Director

Susan Quinn is founder and artistic director for Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD). She is a choreographer and also teaches contemporary dance and composition at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Susan Quinn received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at New York University. After graduation she joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and toured throughout the world, performing repertory and events in opera houses as well as theatres, studios and outside spaces. Susan was in Cunningham company until 1987 and continued to dance in New York City and abroad with various choreographers, at the same time developing her own interest in the study of choreography. She began teaching technique and composition and moved to Europe where she continued choreographing on a small company of dancers ; Susan Quinn Dance Company. She was awarded support from the cities of München and Salzburg which made it possible to produce new work yearly. Susan Quinn's teaching popularity became an impetus to hold courses regularly in Salzburg. As the number of students expanded she invited guest teachers from the contemporary dance scene to offer classes in improvisation, contemporary, ballet, contact and yoga and began developing a curriculum for undergraduate studies in contemporary dance arts which was to finalize her vision of an experimental dance academy.

Susan is the initiator and curator of the festival "New Faces New Dances", a yearly event which presents the work of young choreographers and dancers in cooperation of the Szene Salzburg and is for many years a member of the Regional Council for the Arts in Salzburg and of the choreographer's platform tanz_house.

Since 2008, Susan has founded and curated BODHI PROJECT, a professional contemporary dance company that tours internationally. Today she works actively in promoting movement research and experimental thought as an essential element in the advancement of contemporary dance.

In 2012 Susan was awarded a Merce Cunningham Fellowship by the Merce Cunningham Trust. As a Merce Cunningham Fellow Susan will go to New York City in the Summer of 2012 to research one of the pieces in Merce Cunningham's repertory. Susan will teach a workshop of the work selected in City Center NYC, to a group of Cunningham studio students. Upon returning to Salzburg, she will set the repertory piece on selected SEAD students. The final results will be presented in an informal showing following the repertory workshop in SEAD's theatre.