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Kathryn Posin

Part-time Faculty
kop2001@nyu.edu
431 - 1 Wash Pl

Office Hours
Friday 9:00 TO 12:30

B.A., Dance, Bennington College, 1965
M.A., Interdisciplinary, Multicultural Dance, New York University, 1994

Kathryn Posin (MA ’94) is an award-winning dancer and choreographer who has studied with Hanya Holm, Anna Sokolow, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Alvin Ailey. She has made work for Nederlands Dans Theater I and II, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey 2, The Eliot Feld Ballet, Balletmet, Ballet West, Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah, the Extemporary Dance Company of London, the National Ballet of Bulgaria, as well the ballet companies of Cincinnati. Hartford, Kansas City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Sacramento, Nevada Ballet Theater and the Ohio Ballet. Her Scheherazade was presented in the National Opera house of Doha, Qatar. She was the first international choreographer to make a work for Cloudgate, the National Company of Taiwan. Posin has made over sixty works for the Kathryn Posin Dance Company, which she founded 1972. She believes the study of great choreographers and of World Dance can help the student find their voice.   For the theater, she choreographed Andre Serban’s The Cherry Orchard at Lincoln Center and the hit rock musical Salvation, which was performed in New York and Los Angeles. She has worked with celebrities including Carrie Fisher, Richard Gere, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joe Morton, Bette Midler, Tony Shaloub and Meryl streep.   Posin has been honored with both Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships and her work has been recognized by the NEA, New York State Council on the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation, the America for Bulgaria Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and NYU Gallatin. Posin conceived the Joffrey/New School BFA in Dance and was named Founding Chair. She has taught full time at UCLA, CALARTS, the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, and the Harvard Summer Dance School. She writes for Dance Magazine. www.kathrynposin.org.

Performances, Productions, Exhibitions & Releases

2020

Posin Dance Company

Kathryn Posin’s (BA ’94) Dance Company performed from August 14-22, 2020, as a part of the 39th Annual Battery Dance Festival with free, virtual performances available on YouTube.  

Awards & Honors

2019

Kathryn Posin Dance Company Premieres at the 92nd StreetY

In September, Kathryn Posin's dance troupe, The Kathryn Posin Dance Company, premiered three new works at the 92nd Street Y as a part of the Dig Dance series. Pointe Magazine reviewed the works in "Kathryn Posin's New Ballet Explores the Letters of Charles Darwin."

Teaching and Research Interests

dance  choreography  world dance  dance and film  dance technique  decolonizing dance  dance and race  gender and class  ethnology  music and dance  dance and text  dance as protest  dance as story  the kinesphere 

Recent News

AWARDS AND HONORS

Kathryn Posin received a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in March 2020 for visual artists and choreographers.

Posin was invited by the faculty conferencing group Teach Talks to co-facilitate “Teaching Remote in the Performing Arts” in April 2021.

The Kathryn Posin Dance Company received a National Endowment for the Arts ART WORKS grant and had three performances produced by 92Y in September 2019. The works were Triple Sextet to Steve Reich's Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet and Evolution: The Letters of Charles Darwin. The Darwin correspondence Project supported this performance as well as the Bennington College Alumni Fund.

PERFORMANCES

The Kathryn Posin Dance Company was invited to appear on Battery Dance Company's 39th outdoor Festival on August 18, 2020 to commemorate the Women's Right to Vote Centennial.  

View an excerpt of Kathryn Posin's Climate Control 2, using the password PosinDance.

View Kathryn Posin's Scheherazade, using the password PosinDance.

Learn more about her work at www.kathrynposin.org.  

Professor Kathryn Posin has created a new dance based on Steve Reich's Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, Double Sextet.

In February 2018, Posin made a new work for Milwaukee Ballet 2 called Climate Control 2, an activist dark comedy on climate change. On February 16, 2016, The New York Times reviewed the work of Posin and her company, the Kathryn Posin Dance Company, in "'Climate Control,' Where Hot and Cold Mix It Up in a Pas de Deux.

Posin’s ballet, Scheherazade, will open the season for the Milwaukee Ballet and run from October 21-23, 2016.  

At the invitation of the 92nd Street Y, Professor Kathryn Posin’s eponymous dance company opened the Harkness Dance Festival 2016, presenting “The Kathryn Posin Dance Company with Live Music by Meredith Monk.” The Kathryn Posin Dance Company was awarded a 2016 grant from The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Professor Poisn's program, "Voices of Bulgaria and America," debuted at the 92nd Street Y on October 17, 2014. Her work was reviewed by the New York Times, and Eye on Dance

Kathryn Posin