Lori Dawson
Technical Director, Lighting Designer & Manager
Office: Dance Center
Telephone: 518-580-5383
Fax: 518-580-8356
Email: lddawson@skidmore.edu
Lori joined the Skidmore faculty in 1998. She earned her MFA in lighting design from
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She was a freelance lighting designer
in NYC for ten years and had the pleasure of designing for such noted choreographers
as Vicky Schick, Shelly Lee and Gus Solomons Jr. She served as Lighting Director of
the Red Parrot Cabaret designing for a wide array of musical performers including
Cab Calloway and Tito Puente. Lori collaborated with hundreds of choreographers and
performance artists while serving as the resident lighting designer at the Gowanus
Arts Exchange in Brooklyn. She worked with Director/Choreographer Elise Long for nearly
10 years designing for her company, Spoke the Hub Dancing, at numerous indoor and
outdoor venues throughout NYC and Great Britain. While serving as the resident Lighting
Designer for Dance Theatre Workshop (DTW), she designed the lighting for three Obie
award winning shows: Janie Geiser’s Stories from Here, Dan Hurlin’s A Cool Million,
and Paul Zaloom’s House of Horrors.
Locally, Lori has designed for the Saratoga City Ballet, Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company
and HMT. In January 2013, she traveled with a band of artists to Death Valley, CA
to put on a weekend of workshops and performances as a fundraiser for Marta Becket’s
historic Amargosa Hotel and Opera House.
Lori is a member of USITT and at several annual conferences has served on panels under
the lighting commission. She has also served on the board of the League of Women Voters
of Saratoga County. In this capacity, she has led sessions and caucuses on a variety
of citizen’s rights issues traveling to three National LWV conventions. Lori is one
of the founders of the Saratoga Peace Alliance, a local, grassroots peace organization.
