Tere O’Connor Dance

Tere O'Connor has been making dances since 1982 and has created over 35 works for his company. He is recognized as one of our nation's most influential contemporary choreographers. The company has performed his works throughout the US, Europe, South America, and Canada. O'Connor has created numerous commissioned works for other dance companies around the world, among these are works for Lyon Opera Ballet and a new solo entitled “DAY” for dancer Jean Butler commissioned by The Abbey Theater in May 2010. In addition to his 1996 work “Greta in the Ditch” for White Oak Dance Ptoject, he created a solo work for Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Tere O'Connor is a 2009 United States Artist Rockefeller Fellow. He is a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Award, Arts International's DNA Project Award, and a Creative Capital Award. He has received three New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards – One for “Heaven Up North” in 1988, another in 1999 for Sustained Achievement, and most recently for his work “Frozen Mommy” (2005). O'Connor is a 1993 Guggenheim Fellow. He is also a recipient of repeated grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NEFA/National Dance Project, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, Altria Group, Inc., The Harkness Foundation for Dance, and Mid Atlantic US Artists International.

An articulate and provocative educator, O'Connor has taught at the Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival, Ohio State University, University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, at the School for New Dance Development (The Netherlands), and ImpulseTanz (Austria), among many others across the globe. He is currently a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.