Lyndsey Vader
Education
- PhD in Dance Studies, The Ohio State University
- MFA in Dance, Choreography & Performance, The College at Brockport, State University of New York
- BA in Dance, Franklin & Marshall College
- BA in Sociology, Franklin & Marshall College
Teaching Interests
My primary teaching interests include dance studies, dance education, contemporary dance practice, improvisation, and community-based dance praxis. Before joining Muhlenberg College as an Assistant Professor of Dance, I served on faculty at Utah Valley University and as a Postdoctoral Scholar at OSU, where I collaborated to create curricula centered on social justice education in the arts.
The range of semester-length practical courses I have taught includes Contemporary Dance Practice, Improvisation, and Dance and Technology. I have also instructed seminar courses like Dance as a Cultural Practice and Western Concert Dance: Renaissance to Present as well as the second-level writing and communications course Writing About Dance.
I am passionate about nurturing the next generation of inclusive arts educators and have taught pedagogy courses such as Teaching Children’s Dance and Contemporary/Modern Dance Teaching Methods.
Experiences in curricular development include, but are not limited to, the design of Arts Management for Dance and Citizen Artists: Cultivating Community-Engaged Arts Partnerships, both offered to graduate and undergraduate students at OSU.
Across curricular areas, I mentor students in building cultural competence, critical and imaginative thinking, and analytical skills. These skills translate to students’ varied professional lives after graduation.
Research and Scholarship
Across my creative and print research portfolio, I consider what experimental audience strategies and immersive performance pedagogies may offer audiences, artists, institutions, and social relations alike.
My print research analyzes audience-centered design in performances by United States-based artists that premiered and toured between 2014-2019. Through various choreographic and design strategies, which I call “repertoires of engagement,” the artistic works I study invite participants to imagine new ways of being together in these politically divisive times. Importantly, my scholarship centers on artist-activists who model socially engaged artmaking and inclusive design in the twenty-first century. I have presented my research at national and regional conferences, regularly participating in the Dance Studies Association annual conferences. My writing has appeared in Dance Chronicle and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, and I have scholarship included in forthcoming releases of the Routledge Companion to Performance & Technology and the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training Journal.
I maintain an active choreographic profile through projects that translate my print research into performances that explore experimental audience strategies in practice. Since 2009, I have choreographed, performed, and taught nationally and internationally with Treeline Dance Works—a performance co-op based in NYC and Chicago.
- Dance & Society
- Modern Dance I
- Modern Dance II
- Modern Dance III
- Modern Dance IV
- Teaching Dance Technique
Publications & Scholarly Writings
- 2025 “Mobilizing Anti-Racist Thought and Action Through the Arts in Higher Education,” in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training Journal. Special issue edited by Broderick Chow, Samia La Virgne, and Lauryn Pinard.
- Exp. 2026 “Attending to the Dandelions: Social Movement Building Through Participatory Arts Practice,” in Routledge Companion to Performance & Technology. Edited by Maaike Bleeker and Norah Zuniga Shaw (publication date TBA).
- 2020 “Spaces of Encounter, Repertoires of Engagement: The Politics of Participation in 21st Century Contemporary Performance.” Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/
view?acc_num= osu1593524572991808 - 2019 Dance and the Visual Arts: Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive Commissioned essay for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive Themes and Essays Initiative.
- 2016 “Grasping the Slipperiness of Dramaturgical Labor.” Dance Chronicle. 39.3 (2016). Book review for Katherine Profeta’s Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance (2015).
Select Conferences & Presentations
- 3/2024 “The Business of Professional Dance,” SALT Contemporary Dance II, Ballet West Academy, Pleasant Grove, Utah.
- 10/2024 “An SEL Approach: Moving with Philosophical Anchors,” National Dance Education Organization Annual Conference, Seattle, WA.
- 03/2024 “Embodied Storytelling: Imagining Immersive Environments,” American College Dance Festival Northwest Regional Conference, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah.
- 03/2024 “Beyond College: Arts Funding and Professional Development,”
American College Dance Festival Northwest Regional Conference, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah. - 10/2023 “Beyond College: Arts Funding and Professional Development,” Invited speaker, Marymount Manhattan College, Manhattan, New York. Virtual presentation
- 05/2023 “Building & Sustaining Anti-Racist Praxis in the Arts through a Certificate Program,” National Conference on Diversity, Race & Learning, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Virtually co-presented with Charles O. Anderson and Alesondra (Alex) Christmas.
- 10/2022 “Nurturing Counterspaces: The Role of Artmaking in Building Identity-Affirming Communities,” Dance Studies Association, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, Hybrid. Virtually co-presented with Alesondra (Alex) Christmas (OSU), Jazelynn Goudy (Marymount Manhattan), Davianna Green (Old Dominion; GSArts), and Kathryn Nusa Logan (OSU)
- 9/2022 “Embodied Perspectives: Ethical Dance Pedagogy and Performance,” Ethics Awareness Week, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT. Co-Presented with Christa St. John (UVU) and Jamie Johnson (UVU)
- 9/2022 “Communities of Embodied Connection: Tracing Community-Building Practices from the Classroom to Local and International Movement Exchanges,” OhioDance Webinar Series, Online. Virtually co-presented with Alesondra (Alex) Christmas and Kathryn Nusa Logan
- 4/2022 “Communities of Embodied Connection: Tracing Community-Building Practices from the Classroom to Local and International Movement Exchanges,” OhioDance Festival, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. Co-Presented with Alesondra (Alex) Christmas and Kathryn Nusa Logan
- 10/2021 “Infrastructures of Change: Choreographing Racial Justice Education in the Performing Arts,” Dance Studies Association Conference, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Co-Presented with Alesondra (Alex) Christmas (OSU), Jazelynn Goudy (Berklee), Davianna Green (OSU), and Kathryn Nusa Logan (OSU)
- 11/2020 “White People’s Work: Antiracism, Dance, Pedagogy,” Roundtable with Ellen Chenoweth (Columbia College Chicago), Sammy Roth (UCLA), Kate Mattingly (University of Utah), Ryan Rockmore (UCLA), Alesondra (Alex) Christmas and Kathryn Nusa Logan (OSU), Virtual
- 10/2020 “Mobilizing Anti-Racist Arts Leaders On Campus and Beyond,”
a2ru National Conference, Virtual. Co-Presented with Alesondra (Alex) Christmas and Kathryn Nusa Logan - 08/2019 “Dandelion Revolutions: Immersive Performance as Transformational Infrastructure,” Dance Studies Association Conference, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
- 09/2017 “Kinesthetically Conjuring the Communal in Performance Sensoria," Dance Studies Association Conference, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
- 11/2016 “Contemporary Acts of Spectacle and Sensorial Counterpublics in Yanira Castro’s Court/Garden (2014),” Congress on Research in Dance/Society of Dance History Scholars Conference, Pomona College, Claremont, CA. Additionally presented at Rutgers University (2018) and the OSU Department of Dance Graduate Research Forum (2016).
Theatre & Dance
Contact: lyndseyvader@muhlenberg.edu