Summary
Nate Hodges is an award-winning instructor and choreographer who has over 25 years of experience in the dance field. Nate, an associate teaching professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, specializing in jazz dance technique and choreography, is a passionate educator who believes in creating safe yet rigorous learning spaces that meet students where they are while pushing them to realize and actualize their own potential. His classes are highly interactive, infused with humor and a healthy sense of irreverence, and ask students to bring themselves to the material as much as he shares the material with them. As a choreographer, Nate believes strongly in creating work that explores the line between art and entertainment, embraces genre and provocation, and seeks to create an accessible dialogue with the audience.
Nate’s research focus examines the intersection of dance and horror, analyzing the use of horror narratives and tropes in concert dance as well as examining how bodies in horror cinema move to convey different expressive modes of violence, monstrosity, suspense and fear. Nate has presented on the movement of demonic possession at the 2025 Dance Studies Association international conference, the movement of the zombie at the 2026 Society of Cinema Media Studies international conference, and has served as fight choreographer and monster consultant for regional theatre companies. His current project is working on a book that serves as a choreographic analysis of the different monstrous movement languages in cinematic horror.
From 2003 to 2018, Nate established many years of successful work simultaneously in private studios, the public secondary school sector and as an adjunct college lecturer and guest choreographer before achieving his MFA. Because of this, he is pedagogically well-versed to teach a variety of levels and age groups comfortably. His teaching skills have been recognized with the 2024 F. Donald Tibbitts Distinguished Teacher Award, the most prestigious teaching award given by the University, Runner-Up for the 2025 Alan Bible Excellence in Teaching Award and nominee for the 2022 Paul & Judy Bible Distinguished Teaching Award.
Professionally, Nate was artistic director of RhetOracle Dance Company, an LA-based, award-winning contemporary jazz ensemble that performed in over 45 different concerts since 2006, as well as ten self-produced full-length concerts. Nate was also a founding ensemble member and resident choreographer for the award-winning hyper-theatrical theater company Rogue Artists Ensemble from 2003 to 2018. Nate’s works have premiered at the Ford Amphitheatre, the Blackbox at the Hollywood Bowl, the Getty Villa, the Diavolo Space, the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts, the Alex Theater and the Bootleg Theater. Nate has been the recipient of nine Lester Horton Dance Award nominations, winning in 2011 for his dance Flowers That Pick Themselves, a 2018 LA Scenie Award for Best Choreography in a Play for Wood Boy Dog Fish, a 2014 Jerry Herman Award for his choreography in Pippin, a nomination for 2011 Dancer of the Year by the Beverly Hills Outlook and his company was awarded the Long Beach Post's 2012 Best Hidden Cultural Treasure award.
He holds a B.A. in dance from the University of California, Irvine, where he danced with the hip-hop crew Kaba Modern and Donald McKayle’s Etude Ensemble. He holds an MFA in dance from CSU Long Beach and won the 2018 Graduate Award for Creative Excellence. As a dancer, Nate has danced the works of Donald McKayle, José Limón, Colin Connor, Louise Reichlin, Teresa Jankovic and Leann Alduenda, and was a founding member of Mike Esperanza’s BARE Dance Company. He has also danced with FunkanometrySF and KM Legacy and appeared in Another Gay Movie.
Research interests
- Dance and horror
Courses taught
- DAN 101: Dance Appreciation
- DAN 288: Choreography II
- DAN 132: Beginning Jazz
- DAN 232: Intermediate Jazz
- DAN 332: Advanced Jazz
- DAN 432: Jazz IV
- DAN 376: Musical Theatre Styles
- DAN 466: Horror, Dance, Monstrosity, and The Body
- THTR 345: Movement and the Body: Acting IV
Education
- MFA, Dance, California State University, Long Beach, 2018
- B.A., Dance, University of California, Irvine, 2003