SUE SCHROEDER (SDC Founder; Artistic Director, SDC and CPC), founded Several Dancers Core in 1980, including what is now CORE Performance Company, with four dancers performing in schools, museums and local artist lofts and spaces in Houston, Texas. Originally the company’s sole choreographer, she developed relationships with emerging and world-renowned choreographers as the company began to grow, adding bodies of work by a variety of artists, including Ellen Bromberg, Nina Martin, Bill Evans, Joanna Haigood, RUBATO, Beppie Blankert and Alicia Sanchez. These relationships transformed CPC into the internationally acclaimed company it is today, known for its riveting, passionate and unique work.

As a choreographer, Schroeder artfully integrates the process of the choreographer in relationship to the performing artists, and is committed to collaborating with composers, visual artists, musicians, writers, and artists of other mediums. Schroeder’s recent and memorable works include an evening-length dance version of Handel’s Messiah featuring renowned conductor Antoine Plante and the Mercury Baroque Ensemble, Corazón Abriendo (Heart Opening), a dynamic multi-media cross-cultural collaboration with artists from the United States and Chiapas, Mexico, Spirit of Passion, a multi-media work based on the life of Joan of Arc featuring original sound and film; The Grasp of Unreason, a movement theater performance inspired by the writing of Flannery O’Connnor and commissioned by Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia, for the 1994 symposium “The Habit of Art: An Interdisciplinary Celebration of the Legacy of Flannery O’Connor”.

Throughout her 28 years as the company’s Artistic Director, Schroeder has received numerous awards, including the Haldeman Award for Merit from the University of Arizona and the Cultural Multiplicators from Foreign Countries Award from the Goethe Institut-Munich, as well as multiple grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County (now Houston Arts Alliance), Georgia Council for the Arts, Dekalb County Office of Arts, Culture and Entertainment, Alternate ROOTS, Houston Endowment Inc., Dance/USA, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Schroeder received the 2001 Arts Professional Abby Award and in September 2006 was named a Lexus Leader of the Arts.

Schroeder received her MFA in Theatre with a Dance Concentration from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 1994. She is a founding member of the steering committee of the Teacher Training Institute (TTI), a training program established to develop the most qualified instructors in the region to teach dance and kinetic learning in a variety of community enrichment programs. Schroeder is certified as a teaching artist in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and South Carolina which enables her to foster artistic appreciation in others.