Elizabeth Kattner

Assistant Director, School of Music, Theatre and Dance
Coordinator of Assessment and Evaluation
Associate Professor of Dance

Dance in American Culture, Issues and Trends in Dance
Dance History and Appreciation
Opportunities and Careers in Dance
Contemporary Dance History: Revolution & Revisionism

Contact: [email protected]
(248) 370-2917

Links: Dr. Kattner's website

Elizabeth Kattner, Ph.D holds a B.A. in Anthropology and a Master of Music in Dance from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and a Ph.D. in Humanities from the Free University Berlin. She is a Professor of Dance at Oakland University and serves as Associate Director for the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, coordinating assessment and accreditation for all three departments. She is also coordinator of the K-12 Dance Education program. Prior to coming to Oakland, Dr. Kattner taught Dance, Choreography, Dance Education, Pedagogy, Dance Studies, Study Abroad in Germany, and Dance History at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the Free University Berlin, and the University of Michigan-Flint. She danced professional both in the US and in Europe and is an active choreographer. Her work has been presented at American College Dance Festiva Association, the Uferstudios Center for Contemporary Dance Berlin, the Detroit Dance City Festival, as well as in many of venues. She serves as ballet master for the staging of classical ballets like Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Coppélia for colleges as well as private coaching and mentoring for high school ballet dancers.

 In addition to creating the curriculum for Michigan’s only K-12 Dance Education program, she has given professional development workshops for K-12 teachers at Michigan Dance Festival, SHAPE Michigan, Baltimore County Schools, and for the Detroit Public Schools Community District. She is active in Dance Education research and hosted a National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) special topics conference, What Can Data Do for You? in February 2024. She is part of the planning committee for the NDEO Annual Conference which will take place in Detroit in October 2025. She has served on the board of Michigan Dance Council, the state affiliate of NDEO, for the past 11 years and is one of the main coordinators of the annual high school Michigan Youth Dance Festival, a Michigan Dance Council, Oakland University, and University of Michigan collaboration. For the past several years she has been active in advocating for K-12 Dance Education in Michigan as well as throughout the US.

Her research as a dance historian focuses on the early 20^th century repertory of both modern and ballet, in particular German Ausdruckstanz and early Soviet ballet. She has done extensive research in Germany, the US, and Russia has presented internationally in Berlin, Dublin, Manchester, Quebec, and Toronto, and has been published in both English and German in Ballet Review, Dance Research Journal, Dance Research, Journal of Dance Education, and the program notes of the Grand Rapids Ballet, and the State Ballet Berlin. She serves on the editorial board of Dance Education in Practice and International Journal of Education and the Arts. In addition to her traditional historical research, her embodied research led to the reconstruction George Balanchine’s first ensemble ballet March Funèbre (Choreography by George Balanchine © The Balanchine Trust), which was first performed in Petrograd Russia in 1923. Her reconstruction was performed by the Grand Rapids Ballet in 2018. Her research on this project was published in 2020 by the University Press of Florida in Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets. Her current research project is translating Mariama Diagne’s book, Schweres Schweben: Qualitäten der gravitas in Pina Bauschs “Orpheus und Eurydike,” published by Transcript Verlag in 2019, from German to English.