The University of Washington has announced the 2025 Awards of Excellence Recipients. Congratulations to Dance Professor Emerita, Hannah C. Wiley, who has been awarded the Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award! The Marsha L Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award honors those members of the faculty who exemplify excellence in graduate education.
Wiley’s presence in the UW Department of Dance is long standing and beloved, to say the least.
Wiley studied with Ruthanna Boris and Eve Green in the late 1960s in the UW School of Drama’s Dance Division. After graduating, she taught, performed and choreographed professionally, and then joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke College. While there, she earned her Masters from NYU and also chaired the Five College Dance Department (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts- Amherst) from 1982 to 1987.
She returned to the UW in 1987 and served first as head of the Dance Division, then as director of the Dance Program for fourteen years. During this time, she formalized the innovative graduate program and established the Chamber Dance Company (CDC) in 1990.
As CDC’s Founding Artistic Director, Wiley directed over one hundred twenty seminal modern dance works that had seldom or never been performed in the Northwest. She has created thirteen documentaries about the work of choreographers Michio Ito, Dore Hoyer, Mary Wigman, Joseph Gifford, Eve Gentry, Tandy Beal, Bebe Miller, Doris Humphrey, Jean Erdman, Joe Goode, Shapiro & Smith Dance, and Lucinda Childs. Her research has been published in Dance Research Journal, Graduate Research Journal, Foot and Ankle, Impulse and the Chronicle of Higher Education. From 2011 to 2014, Professor Wiley held the Floyd & Delores Jones Endowed Chair in the Arts, and was awarded a Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professorship in 2003. Between 2010 to 2018 Wiley received 3 National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) Grants and from 2019 to 2021 she received 3 Kreielsheimer Research Grants. She has served as Chair of 57 graduate student committees since 1990. 
In 2014, Sheila Farr wrote for History Link,
“The MFA program Wiley created for UW now influences dance education across the country.”
Indeed, UW MFA in Dance alumni now serve on faculties across the nation with recent graduates being placed at universities such as Bates College, Skidmore College, Scripps College, Pomona College, Bard College, University of Southern California, and University of Utah, to name a few!
Beyond her innovation and leadership within the university, extensive research accomplishments in the field of dance, and creation of the Chamber Dance Company, perhaps Wiley’s most lasting legacy will be the direct mentorship she has offered students, especially the MFA students who work closely with her during their two-year program.
Annie Franklin, a current MFA in Dance candidate said about Professor Wiley,
“She embodies the essence of true mentorship: she invests deeply in our growth, shows us our power, and prepares us to create a lasting impact in the world.”
Emily Schoen Branch, a current MFA candidate in Dance who led the effort to nominate Professor Wiley for the award wrote, “Since founding the Master of Fine Arts in Dance program thirty-five years ago, Hannah has transformed the landscape of dance in higher education across America—empowering generations of mature, professional dancers to become professors who bring invaluable career knowledge to academia. Throughout her tenure, she has instilled in us an educational philosophy rooted in an unwavering belief in students’ potential…Hannah’s win is both an acknowledgement of her extraordinary contributions to the field and a testament to what an educator of any discipline can accomplish.”
Many alumni also wrote letters of support that contributed to Wiley’s nomination of the award, including Brian Evans (‘20) who wrote,
“She goes beyond being an exceptional mentor—Hannah changes lives.”
When asked about receiving this special acknowledgment, Wiley commented,
When I was envisioning a new MFA degree back in the 80s, it was with the goal of better preparing seasoned dance artists for tenure track positions. I wanted to provide mid-career professional dancers a direct path to collegiate careers. Decades later, I am gratified that so many UW artist/scholars have landed professorial positions in colleges across the country. Our graduates have taken the opportunity we offered and flown with it. It has been a joy to engage with the intelligent and thoughtful artists who have come through our program. I am profoundly honored to receive this award.
Congratulations to Hannah Wiley on this well-deserved award!
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The 2025 Awards of Excellence Recipients will be honored at a ceremony in Meany Hall at 3:30 p.m. on June 12.