• Programming
• Leader of the Arts

Sue Schroeder

September 2006

As a contemporary choreographer I focus on the creative process and the exploration of new and unique inspirations for the creation of dance and movement.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Houston and earned my Master’s of Fine Arts in Theater Arts with a dance concentration from the University of Arizona at Tucson in 1994. Educated under dance greats Bill Evans, Hanya Holm, Oliver Kostock and John M. Wilson, among others, I have additional experience in the extended studies of Body-Mind Centering, Contact Improvisation, Modern Dance and Compostion. A recipient of the Haldeman Award for Merit and the Cultural Multiplicators from Foreign Countries Award from the Goethe Institut-Munich and an Abby Award for Arts Professional, I have secured numerous grants and fellowships from organizations such as Alternate ROOTS, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County.

Over 25 years ago, (1980) I co-founded Several Dancers Core in Houston, and added Atlanta as a second home base in 1986. Several Dancers Core is unique as a dance organization in Atlanta and Houston because of the way we serve as a point of connection for so many disparate segments of the dance community. Commited to innovation, collaboration and risk, we create, perform and present contemporary dance with strong community alliances providing the foundation of our work. As I continue to create works for CORE Performane Company, the professional company in residence at Several Dancers Core, my commitment to dialogue and interaction through performance has brought me to share the stage and vision of a variety of artists including Ellen Bromberg, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Tanztheatre Rubato, Hittite Empire, Sussane Linke, Joanna Haigood, and Robert Davidson, among others. I have truly varied interests: commitment to education, multi-disciplinary projects, performance in works by other artists, choreographic commissions, television/film production, the repertory touring of my choreography, and professional service in many arts organizations around the country.

For over twenty five years, I have been creating dance for both solo artists and full companies with performances of my work spanning the globe from Tbilisi, Georgia (CIS), Yugoslavia, Hungary, Germany, Canada, Mexico and across the United States. My work integrates the process of the choreographer in collaboration with the performing artists. My most memorable works include: Spirit of Passion, a multi-media group piece which earned me finalist status in the 1989 Texas Choreography Competition; The Grasp of Unreason, a movement theater performance inspired by the writing of Flannery O’Connnor and commissioned by Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia, for the 1994 symposium “The Habit of Art:: An Interdisciplinary Celebration of the Legacy of Flannery O’Connor;” and Besh, a dance piece commissioned by the 1995 Houston International Festival and featuring original music by Turkish composer Omar Faruk Tekbilek.

During the summer of 1998 at the Houston Jewish Community Center’s Summer Dance Festival, CORE Performance Company, under my artistic direction, previewed remembering; a piece exploring personal and archetypal memory in collaboration with composer Todd Hammes and registered Laban Movement Therapist and Body-Mind Centering Practitioner RoseAnne Spradlin. Work continued on remembering over the next three years, and the full production premiered in Atlanta during Several Dancers Core’s 20th Anniversary Season, 2000-2001.

For our 25th Anniversary, following 4 years of development, I premiered an evening-length dance version of Handel’s Messiah, at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts in Atlanta in collaboration Antoine Plante of Houston’s Mercury Baroque Ensemble conducting Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. This exciting work allowed CORE Performance Company to re-envision this major musical work through our unique style of dance, and in doing so express a choral and orchestral work of grand scale in an intimate and personal way for new audiences. I have also created The Messiah Inter-Faith Dialogue Project designed to address religious intolerance by providing people of faith a safe forum to explore their differences and similarities. Bringing the discussion out of the realm of words and into the realm of movement, where emotions are embodied, opens new channels of communication among people of faith.

I create work with other dance companies besides CORE Performance Company. In 2001, I was a first-round recipient of a commission by the National Choreography Initiative, a project of Dance/USA and the National Endowment for the Arts, to create “Wish” for Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, which was then performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

In addition to being a creator of dance, I have concentrated heavily on making a significant contribution toward the creation and stabilization of the dance communities in both cities which I call home. In 1993, I initiated the Atlanta Dance Initiative, a consortium program to address issues facing the local dance community. Over three years, Arts Action Research, led by Nello McDaniel and Georg Thorn, worked with the Atlanta Dance Initiative, twelve groups and individual artists, culminating in the publication of a comprehensive final report to address the issues facing the entire community. Currently, I serve on the Cultural Tourism Advisory Board of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and as an artistic advisor to Imagine It! Atlanta’s Children’s Museum. I am also certified as a teaching artist in Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennesee, Kentucky and South Carolina which enables me to facilitate artistic appreciation in others.