Faculty

Profile

Cara Hagan (She/They) is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. She believes in the power of art to upend the laws of time and physics, a necessary occurrence in pursuit of liberation. In their work, no object or outcome is sacred; but the ritual to get there is. Hagan’s adventures take place as live performance, on screen, as installation, on the page, and in collaboration with others in a multitude of contexts.

Hagan’s newest short film, “Cut Me Summa Dat Noise,” is set to premiere in early 2025 having been completed in the fall of 2024. She is currently in process for “In/Separate,” a multimedia performance work that explores how human bodies and non-human bodies experience climate trauma in ways that are similar, connected, or both. The work has thus far been supported by a grant through the Puffin Foundation and a technical residency at the Barnard Movement lab in the summer of 2024.  Anticipated premiere of In/Separate is set for the fall of 2026. For the months of September and October of 2024, Hagan is a performance resident at the Monira Foundation in Jersey City.  

Other recent work has included, "were we birds?,” an immersive, site-specific work commissioned as part of the 90th anniversary season of the American Dance Festival. Additionally, Hagan's work titled, "SKIDD-ID-A-BOP was commissioned as part of the 2023 season for Rhythmically Speaking, a jazz-focused dance company based in Minneapolis. Hagan was awarded a 2023 GALLIM Parent Artist Residency, where she has had the pleasure of crafting a new solo-dance and visual art work titled, "Mama Piranha." Thus far, iterations of Mama Piranha have been presented by Morven Moves at the Morven Museum, a GALLIM artist residency showing at the Chelsea Factory, and by Pioneers Go East as part of the Crossroads Festival. Hagan will premiere the work in its entirety in the spring of 2025 at JACK.  

Cara is grateful to have received financial support from various organizations and institutions to continue their work. Recent support has included, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council, the Changing Tap Times Initiative, The New School Office of Faculty Research, GALLIM Dance, and the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron where she was named the inaugural Community Commissioning Residency Artist for the 2020/2021 season. Past support has come from the Dance Films Association, the Filmed in NC Fund, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Forsyth County Arts Council, the Appalachian State University Research Council, the Watauga County Arts Council, and Betty’s Daughter Arts.

Degrees Held

BFA: University of North Carolina School of the Arts MFA: Goddard College