Lisa Naugle

Lisa Naugle, Ph.D. is professor of dance in the Department of Dance at UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts. She earned both her M.F.A. and Ph.D. in dance from New York University, completing her doctorate in education in 2001. A choreographer, artistic director, interactive performance designer, and educator, her work has been presented throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

Naugle’s choreography and research focus on choreography, improvisation, performance and interactive systems, and the intersections of psychoanalysis and somatic practice. Her creative projects include telematic performances such as Voyage of Aeneas: FIXED/NOT, Songs of Sorrow, Songs of Hope, The Cassandra Project, and Janus/Ghost Stories, which integrate dance, music, and interactive video in distributed performances linking sites across the United States and Canada. In 2009, she founded the DTM² Improvisation Ensemble (Dance, Theatre, Music, and Media), which has performed in Italy, Spain, China, and New York.

Her international recognition includes the First Prize Award from the International Festival of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the Overseas Teacher Artist Award from Shanghai University. She was the first American choreographer commissioned to present work at the Shanghai International Dance Center. In 2023 and 2024, her choreography on film was selected by Women in Dance Leadership for presentation in Japan and Los Angeles. She is currently developing a commissioned project for the National Academy of Dance in Rome, Italy.

In addition to her artistic practice, Naugle has been training as a research psychoanalyst, expanding her inquiry into the intersections of psychoanalysis and dance. She continues to choreograph, perform, publish scholarship, and mentor graduate students, including in UCI’s M.F.A. program in directing.