UMBC Dance Department is excited to welcome Professor Elizabeth Johnson as our new department chair starting in Fall 2025. She is a world-renowned dance educator, impactful scholar, and co-author of an upcoming book from the University of Illinois Press featuring a co-created movement analysis system called Framework for Integration. Her academic and creative experience are well-suited to our program, which provides a rigorous, challenging, and humanistic dance education in a liberal arts environment.
Elizabeth Johnson (MFA, GL-CMA, M.AmSAT, RYT200, RSMT/E) is a performer, choreographer, educator, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst, certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique, Registered Yoga Teacher, and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator. She teaches and presents nationally and internationally on dance/movement pedagogies and somatics that center developmental movement, trauma-informed education, and critical perspectives.
Her teaching and research include integrating aesthetics, anatomy, kinesiology, and somatic inquiry into embodied movement practices (inclusive of classical and contemporized Western and non-Western dance), Dance making/composition pedagogies, and exploring feminist theory, embodiment, relationship, and popular culture trends and ironies in her choreographies.
Elizabeth is co-author and author of three book chapters featuring Alexander Technique and developmental movement applications that promote conscious embodiment in response to new media technologies (University of Quebec/PUQ and Intellect publishers), student stress and trauma in the ballet class/studio (Intellect publishers), and the psychophysical demands of arts performance (Springer International Publishing). She is excited to be writing a forthcoming book (University of Illinois Press) with co-authors Rebecca Nettl-Fiol (University of Illinois) and Luc Vanier (University of Utah) introducing an emergent movement analysis system called Framework for Integration, rooted in somatic, educational, and developmental methodologies (Alexander Technique, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis, the Dart Procedures, and developmental movement). She has served as an editor for the American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) Journal and is on the Journal of Dance Education (JODE) Review Board.
As a professional performer, Elizabeth has toured nationally and internationally as a company member with New York City’s David Parker and The Bang Group and also danced with Sara Hook Dances (NYC & IL), and Molly Rabinowitz Liquid Grip (NYC). She has also performed distinguished classical and contemporary works by Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Salvatore Aiello, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer, Rachel Lampert, Mark Morris, Cynthia Oliver, Luc Vanier, Trey McIntyre, and Heinz Poll and has served as rehearsal director for works by Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Sara Hook, Rebecca Stenn, Daniel Gwirtzman, Rebecca Bryant, and Maria Gillespie.
Elizabeth is a multifaceted artist whose choreographic research is rooted in her love/hate relationship with popular culture. She employs interdisciplinary Dance Theatre to exaggerate and subvert cultural tropes regarding propriety, relationships, and bodies as objects/commodities. From 2004 to 2017, her company, Your Mother Dances, featured her choreography and produced other national artists.
Professor Johnson earned a diploma with a concentration in ballet from the North Carolina School of the Arts, a B.F.A. in Dance with distinction from George Mason University, and an M.F.A. in Modern Dance – Choreography and Performance from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She comes to us from the University of Florida, where she has served as an Associate Professor and the Dance Program Coordinator in the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Florida and as the College of the Arts Faculty Council Chair.
The department recognizes the tremendous legacy of Carol Hess’s leadership, who will step down after 28 years of holding the chair role. Carol Hess arrived at UMBC in 1982 as a prolific performer and teacher in New York City and internationally. Throughout her time, Carol served as the Faculty Senate President from 1992 to 1994, was the acting chair of the Music Department from 1994 to 1996, and became the chair of the Dance Department in 1997. Carol Hess will stay on for fall 2025 to assist the incoming chair, complete her research in Spring 2026, and then retire from UMBC.