Susan Haines, MFA
Office
Location
CM 109
Website
About
Susan Haines is a dancer, choreographer and educator with performance credits with ballet and contemporary 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 international study at The Place; London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Dock 11 in Berlin.. Her dance training includes master teachers JoAnna Kneeland, Karen Clippinger, David Howard, and Frano Jelincic of English National Ballet with early training at the Mid-Ohio Valley Ballet. Susan’s choreography has been presented by Danceworks in Jacksonville, FL, ACDA, the NC Dance Festival, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival, Columbia College, Bellingham Repertory Dance, the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, Open Flight Studio in Seattle, and international commissions at Spazio Seme in Italy. 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 where she was mentored by Dr. Ann Dils, Dr. Jill Green, and Dr. Sue Stinson on curriculum design in academia and dance pedagogy. She 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. Her work has been recognized by Dance Education Association of Washington as the "Dance Educator of the Year" 2014, she serves as a Dance Science consultant for Apolla Performance, and is on the editorial review board for the Journal Of Dance Education. She has served on the faculty at UNC Asheville, UNC Greensboro, and Elon University. At WWU, Susan has been awarded 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, presented nationally and internationally with the National Dance Education Organization and Dance Studies Association (Malta 2018 and Vancouver 2022 conferences) at the American Popular Culture Association Conference with Body and Culture and Dance Studies and published articles on rehearsal pedagogy in the Journal of Dance Education and Research in Dance Education. She has served as the Higher Education Special Interest Group leader for NDEO conferences and is the founding director of It Must Have Been Violet Dance Productions, a professional dance company that presents contemporary work for stage and screen.