Michael Richter

Michael Richter, MA, is a Teacher Trainer with the Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion Institute, the Language of Dance Center/USA, and Selver Awareness Leaders Training Institute, which provide professional development and certification courses for dance and somatic educators. He taught two international online courses in Spanish this Winter/Spring 2026: Diplomado en Educación Somática and Somatic Awareness with Librería Somática. In October 2025, Michael was a Fulbright Specialist in Language of Dance: Cross-cultural Connections teaching at 6 universities and 2 schools in Brazil.

Michael has developed and leads Dancing Dialogic Inquiry (DDI) and the Dancing Reading Online Group to engage individuals and groups in investigation of personal, professional, and global themes. He founded and taught for MUV Dance & Yoga, which placed dance integration residencies in 90 public schools in Los Angeles, CA. Michael has been on faculty at CSUN (California State University, Northridge), UABCS (the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur) and ITLP (the Technological Institute of La Paz). Michael is based in Brewster, NY, USA and La Paz, BCS, Mexico. www.michaelrichter.art

JPCiM Influences
“During my masters, I took a course titled ‘Real World Seminar.’ A guest speaker brought in Celeste’s book, Dancing from the Heart: Life Stories. After seeing the book, I called her and a few months later, I started studying with her in the summer of 1998 at Jacob’s Pillow. I received from her what I had most wanted: an opportunity to grapple with guidelines for growing caring, ethical, respectful and inclusive dance and community partnerships. After continuing to grow with her in school residencies, I began working in my local schools.

“I taught in the Los Angeles schools and universities for ten years, developing partnerships with classroom teachers, mentoring dance teachers, writing curriculum, winning community dance grants from California state agencies, and founding two dance improvisation performance groups. I created a dance integration and yoga business that had a faculty of nine dance artist/educators and placed residencies in 20-30 public schools each year.

Developing Online Dance Education
“In 2010, I moved to La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico with my now husband. Though I created a number of community and creative dance classes, I was missing dancing with my colleagues in the US and Canada. So, in 2017, I created the Dancing Reading Online Group. For the last nine years, we have been practicing creative dance integration via videoconferencing. In 2019, I began co-creating and co-teaching the Language of Dance Master Practitioner online certification courses. and the Selver/Sensory Awareness Leaders Training Institute. In all these live synchronous video courses, we get to move with each other on the screen to develop as individual choreographers and dance educators, and as a supportive, creative collective.