Cathie Caraker is a veteran dance artist and educator who has been working in the field of movement research, improvisation and performance for over 35 years.  A native of San Francisco, she moved to Amsterdam in the 1980s, where she graduated from the innovative School for New Dance Development (SNDO), later joining the faculty there from 1995 – 2005. Her dance work has been deeply influenced by post-modern ideas and practices including the Judson Church movement, European new dance /music improvisaton, Contact Improvisation and somatics. She was privileged to work extensively with Nancy Stark Smith and Steve Paxton, founders of Contact Improvisation, with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of Body-Mind Centering® and many other pioneers in the fields of post-modern dance and somatics.

Her performance work has been produced by theaters including Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace at St Mark’s Church, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the University Settlement House, the New York Improvisation Festival, NesTheaters in Amsterdam, CounterPULSE in San Francisco and the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation. She has collaborated with numerous artists including Rosemary Hannon, Katarina Eriksson, Gonnie Heggen, Robert Steijn, Nancy Stark Smith, Mike Vargas, David Beadle, Daniel Lepkoff, Andrew Harwood, Felice Wolfzahn, David Hurwith, Ray Chung, Henry Kaiser, Jerry Smith, and others.

Her work seeks to expand conventional perceptions of dance, and she frequently collaborates with improvising dancers and musicians. In 2009 she was an Artist In Residence at CounterPULSE, where she created a science fiction dance installation with Swedish dance artist Katarina Eriksson and video artist Jerry Smith. More recently she has performed duets with guitarist Henry Kaiser, collaborated on a David Bowie dance-ical with Rosemary Hannon and Katarina Eriksson, and performed in Rosemary Hannon’s The Big Bad and the Little Good and Gallus Gallus Domesticus.

Cathie is a renowned teacher who enjoys working internationally. She has been a guest artist at Tanzfabriek Berlin, Contredanse Brussels, de Beweging Antwerp,  Bewegungs-Arts Freiberg, Barcelona Theater Institute, Association Hayyou'Raqs Tunis, Chisenhale Dance Space London, Movement Research NYC, Moving On Center Oakland, and US colleges including Amherst, Bennington, Middlebury, Mt Holyoke, Brown, University of Rochester and Denison University. She has taught at dance festivals including wcciJAM, Contact Festival Freiburg, Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation, Barcelona CI Festival and Goa Contact Festival. She was on the faculty of the School for New Dance Development / Amsterdam School for the Arts for 10 years.

Cathie is a graduate of the SNDD / Department of Choreography of the Amsterdam School for the Arts. She holds an MFA in dance from Bennington College and is a Body-Mind Centering® teacher, as well as a longtime Pilates and Gyrotonic® instructor.

Her writings on BMC as a somatic approach to dance education have been published by the Belgian dance journal Nouvelles de Danse.