Robin Becker
Founder and Artistic Director
"As we develop and expand our physical presence, we uncover information and intelligence through the body which transforms our connection and relationship to the larger universe."
“Her quiet intensity made her always compelling.”
– Jack Anderson, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Artistic director, choreographer, and dancer Robin Becker began her dance training with Bentley Stone and Walter Camryn in Chicago, Illinois. She continued her studies on scholarship at the Martha Graham School in New York City. She also studied choreography and was mentored by Bessie Schonberg and Eleo Pomare for ten years. Ms. Becker is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist. She has a BA in Dance and a MA in Humanities.
Robin was a principal dancer with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company from 1973 to 1983 and performed with the Martha Graham Ensemble, the Pearl Lang Dance Company, Ballet Etc. Los Angeles Dance Theatre, and Zvi Gotheiner. She performed as a guest artist with the Denishawn Repertory Dancers at the Biennale Festival in Lyons, France. In 1987, Robin founded her own company, which has enjoyed critical success with engagements at Florence Gould Hall, The Union Theater at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, Georgetown University, Westpoint Military Academy, the Joyce Theater'sAltogether Different Series, the Harkness Dance Project's Playhouse 91 series, the Fiorello Festival, and three seasons at St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery.
In 2017, a documentary film about Ms. Becker’s project Into Sunlight premiered at the Lincoln Center Dance on Camera Festival. Under the direction of Ms. Becker, Robin Becker Dance has been the recipient of two National Endowment of the Arts awards in 2016 and 2017 to further the company’s veteran/ military outreach program. In 2016, the company was awarded a grant from the Disabled Veteran’s National Foundation to also support its veteran/military outreach. In 2011, she directed a three-day inter-disciplinary conference at Hofstra University called Into Sunlight, The Impact of War on the Social Body from the Vietnam Era to the Present that focused on the integrative role of the arts in society.
Ms. Becker's wide-ranging experiences as a choreographer include residencies at Southold Dance Theatre in South Bend, Indiana, and at The Yard, a colony for performing artists on Martha's Vineyard. She was also elected to participate in the Carlisle Project; a competitive residency program designed to foster the creation of new ballet choreography. During the summers of 1995-1997, Ms. Becker was a guest artist at the South Carolina Summer Dance Conservatory, and was also in residence at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies with musician Paul Horn. In 1998, she was commissioned to create a new work that was performed with Roberta Flack in a New York concert to benefit breast cancer research and awareness. Ms. Becker performs regularly as a soloist with the Columbia Chamber Players, performing structured improvisations inspired by poetry and literature.
Ms. Becker's work is informed by her extensive training in numerous forms of dance, bodywork, meditation practice, and by Continuum, an innovative field of movement education based on the study of the body as a fluid system. Ms. Becker is an Authorized Teacher of Continuum. Ms. Becker weaves her foundation of classical dance training together with the ongoing inquiry and discovery of contemporary dance. Her commitment to the exploration of movement, healing and spirituality permeate her art. She offers Continuum workshops regularly at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA, and for the past 18 years she has taught workshops in Switzerland at The Zenith Institute in Olivone, and Kientalerhof in Kiental.
Robin Becker is currently on the faculty at Hofstra University. She has served on the faculties of American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, The Fiorello Laguardia High School of Performing Arts in New York City, the Princeton Ballet Society, the Actor's Studio, Peridance Center, and the Stone-Camryn School of Balletin Chicago. She is an accredited teacher of the Martha Graham Technique. Ms. Becker has been both a New York and New Jersey State Artist in Residence. She has presented master classes for several prestigious dance programs, including the New England American College Dance Festival, the University of Utah, Wesleyan University, Skidmore College, the University of South Carolina, and BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio.