Dance Artist

Corrie Franz Cowart grew up in the heart of the Northwest in the scenic Columbia River Gorge, OR. She pursued dance from an early age and was awarded the prestigious Kreilshiemer Scholarship to attend Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA, where she earned a B.F.A. in dance. 

Ms. Cowart performed both nationally and internationally with Impact Production’s touring companies Dayuma and The Masterpiece. She also performed with the Pat Graney Dance Company, LABCO Dance, Minh Tran and Dancers, The Dance Theatre of Oregon and the Pittsburgh Opera. She has performed in the repertory works of Mark Dendy, Paul Taylor, and Betty Jones, and Lynn Simonsen, among others. Additionally, in 1997 she co-founded Co-Art Dance, a contemporary dance company with her husband Timothy Cowart.

Cowart earned her M.F.A. in Dance at the University of Oregon while serving as a Graduate Teaching Fellow. She has a passion for sharing dance and movement with everyone, and in that spirit she is a certified DanceAbility instructor and a certified Laban Movement Analyst. She is currently working to become a certified Dance for PD (Parkinson’s Disease) instructor and has completed both the beginning and advanced workshops in the certification process. She has been a teaching artist at Metro Dance Center, in Portland, OR and at The Dance Alloy in Pittsburgh, PA where she taught all ages from children to seniors. 

As an assistant professor at Muhlenberg College she taught courses in dance composition, screendance, social dances, ballet, all levels of modern dance and first-year writing seminars. She has also taught at the University of Oregon, Lane Community College, Western Oregon University and at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. 

Cowart’s professional research has included choreography and making dances specifically for video. Her screendance compositions have been shown at the San Suci Festival of Dance on Camera in Boulder, CO., Moving Images in Philadelphia, PA., and the Dance on Camera Festival at DeSales University, in Center Valley, PA., among others. Recently, Cowart was a contributing filmmaker to a crowd-sourced dance film work by choreographer Bebe Miller and filmmaker Mitchell Rose entitled Globe Trot, that won international acclaim. 

When not dancing or teaching dance, she is chasing after her five sons. 

B.F.A. Dance: Cornish College of the Arts

M.F.A. Dance: University of Oregon

Certifications:

C.M.A. Certified Laban Movement Analyst DanceAbility Teacher Certification