Paul Matteson
Paul Matteson is an associate professor in the School of Dance at the University of the Arts. He is also a BESSIE Award-winning performer whose research explores methods for generating inventive personal movement within collaborative choreography.
Paul’s evening-length duet with Jennifer Nugent, titled another piece apart, premiered in New York City at New York Live Arts and in Boston at the Dance Complex, with upcoming performances through 2020.
Paul was a member of the internationally touring Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2008 to 2012. He has also worked with David Dorfman Dance, Lisa Race, Terry Creach, Peter Schmitz, Neta Pulvermacher and others.
He regularly teaches at summer festivals, including the American Dance Festival, the Bates Dance Festival, SALT Dance and Provincial Dance Theater’s Summer School in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Paul was a faculty member at Amherst College and Mount Holyoke College, both in Massachusetts, from 2012 to 2017. During that time, he was a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award recipient in choreography.
Paul also recently participated in and taught the movement component of a 10-month course at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, exploring perception and the intersections between Vipassana meditation and art making. He earned a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from Bennington College, both in Vermont.
What / do / I do / when my love / is away? (Premiere) Program A Multicam 12-8-18 from Paul Matteson on Vimeo.
Performance Pedagogies of Dance, choreography with students from fall 2018
At the Opening Act celebration that begins every academic year, the incoming freshmen cheer after the tour de force performance of the school song (“With a Little Help from my Friends”), yet how many are also struggling with homesickness? For this Performance Pedagogies of Dance performance piece, we cut up and rearranged the school song and built movement for each word. At times, we inserted our own language. We used a Fibonacci pattern to create rhythmic structures, and explored chanting, screaming and the Hu breath, as well as interdependent partnering.
