Seán Curran

Seán Curran’s career as a performer, choreographer, and director spans forty years, beginning with traditional Irish step dancing as a child in Boston. Curran is known for his early performance work with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, receiving a “Bessie” award for his role in Secret Pastures, and as an original New York City cast member of STOMP! His works for Seán Curran Company are characterized by collaborations across artistic genres. Founded in 1997, the company has toured to nearly 100 venues in the U.S., Europe and Asia and has presented home seasons in New York City as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music 2015 and 2018 Next Wave Festivals and at Irish Arts Center, The Joyce Theater, The Guggenheim Museum, Dance Theater Workshop, New Victory Theater, 92nd Street Y/Harkness Dance Project, Danspace Project, Symphony Space, Central Park Summerstage and Celebrate Brooklyn. The company debuted a new production, PATH, at NYU Skirball Center in 2025.

The company’s highly regarded service to the field includes donation of performances and classes to the American Civil Liberties Union NYC Chapter, Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Residence (a safe house for LGBTQ youth), Dancers Responding to AIDS and the Hetrick-Martin Institute. Artistic excellence has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York Foundation for the Arts, New Music USA, O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, and Harkness Foundation for Dance, and other private foundations. Irish American Magazine selected Curran as one of its “Top 100” in 2002, and he served as Grand Marshal in NYC’s St. Pat’s for All parade in 2019.

A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Curran now serves as an Arts Professor in the Department of Dance, which he also chaired from 2014-2023. He has over 35 years of teaching experience in modern technique, improvisation, body percussion and composition as a visiting artist at the American Dance Festival, Harvard Summer Dance Center, Bates Dance Festival, Boston's Conservatory of Music, and countless U.S. university dance departments and private studios. In 2019, he received the Martha Hill Dance Fund’s prestigious mid-career award, honoring dance educators.

A sought-after choreographer and director for opera and theatre, Curran’s staging of The Pirates of Penzance has been produced at The Atlanta Opera, The Glimmerglass Opera, Cincinnati Opera, San Antonio Opera, and San Diego Opera, and Seattle Opera. Other notable commercial projects include Salome (Opera Theatre of St. Louis, San Francisco Opera, Opera Montreal, San Diego Opera); Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream for The Shakespeare Theater; Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Shalimar the Clown, Ariadne auf Naxos, Nixon in China, and The Daughter of the Regiment at Opera Theater of St. Louis; NYC Opera productions of L'Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; Shakespeare in the Park's As You Like It; The Metropolitan Opera's Romeo and Juliette; and Broadway’s James Joyce's The Dead, Cymbeline, and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. Curran has also created contemporary dance works for The Wooden Floor, The Limon Dance Company, Trinity Irish Dance Company, ABT II, Denmark's Upper Cut Company, Sweden's Skänes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy.