Faculty & Staff

Lisa Jo Sagolla
Lecturer
Dance
Degrees & Accomplishments
EdD in Art and Art Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
MA in Dance and Dance Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
BA in Music Education and Government, The College of William and Mary in Virginia
Biography

Lisa Jo Sagolla is an arts educator, consultant, critic, choreographer, and historian, whose research interests revolve around the making, history, and teaching of integrated arts genre, such as the Broadway musical, physical theatre, and various forms of American popular culture and entertainment. Her first book, The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken (Northeastern University Press), was a finalist for the Theatre Library Association’s George Freedley Memorial Award for best book in the area of theatre or live performance. Her second book, Rock ‘n’ Roll Dances of the 1950s (Greenwood Press/ABC-CLIO), is part of the social-history, reference book series “The American Dance Floor.” Sagolla has written book chapters, scholarly journal articles, and encyclopedia entries on topics ranging from Busby Berkeley to Twyla Tharp, tap dance, the Rockettes, and the influence of modern dance on American musical theatre choreography. Her writings appear in American National Biography; The International Dictionary of Modern Dance; The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture; The Back-Stage Actor’s Handbook; Frank Sinatra: The Man, The Music, and the Legend; Italian-American Politics: Local, Global/Cultural, Personal; and The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia. She has also written more than 600 arts reviews for trade and popular periodicals including Backstage Magazine (for which she was the Dance/Movement columnist for 8 years), Playbill, American Theatre, Dance Teacher, Pointe, Film Journal International, and The Bucks County Herald. Sagolla has choreographed more than 75 productions for Off-Broadway, regional, summer stock, and university theatres and has taught in K-12, studio, and college settings, including Columbia University, New York University, and Marymount Manhattan College. She has served as an arts education assessment and curriculum development consultant for the Lincoln Center Institute, New York City Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Chicago Moving Company, and as an Educative Teacher Performance Assessment scorer for Pearson.