ERIC MICHAEL HANDMAN portrait
  • Director of Graduate Studies, Modern Dance Department
  • Associate Professor, School Of Dance
801-581-7327

Biography

Eric Handman is an American choreographer and an Associate Professor at the University of Utah's Department of Modern Dance. Prior to receiving his MFA from the University of Utah in 2003, he earned a BA in English from Skidmore College in 1991. He was a member of New York Theatre Ballet and then a professional dancer in various New York–based contemporary dance companies such as Doug Varone and Dancers, Nicholas Leichter Dance and Joy Kellman and Company. He has worked with David Dorfman, Lisa Race, Stephen Koester, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Koosilja-Hwang, Eun Me Ahn, Pooh Kaye and many others. He teaches domestically and internationally specializing in technique, composition, improvisation, contact improvisation, dance studies, criticism and theory. His choreography has been commissioned by various companies and departments across the United States. He has taught, performed and shown his choreography throughout the United States as well as Costa Rica, England, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and Hungary. His work has also been presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He has served on the board of directors of the Congress on Research in Dance and is presently on the board of the American College Dance Association. Handman is a Fulbright Specialist and a member of the Entrepreneurial Faculty Scholars at the University of Utah for his work on mobile technology and choreographic thinking. In 2014 he was a winner of two choreography competitions: the 2014 New Visions Choreography Competition for Idaho Dance Theater and the 2014 Pretty Creatives International Choreographic Competition for the Northwest Dance Project.