Wendy Perron is an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher who was the editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine from 2004 to 2013. She is the author of Through the Eyes of a Dancer, Selected Writings, published by Wesleyan University Press in November 2013.

Biography

Perron graduated from Bennington College in 1969. She began her career in New York as a freelance dancer/choreographer at Dance Theater Workshop. She danced with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1975–78)^[1][2] and participated in one of Twyla Tharp's "farm clubs." Perron later noted: "From Trisha and Twyla, I learned you can use any kind of strange, jagged, weird movements and make a piece flow."^[1]

Perron has taught dance at Bennington College,^[3] Princeton University, NYU, Rutgers, and City College of New York .^[4] She also led the Wendy Perron Dance Company from 1983 to 1994^[4] and was a Senior Fellow of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.^[5] From 1992 to 1994 she was associate director of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. She earned a master's degree from Empire State College in 2000.

Perron has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Ballet Review, and the Dance Research Journal.^[5] She joined the editorial staff of Dance Magazine in 2000 and became its editor-in-chief in 2004.^[6] In 2013 she became editor-at-large.

In April 2011, she was one of three artists inducted into New York Foundation for the Arts' inaugural Hall of Fame.^[7]

In 2017 she co-curated Radical Bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955–1973. She co-wrote and co-edited the book of the same title. She currently teaches a graduate seminar at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.