Lorin Johnson, Associate Professor

Lorin Johnson, Associate Professor, teaches courses in ballet technique, composition and dance history, as well as choreographing for and directing department concerts. Johnson danced with the San Francisco Ballet before joining the American Ballet Theatre in New York under the directorship of Mikhail Baryshnikov. He performed at ABT until 1995, performing classical and contemporary repertoire by such renowned choreographers as Ulysses Dove, Clark Tippet, Agnes DeMille, Glen Tetley, Kenneth Macmillan, Twyla Tharp, and Jerome Robbins. He has also performed as a guest artist with the New York City Ballet. Please visit his website at: www.lorinjohnson.com


Johnson's choreographic work has been described as "dynamic" and "electrifying" and has seen both in the US and abroad. He has been commissioned to create works for such companies as South Bay Ballet, Ventura County Ballet, and Festival Ballet Theatre, among others. His work has also been presented in such dance festivals as: the Fabbrica Europa Dance Festival in Florence, Italy; Celebrate Dance 2010; the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Invitational Dance Festival; the Laguna Dance Festival; SOLA; and the Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival in Palm Springs. He has been artist in residence at such universities as Skidmore College in New York and at the Orange County High School of the Arts in Southern California. Johnson has choreographed on the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company and the ABT summer intensive program, where he has been on faculty since 2004. In 2003, Sergio Trombetta, the dance critic for Danza & Danza, wrote that Johnson's premiere for the Fabbrica Europa Dance Festival was “a work of extraordinary interest,” and the Glendale News Press reported that Johnson’s company, Body Current Dance (www.bodycurrent.org), was "the best performance" in Celebrate Dance 2010.


His writings on dance have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (Routledge), in Experiment and Musyka and in Dance International and Dance Teacher magazines. He has been a pre-performance speaker at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the Los Angeles Music Center and has presented at international conferences such as the Congress on Research in Dance. Johnson is serving as Artistic Advisor to the Music Center in Los Angeles for their 10th anniversary season of the Dance Series, leading the festival LA’s Rite: Stravinsky, Innovation and Dance. He has B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Southern California..