Dawn Schultz
PhD Candidate 2020-23
Dawn Schultz is a movement artist and educator currently creating works out of Monmouth County, New Jersey (USA). In 2018 she founded the Movement Exploration Laboratory, to promote choreographic perspective in young artists and is the co-director of the Dance Department for the Visual and Performing Arts Program in Ocean Township Schools. Dawn received her BA in Education from Kean University in 1999, and her MFA in Choreography from Jacksonville University in 2020. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at Transart Institue and John Moore Liverpool University.
PRAXIS STATEMENT
Reflecting on individual connections with humanity and the world around us, Dawn views choreography through the lens of social and visual arts. Articulating the language of movement and using one's body as an instrument to construct visual narratives, her work explores the human body and its capacity to convey embodied interpretations of experiences. Focusing on the interconnected relationship the body makes with things and other people within the environment generates her choreography as the body becomes an extension of threads that design the fabric within our society. In analyzing various modalities an artist can engage with to create choreography, Dawn empowers movers in celebrating their own ideas to explore personal creative voice. She cultivates a sense of confidence and community, harnessing the power of moving together to bridge disconnects between people, bringing attention to our shared humanity.
RESEARCH INTEREST
Presently, Dawn’s choreographic inquiry explores the body, its relationship to materials within the environment, and how connectivity manifests expression. Her research aims to investigate methods that will explore new movement possibilities in dancers through making visual art images to merge with the process of creating choreographic works through Score reading. This work draws on the foundation of improvisational movement through a phenomenological lens drawn upon the intra-action of objects and measuring agencies which prompts questions that examine the subject-object relationship in which it engages. The correlation between the materiality of creative expression explores how art embodies our ideas and experiences allowing choreography to make connections to the world around us.