Graduate Student
Sydney Schiff is a classically trained contemporary dancer, choreographer, dance educator, and scholar. Her physical practice reflects a lifetime of concert dance training and performance, alongside two decades of training and community engagement in diverse popular social and vernacular dances, with an emphasis on Lindy Hop, competitive International Latin and Standard Ballroom, Blues, Fusion, Brazilian Zouk, and Lambada, among other genres. She received her Bachelor's degree in the History of Science and a Certificate in the Program in Dance from Princeton University, where she completed a written thesis project on the history of dance medicine and science, as well as an evening-length thesis dance concert.
Following six years of creative work as a New York City-based freelance performer, collaborator, and Artistic Director of Sydney Schiff Dance Project, she pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Dance with a focus on choreography from the University of Michigan. While in graduate school, she researched Brazilian Zouk as a Fellow in the Center for World Performance Studies and produced an MFA thesis concert that explored Brazilian Zouk social dance as postmodern performance and community engagement. Upon graduating, she traveled the world full-time to teach, study, perform, compete, and continue her exploratory field research on Brazilian Zouk and Lambada in preparation for future scholarship.
As a PhD student in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Santa Barbara, Schiff seeks to identify and innovate theoretical frameworks that bridge embodied practice with the production of dance historiography and university classroom pedagogy. Her research areas of interest include Dance History, Critical Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Critical Race Theory, Afro-Diasporic Modernisms, Feminist Studies, Brazil Studies, and Global Studies. For more information, please visit: sydneyschiffdanceproject.com.