Bashaw, Barbara (bjb24)

Dr. Barbara Bashaw, Arnhold Professor of Practice, is the Program Director of the Ed.D. Dance Education Program, and the Executive Director of the Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership. She is a recognized expert in dance teacher education with extensive teaching and leadership experience in university settings as a graduate director, program director, and department chair. 

As the founding faculty member and Program Director of the EdD Program, her leadership responsibilities include daily administration, operations, artistic direction, as well as degree advisement and dissertation advisement. She is also responsible for developing partnerships, including the existing partnership MOUs with Ballet Hispanico and Kookmin University in South Korea. Furthermore, she led the recent capital projects, including the renovation of program office space (est. 2022) and the dedicated studios, The Arnhold Dance Education Research Studios (est. 2024). As the co-founder and Executive Director of the Arnhold Institute, she leads a team, including professional research associates, staff members, and student research assistants, to accomplish multiple research and scholarly projects dedicated to moving research into transformative policy with a particular focus on forging new paths in PK-12 public education. Under the auspices of the Arnhold Institute, her latest leadership effort is to re-establish Morningside DanceWorX, a recreational community dance program and teaching laboratory led by students. Her accomplishments include helping to develop over $11 million in funding for the program and institute between 2018-2024. 

Dr. Bashaw's research seeks to foreground the perspectives and experiences of children, PK-12 dance educators, and dance teacher educators whose voices and contributions have often been marginalized within dance and education. With the belief that teachers, practitioners, and children have profound worldviews and important insights to contribute to a broad spectrum of dance artistry within education, Dr. Bashaw is committed to advancing equity and access to dance education and challenging historical prejudices in the field. As a researcher and post-secondary educator, Dr. Bashaw's interests include artistic development, cognition, dance leadership, embodied dance meaning-making, educational history, teacher education, and interdisciplinary practice. Thus, her research and pedagogical work are situated within the shared experience of cultivating artistry to transform, expand, make meaning, and interconnect to a wide array of transdisciplinary epistemologies, living within the intersections of constructivism, advocacy-liberatory, and pragmatist frames. Dr. Bashaw actively engages in various qualitative research approaches, including ethnographic, focus group, interview, embodied, and historical. She has examined the perspectives of choreographers, dance leaders, dance educators, university dancers, children, and adolescent dance learners.

Dr. Bashaw has published articles and book chapters, serves on the editorial boards of Dance Education in Practice journal and the Korean Journal of Dance Studies, has been a keynote speaker, and has presented her scholarship at over 50 conferences nationally and internationally.  She has been sought out to lead dance education residencies and professional development workshops. Actively involved in public scholarship, she has served on national and NEA-funded projects, including the NCAS National Dance Standards writing team; the NDEO Dance Entry Level Teacher Assessment; the New Jersey VPA Dance Standards writing team; the New Jersey State Teacher Preparation Standards VPA committee; the NJDOE CTE Dance and Theater High School Exam; the NYSED Dance Content Specialty Certification Exam; and the NYCDOE Blueprint for Dance advisory committee, amongst other projects. As a board member, Bashaw was instrumental in re-constituting NYSDEA and has served as president of Dance New Jersey.

Prior to her work at TC, she founded and pioneered three of the leading graduate programs in dance education: Rutgers University (Ed.M. Dance Education with Teacher Certification) and New York University (M.A. Dance Education with Teacher Certification and M.A. Ballet Pedagogy). As a chair, she has also led a top-ranked conservatory department within Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, which awards B.A., B.F.A., Ed.M., and M.F.A. dance degrees. She has also served on the faculties of the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers (2010-2017) and the Dance Education Laboratory (1997-2008). Dr. Bashaw also worked with children and adolescents within community settings and private studios and was co-founder of Bridge for Dance studio in NYC. Early in her career, Dr. Bashaw was a certified, tenured, PK-12 dance educator and recognized for her work using creative dance methods to guide young choreographers using a fusion of interdisciplinary methods, social justice dialogue, movement analysis approaches, and interconnections with STEAM approaches to literacy, science, math, and social studies. She began her PK-12 career as a teaching artist and master teacher-of-teachers for the Creative Arts Laboratory at TC, ArtsConnection, and the 92Y School Partners program, where she collaborated with and learned from hundreds of classroom and arts teachers. Throughout her PK-12 career, she has worked in a wide variety of urban school contexts, including zoned, SURR, magnet, and gifted elementary, middle, and high schools. With an interest in the intersection between PK-12 and post-secondary education, Dr. Bashaw directed the Rutgers Summer Dance Conservatory (2010-2017), which integrated university faculty, PK-12 faculty, and graduate students to provide pre-college dance education opportunities and outstanding scholarship funding to underserved youth.

Dr. Bashaw has choreographed professionally for theater companies, PK-12 programs, and college programs, where she has also served as Artistic Director for numerous productions. She is a Laban Certified Movement Analyst and has engaged in a wide range of dance and somatic studies, including Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Haitian, Bartenieff Fundamentals, ballet, ballroom, jazz, modern (focus on Limon and Humphrey-Weidman) Raks Sharki, and tap. Some of her notable dance teachers have included Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Alan Danielson, Jaqueline Davis, Robert Ellis Dunn, Garth Fagan, Sandra Fraleigh, Julio Jean, Carol Mezzacappa, Clyde Morgan, Djoniba Mouflet, Susanna Newman, Jim Payton, Janice Pforsich, and Jacqueline Villamil. Dr. Bashaw’s life partner is the lauded choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow Doug Elkins, and she is the proud parent of two children.