Recent works have premiered in San Diego, Spoleto, Italy and Columbus, Ohio. In December, 2016, he worked as co-director of Diavolo Dance’s Veterans Project featuring military veteran performers and members of the Diavolo Company. In the summer of 2017, he will premiere Occupy (a site-specific journey through an urban garden) commissioned by the mixed ability AXIS Dance Company for the Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco. In August, a large scale media/performance installation for the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine will premiere.
In May 2018, he will premiere one of his largest site-based projects to date, an immersive performance event throughout the town of Northfield, Minnesota, commissioned by St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges. The work will incorporate artists from the College and greater Northfield community in dance, theater, music, and media/visual arts. Koplowitz is a contributor to the first book published on site-specific choreography, Site Dance, published by Florida University Press.
After living in New York City for 23 years, he was appointed dean and faculty of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles) and served in that capacity for ten years (2006-2016). His online course, “Creating Site-Specific Dance and Performance Works” launched in September 2013, was the first dance-related course on Coursera and the MOOC platform, and was re-launched 2014-16. Over 20,000 people from 151 countries have registered for this course. To see examples of his site-specific and media works, visit: www.stephankoplowitz.com and www.youtube.com/c/StephanKoplowitz.