Caroline Copeland is an embodied dance historian, choreographer, and educator who specializes in 17th and 18th century ballet and opera. In the field of baroque dance she has performed in over 70 productions and has 50 choreographic credits in film, opera, theatre, and concert dance, not including her work as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera and with independent contemporary choreographers like Yvonne Rainer, Robert Battle, Trebien Pollard, Elke Rindfleisch, and JoLea Maffei.

As a dancer and choreographer, Caroline has worked with prestigious festivals and performing institutions across the United States and Europe including appearances at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Drottningholm Palace in Sweden, The Neues Palais at Sanssouci, The International Handel Festival in Göttingen, Germany, and the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in Austria. And for over 20 years, she has performed and choreographed for the New York Baroque Dance Company and the GRAMMY-Award winning Boston Early Music Festival.
 

Her creative collaborations in opera and concert dance include projects with Musica Angelica, Cantata Profana, Merz Trio, Bourbon Baroque, Brooklyn Baroque, and Juilliard415 and her choreography has been presented at Alice Tully Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hillwood Museum and Gardens, The French Embassy in Washington D.C., The Kennedy Center, El Barrio Theater, Public Theater, and Philipzaal Den Haag.

Caroline has presented numerous lectures combining embodied and theoretical research including: "Teaching Ballet from a Historical Perspective: Promoting Agency and Artistry in the Classroom", "William Hogarth's "Line of Beauty": A Story of Discover and Connection", "Dancing in Revolutionary America", "The Conference of Monsieur Le Brun in Practice: Embodying a Kaleidoscope of Shifting Expressions for the Stage", and "Convention/Invention in Baroque ballet: A Shorthand to Style and Spirit".

In 2023, Caroline was invited to join an interdisciplinary project at Rutgers University that focused on the writer, composer, and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho. Led by esteemed musicologist Rebecca Cypess, Caroline was invited to explore the dance music of Sancho. Her research, which is on-going, was sparked by mentions of all-Black balls in London and resulted in a contribution of several essays and videos in collaboration with Trinidadian scholar and dancer, Kieron Sargeant where they focused on the transatlantic dance traditions of the Caribbean.

Caroline is currently on the dance faculties of Hofstra University (Ballet, Modern, and Dance History) and SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance (Dance History Lecturer) and a guest lecturer for Juilliard’s Historical Performance program (Baroque Dance Forms for Instrumentalists). She received a BA in Dance at Goucher College and MFA in Dance at Sarah Lawrence College.