Angie Hauser

Angie Hauser is a BESSIE award-winning performer, choreographer, and director with training in modern and postmodern dance, ballet, and contact improvisation. Angie Hauser’s research focuses on the creation and performance of dances for the stage, and is grounded in the interrogation and practice of movement, improvisation, and collaboration. Known as a bold performer who mixes set choreography and improvisation with personal history, she is described by The New Yorker as “a tremendous performer … who brings everything she has ever known about dance to the stage in a moment.”

Hauser is a long-time collaborator with the celebrated Bebe Miller Company. As a principal collaborator, she has contributed to the repertory as a dancer, performer, writer, and choreographic collaborator since 2000. Her work with the company is featured on TWO: an online score for Motion Bank/The Forsythe Company, and in two e-books How Dancing is Built: The Making of In A Rhythm and Dance Fort: A History.  As part of the DanceMotion USA program, Hauser traveled to Peru and Colombia with Bebe Miller Company to share creative work and thinking with local communities, fostering dialogue around the human condition and exploring the subtext that our bodies reveal. 

Hauser has created performances with dance artist and Smith College Professor, Chris Aiken, since 2003. The two are Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellows for Choreography. They have toured their work extensively abroad, including projects in Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan, Germany, and throughout Canada.  Other recent choreographic projects include collaborations with dance artists Jennifer Nugent, Darrell Jones, Alex Springer + Xan Burley, and musicians Mike Vargas, Jesse Manno, Tigger Benford, and Andre Gribou. Before coming to Smith, Hauser danced with the companies of Elizabeth Streb, Liz Lerman, and Poppo Shiriashi, and taught on the faculty at Cornell University, Denison University, and Columbia College.  

In addition to her creative research, Hauser has strong interests in the areas of liberal arts education and the application of movement, design-thinking methodologies, and collaboration to creative problem solving in many domains. Hauser teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on choreography and the creative process. She also teaches contemporary dance technique, dance improvisation, repertory and performance, and an upper-level theory and practice course on the work of Merce Cunningham and his collaborators. In 2021, Hauser and Aiken created a new course, “Movement, Ecology, and Performance,” which combines their dance research with the study of land, water, and Indigenous stories.

At Smith, Hauser was integral in the visioning and implementation of the Design Thinking Initiative pilot program and has served on the advisory boards for DTI, the Sherred Center for Teaching and Learning, Smith Office of the Arts. She is a member of the Five College Dance Faculty and the Director of the MFA in Dance Program.

Selected Online Publications

Bebe Miller Company. Dance Fort: A History. Ohio State University, 2015. iBooks.

Bebe Miller Company. How Dancing is Built: The Making of In A Rhythm. Pressbooks, 2018.

Motion Bank. TWO: an online score. 2013. Produced by The Ohio State University’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design in collaboration with Motion Bank, a Forsythe Company project.

Selected Choreography and Performance

In a Rhythm (2017). Bebe Miller Company: Michelle Boulé, Christal Brown, Sarah Gamblin, Angie Hauser, Darrell Jones, Bronwen MacArthur, Bebe Miller, Trebien Pollard. Presented by New York Live Arts, New York, NY; Wexner Center for the Performing Arts, Columbus, OH; On The Boards, Seattle, Washington; Dance Motion USA: Peru, Colombia. Watch the video.