About Dagmar Spain

ARTIST · RESEARCHER · EDUCATOR

Dr. Dagmar Spain is a dance artist, researcher, and educator whose work explores how embodied experience creates spaces for dialogue, reflection, learning, and transformation. Her artistic work, research, and pedagogy are interconnected through a sustained interest in embodied practices, dialogic learning, and the ways movement and dance can open possibilities for individual and collective expression.

Her approach brings together dance, education, and interdisciplinary artistic practices, creating environments in which people engage through movement, reflection, verbal and non-verbal communication, and creative inquiry. She has collaborated with filmmakers, actors and theater directors, visual artists, writers, musicians, educators, and community members across academic, artistic, and cultural contexts in Europe and the United States.

Education & Pedagogy

Dagmar earned her EdD in Dance Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 2024, with a focus on dialogic research and pedagogy. Her doctoral work grew from a longstanding question: How can embodied experience become a meaningful form of knowing, inquiry, and dialogue?

Her pedagogy is grounded in the belief that dance education can be both rigorous and deeply human. Through dialogic and experiential approaches, she creates inclusive learning environments in which students become active participants in their learning, reflect on embodied experience, and engage with multiple perspectives.

She has taught dance, movement, writing, and interdisciplinary courses in higher education and professional dance education, including at the University of New York in Prague, DanceWorks Berlin, Brown University, Penn State University, Montclair State University, Teachers College/Columbia University, and 92NY, among others.

She has also designed courses and educational programs, including The Power of Words, which explores monologue writing, and Applied Learning for pre-professional dancers. Her work extends beyond conventional dance training into community-based and adult education, where movement becomes a means of connection, reflection, and dialogue.

Artistic Practice

As a dancer and choreographer, Dagmar works across classical, modern, and contemporary dance and frequently brings dance into dialogue with film, poetry, music, drama, and spoken text. Her practice also incorporates Qigong exercises alongside contemporary dance, expanding her exploration of movement, embodiment, and presence.

Her artistic practice is collaborative and research-informed, with a particular interest in the relationship between movement and lived experience and in how artistic processes can make visible dimensions of human experience that are difficult to express through words alone.

Her recent performances and research projects investigate embodied knowing, professional dance training, community, belonging, and the possibilities of dance as a form of inquiry.

Research

Dagmar's research is situated at the intersection of dance education, embodied learning, dialogic pedagogy, and transformative learning.

Her doctoral research and ongoing longitudinal study examine embodied dialogic spaces and dance as a research methodology, asking how students' embodied experiences can contribute to reflection and meaning-making within educational contexts. This work continues to inform her artistic practice, pedagogy, and scholarly inquiry into embodied knowing, transformative learning, and lifelong learning.

On the whole this company, in trying to bring together not only various disciplines but various people, including performers and audience, is trying to tell us something important: that we need to reach out to each other, to believe in our best dreams of humanity, if we want to survive.”

      — Roberta Pikser, Arts Cure, New York