
Rachel Schwartz. Photo by: Felicity Audet.
Trenton Youth Dancers director Rachel Schwartz is an educator, artist, choreographer, dancer, and designer based in New Jersey. She is honored to say that this is her fourth year with TYD and since December 2023, she has been teaching full-time at Trenton Central High School as the long-term substitute in Dance. She believes that dance and choreography have the power to help young people develop personal agency and access powerful modes of self-expression.
Based on her experiences as a teaching artist in New York City, and her study of dance pedagogy at Princeton, Schwartz has developed a teaching style that is attentive, compassionate, fun, and rigorous. Previously, she taught in special education settings, such as The Quad Manhattan, and with girls’ empowerment organizations throughout NYC. She was also a teaching artist for Art as a Catalyst for Change, a NYC initiative that brings anti-gun violence messaging and opportunities for creative expression to middle and high schools with high incidences of gun violence.
In 2023, Schwartz choreographed the Princeton Theater Department’s fall musical: The Winter’s Tale, which featured a cast of over 80 people, including 45 community members ranging in levels of experience and age from 8-79. She continues to collaborate on devised theater projects with Nathalie Ellis-Einhorn and GASH Theatre Company in London. In past productions, including work that was featured at The 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Schwartz has choreographed, performed and designed costumes, sets, and puppets. Her personal artistic practice explores the material and ephemeral properties of memory and love across media such as painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, costume, dance and food.
Schwartz graduated with honors from Princeton University in 2018 where she studied Visual Arts and Dance. She won the Outstanding Creative Thesis Award for her choreographic thesis “Can You Taste It?” which explored the social rituals of mealtime and power of family recipes. Throughout her time at Princeton, she was also awarded the Visual Arts Department Senior Award 2018, Mallach Senior Thesis Grant, Lewis Center Award for Outstanding Work in the Dance Department 2015 and a Community Leader Award from the LGBT Center.