The 2006 Association of Teaching Artists’ Teaching Artist Distinguished Service to The Arts In Education Field Award honors Susan Thomasson. The Award was created in 2002 to honor individual artist educators who not only pioneered the Arts In Education Field, but who also continue to define the best of what it means to be a Teaching Artist. This award is the first in the nation to recognize artist educators for service to the Arts In Education field.  

Susan Thomasson
Dancer/choreographer, Susan Thomasson has performed a wide variety of modern dance styles, dancing and touring with the companies of Kathryn Posin, Raymond Johnson, Bill T. Jones, Bill Evans, and Rosalind Newman. Since 1983 she has been a soloist with Anna Sokolow’s Players’ Project, performing nationally and internationally with the company, and assisting in reconstruction of Ms. Sokolow’s repertory. She also tours a solo/duet concert of Pilobolus Dance Theatre’s work, originally created for Lincoln Center Institute.

A Teaching Artist for the Lincoln Center Institute since 1980, she has been involved in the development of many of the Institute’s national affiliates both as a performer and as a Teaching Artist. She has been a faculty member of Brooklyn College, the Rutgers University system, Manhattanville College, Fairleigh Dickinson University, the University of Northern Iowa, and Brooklyn’s Berkeley Carroll School. She is also an Artist-In-Residence for the New York Foundation for the Arts, the 92nd Street Y, New York City Center, the Joyce Theater, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, New Visions for New York City Public Education, and Hofstra University.

Susan Thomasson’s work has been presented at New York’s Riverside Dance Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Hopkins Theatre at Dartmouth College, Iowa’s Cedar Arts Forum, and Bergen Dancemakers’ Dance Connection. Recent projects include a commission from the University of Nebraska's Lied Center for an evening-length dance/theatre/music work, and a series of pieces for Lincoln Center incorporating poetry, text and movement.