BIOGRAPHY
Sara Rivera, a native of New Jersey, is currently a high school dance teacher for Bridgeton High School. Additionally, Sara is a freelance dance educator and choreographer working part-time at various dance studios such as Stewart Johnson Dance Academy, The Turning Pointe, and EnVision Gymnastics.
In the past two years, Ms. Sara Rivera presented at NDEO 2021 titled Student Teaching In A Pandemic, collaborated with Dance New Jersey and Arts Ed New Jersey, and qualified African dance choreography at Bridgeton High School for Teen Arts at the state level.
Sara received her Ed.M in Dance Education at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University. Throughout her time in the graduate program, she completed her full-time and part-time clinical internship at Trenton Central High School-Visual and Performing Arts in Trenton, NJ building her teaching and choreographing repertoire. As part of her degree, she collaborated with Dance New Jersey to provide an online platform for dance educators to use within their classroom. The partnership allowed myself and another dance educator to create a unit plan which embedded social justice and health/wellness topics/ The online unit included video resources, worksheets, assessments, etc.
In 2020, Sara graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in Dance Performance from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She made Dean’s List for all eight semesters. For her academic and artistic excellence, Sara was awarded the Florence Schnepf Domeshek Memorial Merit Scholarship. She is an active member of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) and has been inducted into the National Honor Society for Dance Arts. During her BFA studies, Sara was a performer and teaching artist for 9th-12th grade students in the student-led touring company hosted by Mason Gross, University DanceWorks. She developed a technical and anatomically driven repertoire from renowned dance artists such as Randy James, Doug Elkins, John Evans, Marielis Garcia, Stephanie Batten Bland, Brittany Engel-Adams, Alexandra Beller and Jesse Young in which she trained in Graham, Horton, Afro-Fusion, Release technique, Capoeira, Kathak, Dance Theatre, Barteneiff Fundamentals,
She also had the pleasure of partaking in various works including those choreographed by Pam Tanowitz, John Evans, Bill T. Jones, Chien-Ying Wang, Yin Yue, Alexandra Beller, Lar Lubovitch, and Randy James. Throughout her studies, Sara performed at various venues in New Jersey and New York City, including The Joyce Theater as a soloist and The International Creative Dance Seminar in Beijing, China. Prior to Rutgers, Sara received her foundational training at Stewart Johnson Dance Academy in Hamilton, NJ, where she studied contemporary, musical theatre, jazz, hip-hop, ballet, and tap sparking her passion and love for the art of dance performance and dance education.
