Susan Levine, MFA came to Nebraska from New York City via New England. She was an Assistant Professor at Fitchburg State College, outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She has also taught at Smith College, in Northampton, MA, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA and Keene State College in Keene, NH.
Ms Levine has just returned from Waterford Ireland where the UNL production of "Most Happy Fella", which she choreographed, won 6 prizes including the First Prize, at the Waterford International Light Opera Festival.
in July 2007, Ms. Levine choreographed and danced in a new work to Mark Schultz’s composition for clarinet and piano. This world premiere, entitled “Into the Monster’s Lair” , was performed with Drs. Diane Barger and Mark Clinton, at the International Clarinet Association in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In 2005, Ms. Levine had her first collaboration with Dr. Barger in an evening-long concert devoted to clarinet works for dance, in which three pieces were choreographed: Welcher’s “Dante’s Dances”, Daniel Dorff’s “Mr. Mouse Dances and Dies” and Cahuzac’s “Arlequin”. In the same year, Ms. Levine collaborated with Anthony Falcone and the UNL Percussion Ensemble, with the Lou Harrison work, “Canticle”. More recently, in Spring 2007, with Dr. Therees Hibbard, Levine choreographed and co-directed Menotti’s “The Unicorn the Gorgon and the Manticore” with the UNL Chamber Choir and 12 UNL dance majors.
In 2006, Levine and photographer Fred Schneider joined forces to create a multimedia piece using photography. Photos of the dance, shot from all perspectives except those which would be seen by the audience, where projected in enormous scale behind the dancers. As the dancers moved so did a streaming slide show of the same dance, viewed from angles that the viewers would not normally be privy to. This piece, “Miss”, was invited by the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery to be shown at the opening, and three itinerant installations, of the exhibit entitled, “Painting Music: Rhythm and Movement in Art. Ms. Levine has been commissioned by the University of Vermont to recreate this work for their dancers In 2008.
Since 2004, Ms. Levine has been the Director of the annual faculty and guest artist dance concert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This series of concerts was renamed “Evenings of Dance” in honor of her first modern dance mentor, the late Alta Lu Townes. In addition to directing the event. Ms. Levine has choreographed several new works including the most recent “Prom” a piece, part dance/part theater, that looked at the contemporary American high school social event, as expressed through the myth of Prometheus.
In 2002, Levine presented a fully choreographed, musical version of The Call of The Wild, Jack London's classic tale, at the Edinburgh Festival-Fringe, in Scotland.
Keene State College invited Ms. Levine in 2000 to create a piece for their students. The result, thanks to a collaboration with Designer Celine Perron, was a dance performed on a multi-level, multi-angled series of platforms, including one that allowed a dancer to seemingly walk off the stage into the sky. Ms. Levine has performed for Susan Waltner, Brenda Divelbliss, Kelli Edwards, Paul Besaw, Marcia Murdock and was a member of the Dianne Eno Dance Company, performing in New England and New York City.
At the present time Levine is working with Music Theorist, Dr. Gretchen Foley on a dance piece that is based on an exploration of how familiarity with Perle’s twelve-tone tonality, as analyzed by Dr. Foley, impacts the choreography of George Perle’s String Quartet No. 5. This work has been accepted for presentation at both the International Conference of the Society for Music Theory in Baltimore, MD and the College Music Society in Salt lake City, UT both in November 2007. Levine is also a primary investigator on a project that has been submitted to the National Science Foundation: CreativeIT Pilot: DANCE: Dynamic Adaptive Networks for Creativity Enhancement in Arts Application.
n 2004, Ms. Levine presented a paper “The Male Gaze in the Classic Dances of India and the West” at the Nebraska International Multicultural Exchange Conference, with Jyothsna Sainath, investigating the comparative gender roles in western modern dance and the Indian dance form Barathanatyam.
Ms. Levine has served on the Nebraska Arts Council and the Wisconsin Arts Board as a grant reviewer. She was also on the Board of Directors of the Grand Monadnock Arts Council, in New Hampshire.
