Rate My Professor Carol Hess

Carol Hess is Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she has served on the faculty since 1982. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College (1975) and an M.A. in Dance Education from Columbia University Teachers College (1980), where she studied dance composition with Robert Ellis Dunn. Her teaching includes Intermediate Contemporary (Modern) Technique, Dance and Technology, Dance Composition, and Teaching Methods for Dance. Under her leadership as chair, dance department enrollments doubled. She developed Project REACH, which brings dance into public elementary and middle schools and provides opportunities for UMBC students to perform and teach master classes. She also created the Methods of Teaching Dance course, training UMBC students who hold positions in dance education throughout Maryland.

Professor Hess has a distinguished career as a performer, choreographer, and artistic director. Born in New York City, she performed with Hannah Kahn and Dancers, The Rondo Dance Theater, and DANCES/Janet Soares, and as a tap soloist appeared on television and in solo concerts in New York City and Europe. Her choreography has been presented at venues such as the Cubiculo, Dance Theater Workshop, and the Grand Finale in New York; the International Dance Workshop in Bonn, Germany; and the Flora Theater in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She served as Artistic Director of Oregon Dance Theater and Phoenix Repertory Dance Company, and has been Co-Artistic Director of UMBC's resident Baltimore Dance Project since 1987, originally founded in 1983 as Phoenix Dance Company. Her recent multi-disciplinary works incorporate dance with visual media and technologies, using live camera feeds and pre-recorded images; notable pieces include Changing Room, created in collaboration with video artist Vin Grabill and composer Neal Woodson and featured on the Innovators Series, Artscape 1995, and Maryland Public Television’s Independent Eye, as well as video/dance films Site Visits (2004) and Substrata (2006), screened at festivals including the Maryland Film Festival and Rosebud Festival. She received the 2008 Maryland Council for Dance Award for Outstanding Service to Dance in Maryland and a 2017 Individual Artist Award. Professor Hess was elected to the National Association of Schools of Dance Commission on Accreditation in 2022 and re-elected in 2025.