Susan Haines

she/her/hers
Director of Dance

About

Susan Haines is a dancer, choreographer and educator with performance credits with ballet and modern companies in Colorado, New York, North Carolina and Virginia, independent choreographers Gerri Houlihan, and B.J. Sullivan as well as collaborative work with Brad Parquette, and study at The Place; London Contemporary Dance Theatre, and Dock 11 in Berlin. Her dance training includes master teachers JoAnna Kneeland, Karen Clippinger, David Howard, and Frano Jelincic of English National Ballet. Susan’s choreography has been presented by Danceworks in Jacksonville, FL, ACDF, the NC Dance Festival, Highlands Arts Council, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, Labor Force Dances, Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival, the Power Company in residence at Columbia College (SC), Bellingham Repertory Dance, Dance Gallery, the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, and Open Flight Studio in Seattle. Her dance films with WWU Music Professor Bruce Hamilton have been screened at the Open Art Short Film Festival in Dusseldorf, and the Braga International Screendance Festival in Portugal, the Northwest Screendance Expo and as part of the “Next Generation of Dance Filmmakers” at the Dance for the Camera Festival in Salt Lake City. She has an MFA in Dance from UNC-Greensboro, and is a Nationally Certified Pilates Teacher with PMA, certified in Functional Range Conditioning and is a Level III Practitioner in: NeuroKinetic Therapy: a sophisticated assessment and treatment modality that addresses the causes of dysfunctional movement/coordination problems at their root in the motor control center. She serves as a Dance Science expert for Apolla Performance, and is on the editorial board of the Journal Of Dance Education. Susan has received two NEA grants to restage works by the Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Martha Graham Dance Company,  and has served as rehearsal director for re-stagings of works by Liz Gerring and Doug Varone at WWU She has presented her dance conditioning workshops around the country and published articles on rehearsal pedagogy in the Journal of Dance Education and Research in Dance Education. She is the founding director of It Must Have Been Violet Dance Productions, a professional dance company that presents contemporary work for stage and screen nationally. Susan was honored with the 2013-2014 “Dance Educator of the Year” for WA State.