Susan R. Koff
Clinical Professor of Dance Education
Music and Performing Arts Professions
(212) 992-9384
Dr. Susan R. Koff has over thirty years of experience teaching dance education in higher education. She was the director of the Graduate Dance and Dance Education Program in the Department of the Arts and Humanities at Teachers College, Columbia University and most recently completed ten years as Director of the Dance Education Program at NYU. She is a Clinical Professor of Dance Education and was a Fulbright Scholar visiting the National School of Contemporary Dance in Copenhagen. She proudly published her first book, Dance Education: A Redefinition, in 2021.
Dr. Koff is currently past Chair of Dance and the Child International (daCi) which is a UNESCO organization. She served as a founding board member for the National Dance Education Organization, and was a Content Area Coordinator for the NDEO Research in Dance Education Project funded through the US Department of Education. She has over fifteen journal publications and has presented at numerous national and international conferences. As a member of the Interdisciplinary Committee of the National Arts Education Consortium, she co-wrote an interdisciplinary arts standards guide. In addition, she has led many in-service professional development projects for the implementation of Arts Standards in New York and New Jersey, as well as dance curriculum development projects in those states. Most recently she was chair of the dance committee that revised the New York State Standards for Dance. For twenty years she was a consultant for the Education Department of the New York City Ballet, helping to design and evaluate several integrated school-based programs. Currently she serves as a consultant for the New Orleans Ballet Association to evaluate the integrated school-based curriculum.
Selected Publications
- Davis, Crystal U., Selene Carter, Susan R. Koff, (2021). “Troubling the frame: Laban movement analysis as critical dialogue.” Journal of Dance Education 21(4).
- Koff, Susan R. (2021). Dance education: A redefinition. London: Methuen.
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Mabingo A. and Susan R. Koff (2019). Dancing across the wall(s) of exclusion: reflections of two dance teachers on overcoming barriers to difference in dance education In C.S. Nielsen & S. Burridge (Eds.) Dancing Across Borders: Perspectives on Dance, Young People and Change. London: Routledge, 100-108.
- Mabingo, A. and Susan R. Koff (2018). Altering the paradigm. In C. Brown & A. Longley (Eds.) Undisciplining dance in nine movement and eight stumbles. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Koff, Susan R. (2017). Remixing the dance education classroom. Action, theory and criticism for music education, 16 (1), 66-78. http://act.maydaygroup.org/volume-16-issue-1/act-16-1-66-78/
- Svendler Nielsen, C. and Susan R Koff (Eds.) (2017). Exploring identities in dance: Proceedings from the 13th world congress of dance and the child international. http://ausdance.org.au/publications/details/exploring-identities-in-dance
- Koff, Susan R. (2016). Innovative instructional strategies for teaching dance. Dance Education in Practice, 2(2), 13-17.
- Brown, A.K., Koff, S.R., Meiners, J., Svendler Nielsen, C. (2015). Dance learning in motion: Global dance education. In C. F. Stock & P. Germain-Thomas (Eds.), Contemporising the past: envisaging the future, refereed proceedings of the 2014 World Dance Alliance Global Summit, Angers, 6–11 July. Retrieved 12/21/2015 from: http://www.ausdance.org.au
- Koff, Susan R. (2015). Applied dance curriculum: A global perspective. In C. S. Nielsen & S. Burridge (Eds.). Dance education around the world: Perspective on dance, young people and change. London: Routledge.