Barbie Diewald

she/they

  • Assistant Professor of Dance
Barbie Diewald

Barbie Diewald directs Barbie Diewald Choreography, a research and performance ensemble based in Western Massachusetts and New York. Diewald has been a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Choreography, Bogliasco Foundation Fellow, and a Bessie Schonberg Choreographer at New York Live Arts. Her choreographic work has been presented extensively in New York City (BAM, Movement Research at Judson Church, The 92nd Street Y), Western Massachusetts (Jacob’s Pillow, A.P.E. Gallery, The Academy of Music Theatre), and internationally at Ponderosa (Germany), the Bogliasco Foundation Center (Italy), and Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada). She has collaborated with a broad range of artists including Bronwen MacArthur, Katie Martin, and Kate Seethaler, and is currently in process with Sara Smith. Diewald's current work, Pare, challenges the scale, utility and memory of formal performance spaces, and moves toward intimacy as an ethos of resisting hierarchy and reshaping trauma. She is also developing a feminist pedagogy that draws from intertextuality, and considers Creative Bibliography as a mobilizing force for embodied knowledge.  Diewald holds a BFA in Theatre from Millikin University and MFA in Dance from Smith College.  She was a Visiting Lecturer in dance at Keene State College in 2017, and a Visiting Artist at 鶹ý from 2017-2019. 

Areas of Expertise

Choreography; Modern Technique; Modern Repertory

Education

  • B.F.A., Millikin University
  • M.F.A., Smith College

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Recent Campus News

Barbie Diewald, assistant professor of dance at 鶹ý, is on a team of researchers looking to quantify dance with computer-based tools.

Dance instructor Barbie Diewald used an iPad, laptops, a ladder and many props to bring the dance studio to her Mount Holyoke students — remotely.

An interdisciplinary project encompassing film and dance.

Recent Grants

Fellowship from the New England Foundation for the Arts for their New Work New England project: Concourse. The fellowship is for one year.

Recent Honors

Assistant Professors of Dance Barbie Diewald and Shakia Barron were artists in residence at the internationally-renowned Bates Dance Festival to develop their collaborative dance project, "Concourse." The work will premiere at 鶹ý September 16 and 17, 2022.

Was named a Faculty Research Fellow by the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Archives for her project "Consoling Clarity: Queer and Lesbian Aesthetics in Twenty-First Century Dance."

Were artists-in-residence at the renowned Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. At the culmination of their residency, they shared an excerpt of their shared research, "Concourse" at the annual Jacob's Pillow College Partners Convening. Their next choreographic residency will be at High Street Studios in Ipswich, MA in December 2021.

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