Kimberly Karpanty

Kimberly Karpanty is a Professor of Dance at Kent State University where she teaches modern and jazz dance technique, dance composition, pedagogy, dance science, dance and technology and American jazz dance history, among others. Since 1996 Karpanty has also served as the Artistic Director of the Kent Dance Ensemble, a pre-professional student dance company that performs faculty adn guest repertory year-round. Professor Karpanty holds a M.F.A. Degree in Choreography and Dance Technology from Arizona State University and a M.A. in Dance and Dance Education from New York University. She is also a seven-time recipient of a KSU Faculty Excellence Award in both Teaching and Scholarship/Service.

Karpanty currently tours nationally and internationally as an invited guest artist and with Travesty Dance Group, of which she is a co-founder and Artistic Director (www.travestydancegroupcleveland.com). For over a decade she choreographed, taught and performed professionally in New York City with Rondo American Dance Theatre in works by Anna Sokolow, Manuel Alum, Moses Pendleton, and Murray Louis among others. She was a soloist with Linda Nutter & Dancers and a founding member of the collaborative, interdisciplinary dance & theatre group StraightJacket/Danza en vano. She taught modern dance and Simonson-based jazz in New York City on the faculties of Dance Space, Inc. (later Dance New Amsterdam), Steps on Broadway, the 92nd Street Y, the Spence School and the Steffi Nossen School of Dance.  

Karpanty has made over 60 dances in modern dance, dance theatre, screendance and concert jazz dance genres. She has been invited to teach and choreograph at numerous universities and dance festivals in the United States and abroad in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and Sweden. Much of her choreography is research-based and is theatrical, interdisciplinary and structurally related to the musical scores. Karpanty collaborates with composers, poets, musicians, new media artists and scenic and lighting designers.

Professor Karpanty is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar and a certified instructor of both the Simonson Technique and Core Dynamics Pilates  She is active in  the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), the Pilates Method Alliance and in the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS) as a committee member, copy editor and peer reviewer for the Journal of Dance Medicine and Science. Her research agenda includes work in American jazz dance history, dancer wellness, dance for the camera and original choreography.