Ellen Bartel

Ellen Bartel MFA, CMA, RSME, Moving For Life™ cancer exercise specialist, is an award winning independent choreographer and an established dancer and teacher in Austin, Texas. She is the program director of Somatic Movement Education Training at Austin Community College and has recently served as the Interim Education Coordinator and Assistant Instructor at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in NYC. She is also a facilitator of creative and somatic approaches to grief in NYC and in Austin, and previously has been a peer review dance panelist and Creative Ambassador for the City of Austin. Over the past couple of decades Ellen has been recognized as a creative force in central Texas receiving accolades such as “Dance Mobilizer,” from the Austin Chronicle, “Fortunate 500” (top 500 people to know in Austin) from Austin American Statesman, a Critic’s Choice Award for “Dancing through the Pain,” for her performance about her husband’s dire battle with cancer, and was also in the running for multiple “Best Of” nominations in the Austin Chronicle.

Ellen has been a dance educator for over three decades teaching in Central Texas and New York and instructing locally at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University, Saint Edwards University and Austin Community College. She integrates contemporary dance techniques such as Humphrey-Limón, release technique, and Bartenieff Fundamentals into her beginning and intermediate modern classes. Ellen is also an experienced improvisor, and teaches improvisation as a tool for choreographic inquiry and as a performance practice. Currently she is an adjunct professor at Austin Community College and continues to choreograph original work and teach independently in Austin.