Degrees:
M.F.A., California Inst. of the Arts
M.A., Wesleyan Univ.
B.F.A., Univ. of the Arts-Philadelphia
Deborah Goffe is a dance maker, performer, educator, and performance curator. Prior to arriving at Trinity, Deborah served as Associate Professor of Dance and Performance Curation and Dance Program Coordinator at Hampshire College. Deborah’s current role as Executive Director of the Austin Arts Center and Artist-in-Residence of Theater and Dance is informed by her enduring commitments to world-making, support of vibrant local arts ecosystems, and the role of curatorial practice in those processes.
She is founder of Scapegoat Garden, a New England-based creative engine that has functioned as a primary artistic and curatorial vehicle since 2002. Deborah’s artistic works have been performed in homes, gardens, galleries, as well as in regional, national, and international performance festivals and venues. In 2022, she was a Creative Capital Awardee and recipient of a New Work New England grant from New England Foundation for the Arts for her current project, Liturgy|Order|Bridge. She is a past Massachusetts Cultural Council, Connecticut Office of the Arts, and Greater Hartford Arts Council artist fellow, and was awarded the Rebecca Blunk Fund Award by New England Foundation for the Arts. She has also been honored for Distinguished Achievement by the Connecticut Dance Alliance and Lifetime Achievement by The Greater Hartford Arts Council.Alongside her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from California Institute of the Arts, Deborah earned an MA in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP). Her curatorial research examines and makes visible formal and informal cultural networks that emerge outside perceived cultural centers or among artists with marginalized identities. She was also a 2019 ICPP Ford Curatorial Leadership Fellow, and served as lead author and consultant on the ICPP Performing Artist Case Study project, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Her book chapter, "See Me Here: Defining Black Space at the Intersection of Artistic and Curatorial Practices in Privy," was published in Black Art and Aesthetics: Relations, Interiors, Reckonings by Bloomsbury Publishing in December 2023.
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