Faculty Profile

Erin Crawley-Woods

Lecturer in Dance (2014)

Contact Information

crawleye@dickinson.edu

Montgomery House
717-245-1151

Bio

Erin Crawley-Woods joined the Dickinson faculty in 2014 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance where she has developed service-learning course work in community engagement and artistic activism and continued her choreographic research in site-specific performance. Prior to arriving at Dickinson she received an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland- College Park where she directed Visible Seams, a site-specific sound/dance/video installation for the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and served as Education Fellow for the Dance Films Association. From 2007-2011 she was a Company Member and Director of Community Outreach at Keshet Dance Company in Albuquerque, NM where she taught and developed curriculum for Keshet's nationally-recognized M3 dance program for incarcerated youth. She has performed in the US and abroad with Adriane Fang, Sharon Mansur, the Nancy Meehan Dance Company, Leslie Satin & Dancers, Sara Rudner & Company, Anneke Hansen, and the Irish Modern Dance Theater. She has participated in artistic residencies in Oulchy-le Chateau, France and at the Omi International Arts Center in Ghent NY and leads workshops in site-specific choreography and community-based dance practice at national and international dance conferences. Crawley-Woods holds a Diploma in Wholistic Bodywork from the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts and a B.A. in theatre, dance and French from Sarah Lawrence College.

Education

  • B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 2001
  • M.F.A., University of Maryland, 2014

2023-2024 Academic Year

Fall 2023

THDA 204 Fundamentals of Choreography
A studio-based course designed to introduce the student to various tools to generate and create original dance compositions. Basic elements such as time, space, energy, dynamics, movement generation, and quality are explored in addition to multiple structuring devices. Using an interdisciplinary lens, this course offers a different approach to art making from related fields such as visual art, literature, and media in order to treat dance composition as a relevant response to the contemporary moment. Prerequisite: 102, or permission of the instructor. One studio course in dance is recommended.

THDA 215 Thinking Body:Hum Mvmt/Anat
This course employs an experiential approach to the science and expressive potential of human movement. It is meant to give students a foundation in anatomy and kinesiology basics. Simultaneously, significant time will be spent in explorations designed to deepen body-mind connections. We will focus on the act of embodiment - how does factual knowledge of the body help us move more efficiently and utilize healthy biomechanics? Through course readings, movement exercises, guest lectures, writing, partnered activities and self-directed independent studio time, we will connect how broad analytical frameworks of the human body apply to the personal and individual experience of movement.

THDA 321 Modern Dance III
Permission of instructor required.

Spring 2024

THDA 214 Body and Place
"Body is our first environment. It is the medium through which we know the earth." Andrea Olsen Drawing from movement ecology, somatic practice, site-specific artistic investigation, and current conversations in the multidisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities, this course is an embodied interrogation of Olsen's statement. How can we explore our body as an environment? What does it mean for this to be the medium through which we know the earth? What is this knowing good for? Through reading, discussion and creative projects (many of which will take place outdoors) we will investigate how our interactions with built and natural environments influences our perception of space and place and our role within it. What shifts in our relationship and approach to the pressing environmental issues of our time when we experience ourselves as a part of nature?

THDA 322 Modern Dance III
Permission of Instructor Required.