Karen Schaffman is a life-long dancer. Her research explores sensorial perception, memory, and the politics of transgression. Karen is interested in witnessing bodies, both everyday and spectacular, in curious states of investigation. She pursues paradox and the agency of vulnerability as means to disrupt cultural norms of performativity.
Research and Performance
Karen earned her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside, with her research focused on contact improvisation, identity, and politics of (anti) authority. Her writing has appeared in Taken by Surprise: An Improvisation Reader (Wesleyan Press), Encounters with Contact Improvisation (Oberlin College), and Contact Quarterly. She has presented papers at numerous conferences and is currently serving as an elected board member for the Congress on Research in Dance. Karen is also a graduate of the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem, Holland (1991), where she transformed her movement thinking by plunging into somatic research and improvisation.
Karen has been fortunate to study with a host of remarkable dance artists and scholars. She acknowledges her teachers with gratitude: Susan Foster, Deborah Hay, Eva Karczag, Nina Martin, Lisa Nelson, Mary Reich, Marta Savigliano, and Nancy Stark Smith. Her research has also been influenced by her experience in intensives with Ann Bogart, Irene Dowd, Karin Finley, Simone Forti, Mary O’Donnell Fulkerson, K.J. Holmes Benoit LeChambre, Daniel Lepkoff, Karen Nelson, Mary Overlie, and Steve Paxton.
A devoted collaborator, Karen has co-created and performed in works by Veronika Blumstein, BodyCartography Project, Downstream Media, Lower Left, Sara Shelton Mann, Nina Martin, and LIVE. In 2008, she created a media art installation, United & Severed: That Window of Time, with video artist Kristine Diekman and visual artists Richard Keely and Anna O’Cain, which investigated the experiences of women living with traumatic injury. Currently she is practicing FIRE, a solo adaptation of choreography by Deborah Hay for the Solo Performance Commisioning Project (1999). She is also directing, BARK, a collaboration with Liam Clancy, Eric Geiger, and Leslie Seiters, which was selected for The A.W.A.R.D. Show! at the REDCAT in Los Angeles.
Teaching
Currently Karen is Associate Professor of Dance at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM). She has also been on faculty at TuT, School for New Dance and Theatre (Hannover, Germany) and instructor at University of California (UC), Davis and UC Riverside. She has taught at festivals and graduate programs in Germany, Holland, Hungary, Mexico, Russia, and the U.S.
Curatorial
As co-founder and collective member of Lower Left (1994-2006), Karen was vital in the creation of innovative programming including: Process Works (an tri-annual audience involved works-in-progress showing), Available Space (an improvisational performance series), Zero-to-One (a choreography mentorship program), monthly workshops by nationally known teachers, and annual summer workshops. In 2006, Karen instigated and directed The Satellite Project, which commissioned BodyCartography Project, Keith Hennessy, Lionel Popkin, and Nina Martin to create new works for San Diego based dancers. Since 2008, she has been the Chair of the CSUSM Arts & Lectures Series, presenting over 120 events for the North County community. She has also been course coordinator for CSU Summer Arts, hosting intensive trainings with Mary Overlie, Ann Bogart, and Deborah Hay.
