BODY AND SOUL: Stephan Koplowitz: History in place

Stephan Koplowitz (photo: Lynn Lane)

 

Award-winning choreographer and writer Stephan Koplowitz discusses the importance of thorough research into the history of a place--and knowledge of one's own relationship to history--in the making of site-specific performance. He describes site work as disruptive and all performance as political.

Listen to Stephan's episode of Body and Soul podcast here. And scroll down to learn more about his own history and work! 

 

Occupy by Stephan Koplowitz (photo: George Simian)

Mill Town by Stephan Koplowitz (photo: Jonathan Hsu)

 

Stephan Koplowitz is an award-winning artist/educator who creates site-specific and staged
dance performances, interactive media installations, and short films. His site performances aim
to alter people’s perspectives of place, site, and scale, infused with a sense of the human
condition, and concerned with the intersection of natural, social, and cultural ecologies within
urban and natural environments. His productions have been produced by performing arts
venues domestically and abroad having created 93 works (66 commissions) in the US, Europe,
and Asia. He received a 2017 Rockefeller Bellagio Fellowship, a 2004 Alpert Award, a 2003
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2000 “Bessie,” and 6 NEA Choreography Fellowships (1988-97). He
was named a Distinguished Alumni by Wesleyan University (BA in Music Composition) and the
University of Utah (MFA, Choreography). In April 2022, Oxford University Press published his
critically praised book On Site: Methods for Creating Site-Specific Performance. Koplowitz lives
in New York City. https://www.stephankoplowitz.com