photo by Nick Francher
Stephan Koplowitz is a multi-faceted artist who has created diverse works over a 30-year career,
including interactive media installations, site-specific and staged dance performances, and short
films. Koplowitz’s site creations aim to alter people’s perspectives of place, site, and scale and offer
communities a chance to rediscover shared spaces through an artistic experience. Since 1984, Koplowitz
has created 93 works (66 commissions) in the US, Europe, and Asia. His choreography and company,
Stephan Koplowitz & Company (Kop Art, Inc.), have been produced repeatedly by internationally
recognized performing arts venues domestically and abroad. His work has appeared in the United
Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Vietnam, and the United States. As a writer, he contributed to the first book on
site-specific choreography, Site Dance, published by Florida University Press. In April 2022, Oxford
University Press published his critically praised book On Site: Methods for Creating Site-Specific
Performance.
Recent works include a reconstruction/reimagining of his 1979 work Abide (duet, music by Richard
Winslow), first performed at Wesleyan University (1979) and Symphony Space, NYC (1980) in
collaboration with renowned Balinese dance artist I. Made Bandem and in 2023 with choreographer Hari
Krishnan. Passage Home (2021), commissioned by the Wooden Floor in Santa Ana, CA, (nine dance
works, ten films, and a cast of 80 young performers (12-18 years old). The Northfield Experience (2018),
an immersive sited multi-arts event for the entire city of Northfield, MN; Mill Town (2017), a site-specific
performance/installation in historic mills in Lewiston, ME, commissioned by the Bates Dance Festival;
Occupy (2017), a site-specific work for the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco commissioned by
AXIS Dance Company.
Koplowitz is the recipient of an Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York
Performance and Dance “Bessie” Award, six NEA Choreography Fellowships (1988-97), a Hewlett-
Gerbode Choreographic Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Fellowship, and
two distinguished alumni awards from Wesleyan University (Music Composition) and the University of
Utah (Choreography). In 1996, his site-specific work Genesis Canyon, commissioned by the Dance
Umbrella Festival for the Natural History Museum in London, won Time Out Magazine’s Award for “Best
Dance Production of 1996”.
He has taught workshops on the creative process, composition, improvisation, and site performance at
colleges, universities, and festivals throughout the United States. Koplowitz has an extensive career in
arts education, having taught dance at the Packer Collegiate Institute (K-12, Brooklyn, NY) for 23 years
as a full-time faculty member and served as a master teaching mentor for both NYU Dance Education
and Hunter College for over 15 years. After living in New York City for 23 years, Koplowitz, in 2006, was
appointed dean and faculty of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, directing the BFA and MFA
programs at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts, Los Angeles). He served in that capacity for ten
years until 2016. In 2022, Koplowitz returned to New York City to work and live.
Visit the artist’s website (www.skoplowitz.com) for more information about his book and work.
Stephan Koplowitz is a multi-faceted artist who has created diverse works over a 30-year career,
including interactive media installations, site-specific and staged dance performances, and short
films. Koplowitz’s site creations aim to alter people’s perspectives of place, site, and scale and offer
communities a chance to rediscover shared spaces through an artistic experience. Since 1984, Koplowitz
has created 93 works (66 commissions) in the US, Europe, and Asia. His choreography and company,
Stephan Koplowitz & Company (Kop Art, Inc.), have been produced repeatedly by internationally
recognized performing arts venues domestically and abroad. His work has appeared in the United
Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Vietnam, and the United States. As a writer, he contributed to the first book on
site-specific choreography, Site Dance, published by Florida University Press. In April 2022, Oxford
University Press published his critically praised book On Site: Methods for Creating Site-Specific
Performance.
Recent works include a reconstruction/reimagining of his 1979 work Abide (duet, music by Richard
Winslow), first performed at Wesleyan University (1979) and Symphony Space, NYC (1980) in
collaboration with renowned Balinese dance artist I. Made Bandem and in 2023 with choreographer Hari
Krishnan. Passage Home (2021), commissioned by the Wooden Floor in Santa Ana, CA, (nine dance
works, ten films, and a cast of 80 young performers (12-18 years old). The Northfield Experience (2018),
an immersive sited multi-arts event for the entire city of Northfield, MN; Mill Town (2017), a site-specific
performance/installation in historic mills in Lewiston, ME, commissioned by the Bates Dance Festival;
Occupy (2017), a site-specific work for the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco commissioned by
AXIS Dance Company.
Koplowitz is the recipient of an Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York
Performance and Dance “Bessie” Award, six NEA Choreography Fellowships (1988-97), a Hewlett-
Gerbode Choreographic Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Fellowship, and
two distinguished alumni awards from Wesleyan University (Music Composition) and the University of
Utah (Choreography). In 1996, his site-specific work Genesis Canyon, commissioned by the Dance
Umbrella Festival for the Natural History Museum in London, won Time Out Magazine’s Award for “Best
Dance Production of 1996”.
He has taught workshops on the creative process, composition, improvisation, and site performance at
colleges, universities, and festivals throughout the United States. Koplowitz has an extensive career in
arts education, having taught dance at the Packer Collegiate Institute (K-12, Brooklyn, NY) for 23 years
as a full-time faculty member and served as a master teaching mentor for both NYU Dance Education
and Hunter College for over 15 years. After living in New York City for 23 years, Koplowitz, in 2006, was
appointed dean and faculty of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, directing the BFA and MFA
programs at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts, Los Angeles). He served in that capacity for ten
years until 2016. In 2022, Koplowitz returned to New York City to work and live.
Visit the artist’s website (www.skoplowitz.com) for more information about his book and work.