Kelli McGovern  is a doctoral candidate in the Ed.D. Dance Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is a recipient of the prestigious Arnhold Fellowship. She is a graduate of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey with a Masters in Dance Education from the Graduate School of Education and a B.F.A. in Dance Performance from Mason Gross School of the Arts. 

 

Ms. McGovern is a tenured full-time dance educator at Bayonne High School, where she developed the district’s dance arts curriculum and founded the BHS Young Dancer Program, an outreach initiative that expands access to dance education in the community. She was a contributing author to the 2020 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards for Visual and Performing Arts and played a key role in creating the state's Model Curriculum Dance Assessments.

 

Kelli is a co-founder/owner of Rock Dance Center, a three pillar organization that integrates education, performance, and outreach. Its training arm, Washington Rock Dance (WRD), founded in 2015, provides developmentally appropriate instruction for dancers from beginners to pre-professionals. Its professional company, Rock Dance Collective (RDCo), established in 2016, is a non-profit where Kelli serves as both Executive Director and as a performer. The company’s creative process is collaborative, creating immersive, interdisciplinary works that merge movement, visual art, sound, and installation to explore societal and environmental themes. RDCo has been commissioned by organizations including DanceNOW SteelStacks and Joe’s Pub, Rutgers Summer Stage, CoLab Arts, ArtCake, and has presented numerous original works in both traditional and site-specific settings. Rock Outreach, launched in 2025, is a new initiative that uses movement as a catalyst to foster connection and build community within Rock Dance Center and in collaboration with local partners and grants.

 

Throughout her career as a performer, Ms. McGovern has worked extensively as a freelance dancer appearing in venues and festivals across New York City, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Boston. She is also an American Ballet Theatre® Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 5 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. Kelli has presented her choreography, research, and educational philosophy at national conferences hosted by the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) in Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and Florida, as well as at the New Jersey Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (NJAHPERD) Conference. Her doctoral research is centered around defining Dance Entrepreneurship and developing a framework for its implementation in dance curriculum across secondary and higher education.