Shall We Dance!

Carol Teten has been a professional educator and scholar in the field of historical dance for over 40 years.  She is the creator of DANCETIME PUBLICATIONS and the DANCE THROUGH TIME performance dance company.

Carol's career is based on the insight that historical dance can and should be an exciting and fascinating art form, much like historical painting, historical sculpture, and historical music.  However, historical dance has traditionally not been the subject of significant investigation because of the transitory nature of the medium...unlike the accepted preservation of painting, sculpture, and music.  Over the past four decades, Carol has conducted thousands of hours of research and developed an expertise in reading dozens of obsolete dance notation systems.  She is one of few recognized leaders who has developed historical dance into an exciting field with resources comparable in sophistication to the materials available for studying the historical development of other art forms.

Founder, DANCE THROUGH TIME
Carol Teten founded DANCE THROUGH TIME in 1980, in San Francisco, California. Its mission is to research, preserve and perform social dances of Western culture from the 15th Century to the present, and to collect and disseminate information about historical social dance. The Company offers performance, outreach, and educational programs year-round in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has toured nationally under the auspices of Columbia Artists Management Inc. In the past few years, the Company has performed in 36 states, 120 cities, and before more than 150,000 people. Under Mrs. Teten's guidance, the Company grew from two apprentice dancers to an ensemble of 8 professional performers.

During her career as Artistic Director of Dance Through Time, Mrs. Teten choreographed and directed six full-length productions: Dancetime! 500 Years of Courtship Through Dance, A Renaissance Revel, The Baroque Salon, A 19th Century Romance, Dancing the 20th Century, and Origins of Ballet. She built hundreds of shorter productions from this core.

Reconstructor and Choreographer
Carol Teten has choreographed and reconstructed social dances from the 15th Century through the 20th Century. Her research has taken her to libraries and archives throughout Europe and America, and she has assembled a collection of over 1,000 rare books, manuscripts, journals, film clips and other materials. From these materials, she has reconstructed and choreographed over 100 dances for DANCE THROUGH TIME. Many of these dances were previously inaccessible, but now can be seen by a broad range of audiences. They offer insight not only into the times in which the dances first appeared, but also into the diverse cultural forces that shape contemporary social dance forms.

Dance Historian and Teacher
In addition to creating historical dance for performance, Mrs. Teten offers lectures and master classes for scholarly groups, students, and the general public. She teaches a wide variety of dance styles and has developed curricula for teaching social dance in its historical, cultural, and social contexts.

Publisher
In 1997, Carol Teten founded DANCETIME PUBLICATIONS to publish her work to the broadest possible audience.  The company has grown from publishing the work of one artist to publicizing the works of international researchers and choreographers. Through her leadership, the publishing company has become the primary leader in bringing Dance History to life for a broad international community, and for preserving the vibrancy of its meaningful heritage.

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Selected Biographical Information for Carol Teten

Commissions

• CBS, Hallmark Hall of Fame
• Bat Sheva Dance Company, Israel
• Berkeley Repertory Theater, CA
• San Francisco Opera, CA
• Spoleto Arts Festival, Spoleto, Italy

Academic Presentations

• Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT
• Goucher College, Baltimore, MD
• University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA
• University of California, Los Angeles, CA
• University of Ohio, Athens, OH
• First International Movement Notation Conference, Tel Aviv, Israel

Teaching Residencies

• California State Summer School for Arts, Arcata, CA
• San Francisco Music Conservatory, CA
• American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco, CA
• St. Mary's College, MD

Teaching Positions

• Dominican College, San Rafael, CA. Chair, Department of Dance
• College of Marin, Kentfield, CA
• Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Master Classes

• Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Tel Aviv, Israel
• City University of New York, NY
• Drama Studio, London, UK
• San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco, CA
• Stanford University, Stanford, CA
• University of Ohio, Athens, OH

Lecture/Demonstrations

• Barnard College, New York, NY
• Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
• California Council for the Humanities - Five California State Universities
• Dance Library of Israel, Tel Aviv
• New York University, New York City, NY
• Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv, Israel
• Three University California campuses: Berkeley, Riverside, Santa Cruz
• Wesleyan University, CT

Awards

• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• National Endowment for the Arts
• San Francisco Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund
• California Council for the Humanities
• California Arts Council/Touring
• Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Woodside, CA

Education

• M.A., Dance, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
• B.A., Dance, Sarah Lawrence College, New York, NY