Beth Soll

Beth Soll

American dance artist Beth Soll is frequently hailed as “ . . . the most accomplished choreographer to have emerged from New England” and is known for her enigmatic and powerfully expressive dances. She began her training as a child in Ithaca, NY with Romanian modern dancers Iris Barbura and Vergiu Cornea and then continued studying in the European tradition at the Essen Volkwangschule, and at the Kreutzbergschule in Switzerland. She received a degree in Modern Dance from the University of Wisconsin in 1965, and earned a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Modern Dance from the University Professors Program at Boston University in 2000.  Her book, Will Modern Dance Survive: Lessons to be Learned from the Pioneers and Unsung Visionaries of Modern Dance was published in 2002.  

Since 1965, she has taught dance and related subjects in schools, camps, community centers, private studios, and university dance departments.  Immediately after graduation, she began teaching at the University of Wisconsin. After moving to Boston in 1973, she taught at Boston University (as Coordinator of the Dance Program), the Boston Conservatory,  the Harvard Summer Dance Center, and for 20 years, she directed the Dance Program at MIT. Since leaving Boston in 1997, she has taught at UC Santa Barbara, Hofstra University, the New School, and Manhattanville College.

Before forming Dance Projects, Inc./Beth Soll & Company in 1979 in Massachusetts, she performed with several companies in the Midwest, and in Boston with the Ina Hahn Company, Dance Collective, and the Harvard Summer Dance Center Company. She has choreographed more than 100 dances.  With her company or alone she has performed in many American cities and states, and in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Romania,  and Russia. Soll has worked with or collaborated with other choreographers, including Frances Alenikoff, Ruth Birnberg, Ze’eva Cohen, Bill Evans, Dawn Kramer, Wendy Perron, tap dancer Pamela Raff, Rosalind Newman, and Mel Wong. In addition to working with numerous composers, such as Robert Aldridge, Richard Cornell, Wendy Griffiths, Carolyn Lord, Malombo’s Philip Tabane, Thomas Oboe Lee, Stan Strickland, David Stringham, and Kathryn Woodard, she has collaborated with visual artists Ed Andrews, Liese Bronfenbrenner, Mira Cantor, Katherine Finkelpearl, Derith Glover, J.C.  Hotchkiss, and Anne Saussois.

For many decades, Soll has created a full concert of new dances each year, including most recently:  Education and She Takes a Walk (2025), Four Dancers, One Choreographer, and One Musician (2024), Four Dances (2023), Earthly Dances in Troubled Times (2022), Dances of Passion and Peace (2019),  The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals (2018), and Tribute to Iris Barbura (2016). In 2020, with cinematographer Ethan Mass, she premiered her film: Two Red Solos: A Formal Response.  Soll’s choreography has been supported by more than 60 grants from private donors, corporations, and grants from government agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Artists Foundation of Massachusetts.  She has been the recipient of many awards, including an Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Boston Magazine Best of Boston Award: Best Choreography, the Peter de Florez Grant for Humor at MIT for Outset, the Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize at MIT, and the Eliot Norton Award for her work as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher.