Deborah Jowitt began to dance professionally in 1953, to show her own choreography in 1962, and to write a regular dance column for The Village Voice in 1967. In the sixties, she was a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop, where she presented her own choreography as well performing in works by colleagues.

Her articles on dance have appeared in numerous publications, among them The New York Times, Dance Magazine, Ballet Review, and Dance Research Journal, as well as in anthologies. She has published two collections: Dance Beat (1977) and The Dance in Mind (1985). A third book, Time and the Dancing Image (William Morrow; paperback, University of California Press), won the de la Torre Bueno Prize for 1988. In 1997, she edited Meredith Monk for Johns Hopkins University Press, and wrote its introduction. Her latest book is a critical biography of Jerome Robbins:Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

She has lectured, taught, and/or conducted workshops at institutions both in the United States and abroad — among them Princeton, Barnard, the University of Copenhagen, York University in Toronto, and the University of Iowa — and is a Master Teacher in the Dance Department of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she has been on the faculty since 1975. A founding member of the Dance Critics Association, she served at various times as its treasurer, newsletter editor, and co-chairman. From 1969 to 1972, she was a member of the Dance Advisory Panel to the National Council on the Arts, and its co-chair in 1971-72.

The Dance Theater Workshop awarded her a “Bessie” in 1985 for her contributions to dance criticism. In June, 1998, she received an “Ernie” — an award reserved for dance’s “unsung heroes” — from Dance/USA. In October 2001, she was the annual honoree of the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD).