A native Oregonian, Tere Mathern is considered one of Portland's leading dance artists. She creates work that brings attention to space and form, is inventive and dynamic and inspired by rudimentary forms and ideas such as branching and dividing, depicted in Evidence of Division; manifestations of the solar cycle in night, day and the golden hour; patterns of spiraling plant growth in the solo, Versus, the fulcrum between risk and balance in PIVOT, or concepts of attraction, interdependence, and fracture in her most recent work GATHER.

Currently adjunct faculty in dance at PSU, she has been a teacher, choreographer, and performer for over 20 years. She has received support from the Oregon Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts (as part of The Company We Keep/PSU), from the former Metropolitan Arts Commission, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. She is the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship and a 2010 OAC Career Development Grant. Her work was featured in the January 2010 OBP Art Beat broadcast, found online at www.opb.org.

Ms. Mathern holds an M.A. from NYU in Contemporary Dance and Performance, and is a Certified Movement Analyst (C.M.A.) in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies from the Laban Institute of Movement Studies in NYC. Her project-based company Tere Mathern Dance was formed in 2002. Recent choreography includes PIVOT commissioned by White Bird Dance for their Uncaged Series 2010, Show Me The Body (2007) funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and a commissioned site-specific work for Keller Fountain -- one of a four-part series of dance works created for The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin (2008, produced by Third Angle as part of the PICA TBA:08 festival).
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