Bio
James Clouser, who holds both MA and MFA degrees, began dancing while at the Eastman School of Music on an orchestral scholarship, studying the French horn and musical composition. He became familiar with the classical and contemporary ballet repertory as a member of the American Ballet Theatre and as principal artist with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of Canada. A recipient of a Canada Council grant in 1963, he studied pedagogical styles in London, Copenhagen and Moscow. He moved to Texas in 1970 after having served on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Connecticut College. For the next several years he served as Ballet Master, Choreographer-in-Residence and Acting Artistic Director of the Houston Ballet, staging "Swan Lake, Act II" and "Napoli, Act III", and choreographing numerous original works including "Carmina Burana" and the rock-ballet, "Caliban". In 1982 he accepted an invitation to head the dance program at Loretto Heights College in Denver, where he subsequently became the Chairman of the Programs in Fine Arts. In 1988 he was appointed Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Ballet and Modern Dance at Texas Christian University. In 1990 he moved briefly to Ohio where he served as Artistic Director of the Dayton Ballet. He returned to the Southwest in 1993 to accept a faculty position at the University of North Texas where he remained until his retirement in May of 2000. Within one year he came out of retirement to accept a full-time position in the School of Dance at the University of Arizona where he continues to be active as a choreographer and master teacher. He is the author of numerous articles on the relationship of kinesiology to ballet pedagogy. His textbook, Looking At Dance, is in its second edition. Over the last decade his choreographic work has been presented in Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Lexington, Cincinnati, Greensboro, Tucson, Denver, Des Moines, and Chicago, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at the Avignon Festival in France, and in Rome and Paris. A special collection of materials concerning his earlier work is housed in the Performing Arts Library at the University of Texas in Austin.
