Kristen Smiarowski
Clinical Associate Professor of Dance, College of Communication and Fine Arts | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Dance Instructor
Biography
Kristen Smiarowski, M.F.A., has been teaching in LMU's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, Dance Program since 2004. She is a nationally and internationally produced choreographer whose work manifests in the creation of site-specific dances, an approach to choreography drawing on current events, and an ongoing investigation of dance and cultural memory. Also a recognized teaching artist, Smiarowski has taught widely at schools, healthcare facilities and other institutions. She has received awards and commissions from Culture Lab, The Six Points Fellowship, Durfee Foundation, Puffin Foundation West, Skirball Cultural Center, LMU and The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, among others.
She is a curriculum writer for ESCAPE (Equitable Science Curriculum Integrating Arts in Public Education) and teaches creative and modern dance at the Colburn School. She is a founding faculty member of the "Dance for Veterans" program at West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, and recently co-authored "Dance for Veterans: A Complementary Health Program for Veterans with Serious Mental Illness" (Arts & Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice. Special Issue on Arts, Social Health & the Military). Her choreography is included in the dance studies text Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance (Rebecca Rossen, University of Texas, Oxford University Press, 2014).
At LMU, Smiarowski teaches courses in dance and community engagement, choreography, education, and cultural studies.
