Charlotte Adams

Professor Emeritus
Biography

Charlotte Adams joined the faculty in the Department of Dance at Iowa in the fall of 1998. After 23 years she recently retired as Professor Emerita and now lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. While at Iowa she wore many hats: a teacher of modern technique, composition, dance kinesiology and she began a 200-hour yoga teacher training certification program; the director of the undergraduate program; the artistic director for Dance Gala and the Dancers In Company; and the choreographer of over 50 new dance works for students. Her choreography has been described as “arresting” (The New York Times), “gorgeous” and “delicious” said The Tucson Weekly, describing a style that combines her signature wit and athleticism with an eye for the poetry of human foibles. In 2001 Charlotte Adams & Dancers had its premiere performance at New York’s Joyce SoHo with return seasons in 2003 & 2006. Subsequent company performance venues and choreographic commissions include: Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), the Breaking Ground Festival (Phoenix), Triskelion Arts (New York), Diane Wortham Theatre (Asheville, North Carolina), the DUMBO Dance Festival (New York), DeMeester Theater (Tucson, Arizona), OMDC the Lied Center (Omaha, Nebraska), El Museo Centro Leon (Santiago, Dominican Republic), New Territory/Cuerpo de Danza (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Ah-Ha! Dance Theatre (Kansas City, Missouri), and the Theatre Iseion and Oldysud in southern France with the Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre, among others. Recently Adams has toured and performed with The World As We Know It: solos performed by women of a certain age with dance artists Beth Corning, Simone Ferro, Sara Hook, Heidi Latsky, Chiao-Ping Li, Debra Loewen, and Endalyn Taylor in Iowa City, Milwaukee and Madison, WI, and Pittsburgh, PA (Pittsburgh in the Round described her performance as “iridescent”) with future concerts in the works. Awards include The Arizona Arts Awards for artistic achievement, the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty Honors Award for Outstanding Professional Honors, the selection of The Poetry of Physics for the national ACDA gala celebration, and numerous grant awards from national, state, and university funding sources for creative projects. Adams began her choreographic career in Tucson, Arizona as a founding member of Tenth Street Danceworks. Under her direction, the company toured primarily in the southwest U.S. and to South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. She earned an MFA at the University of Arizona in 1995.