KT Niehoff received her performance education from such mentors and visionaries as Joy Kellman, Jimmy Tripp, Stella Adler, Lisa Sokolov, Duaine Wolfe, Katie Duck, Laurie DeVito, Daniel Lepkoff and Nina Martin. She holds a B.F.A. in theater from New York University. KT began her dance career in 1992 teaching and performing. She received her teaching certificate in The Simonson Technique and began teaching at Dance Space Inc. in New York City, while simultaneously mentoring with Joy Kellman in her Lewitzky-based technique. In 1992 she re-located to Seattle. Her first four years in Seattle, KT performed with The Pat Graney Company and began her own teaching practice at Dance Center Seattle, drawing from both Ms. Simonson's and Ms. Kellman's methodologies to create her own contemporary technique ideology. ( continued )

In 1999, KT began research and development for her composition/improvisation system called Reinvent Your Eye, Tools for Abstract Composition. KT began choreographing in the Northwest in 1995, and founded her company, Lingo dancetheater, in 2000. With Lingo, she has created four full-length works and numerous short works. She has been commissioned to create dances for Groundworks Dance Theater in Cleveland, Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle, Mt. Holyoke College, St. Olaf College, Cornish College of the Arts and the d-9 Dance Collective. In 1996 KT co-founded Velocity Dance Center, which has since grown to be the epicenter of Seattle's professional dance community, offering over 30 weekly classes and a 99-seat performance venue. ( continued )

Aside from teaching regularly at Velocity, KT has taught technique and composition world wide at institutions including The Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts, Cornish College of the Arts, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, The School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam), Oberlin University (Ohio), Estudio 3 (Madrid) and Evergreen State College. KT is the recipient of three Seattle Arts Commission Individual Artist awards (1998, 2000 & 2002) and is a 2001 Artist Trust Fellow. --- She has served on a grant panel for The National Endowment for the Arts and as an artist advisor to the Pacific Northwest Dance Lab, an initiative of the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project. She was one of ten national artists invited to participate in the 2003 artistic think tank at the White Project, hosted by the Doris Duke Foundation.