Karen Schaffman, Ph.D. (dance artist, choreographer, writer and curator) explores sensorial perception, memory, and the politics of transgression. She is interested in witnessing bodies, both everyday and spectacular, in curious states of investigation. She pursues paradox and the agency of vulnerability as means to disrupt cultural norms of performativity. Her dissertation research was based on Contact Improvisation in the 1990s, and ways the form both resists and conforms codification.
It was in 1990 that Karen first came to Germany as a student on the inaugural tour of the European Dance Development Center, Arnhem. Upon graduation, she joined the faculty at TuT – Schule für Neuen Tanz und Theater, Hannover (1991-1994). Since then she has been fortunate to engage in many transatlantic exchanges through artistic collaborations and teaching opportunities.
Karen considers her intensive studies with Susan Leigh Foster, Deborah Hay, Eva Karczag, Nina Martin, and Lisa Nelson as most influential to her embodied knowledge. Since 2007, she has created collaborative works with Anya Cloud and Mary Reich (The Fantasy Project), Liam Clancy, Eric Geiger, and Leslie Seiters (BARK), Kristine Diekman (United & Severed), Peter Pleyer (Veronika Blumstein Project), and adaptions of choreography by Deborah Hay in concert with Eric Geiger (FIRE and Art & Life). From 1994-2006, Karen was (founding) member of Lower Left and co-produced numerous initiatives with Sushi Performance & Visual Art.
Currently, Karen is Professor in the ARTS Program at California State University San Marcos where she forges Dances Studies. In 2011, she founded PADL West, a non-profit organization that she co-directs with Eric Geiger. She is in her second year of a professional training program at the Feldenkrais® Institute of San Diego.