Rachel Cooper has commissioned, produced, and toured artists in theater, music, dance and film. Her work with artists spans Asia and the U.S. including artists from Indonesia, Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and the U.S.,. and include Eiko and Koma, Lin Hwai-Min, Tan Dun, Malavika Sarukkai, Vijay Iyer, Shahram Nazeri. Chen Shi-Zheng, Sardono, Ratan Thiyam among others. She has conducted public interviews with Pico Iyer, Reza Aslan, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, Huang Ruo, Ong Keng Sen at Asia Society as well as BAM, Lincoln Center, UCLA, Cal Performances, Walker Arts Center, among other venues. She has given lectures at Barnard, UC Berkeley, and conducted international arts management workshops in Asia. A frequent consultant for international projects, she is currently on the executive board for the Interdependence Movement, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, and an advisor for Center Stage /NEFA, and Caravanserai/Arts Midwest.

She has been at the Asia Society since 1993 and is currently the Director for Global Performing Arts and Special Cultural Initiatives. She has extensive experience in the presentation of traditional and contemporary Asian and Asian-American performing arts and the development of interdisciplinary programs. She has worked for the Asia Society on cultural diplomacy and a multi-year Creative Voices of Muslim Asia. And the New York city-wide Muslim Volices Festival with Asia Society, BAM and NYU.

She received a Manhattan Borough award for her contributions to the city of New York in 2011. She was awarded the 2006 Dawson Award for sustained achievement in performing arts programmatic excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), an 'Izzy' (Isadora Duncan) award for the Festival of Indonesia, a Rockefeller award for choreography, and the Clifton F. Webb award for film. Ms. Cooper was an advisor for the National Dance Project and the co-chair of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conference in 2005 and 2006.

Ms. Cooper is the co-founder of the California-based Balinese music and dance company, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, which has been presenting the arts of Bali in the United States since 1979. She has studied Balinese dance intensively from 1977-1993. Primary teachers have included Ni Ketut Arini, Ni Made Wiratini (Taruna Jaya, Legong, Oleg, Telek) , I Wayan Dibia ( topeng), Ida Bagus Wirjana (kebyar duduk), and Sriathi (legone Peliaton). In Java, she studied with Romo Sasminto Mardawa . Her primary music teachers include I Wayan Suweca and I Wayan Tembres. She choreographed Prembon Turis Modern in 1993 with funds from MAP grant through the Rockefeller Foundation and performed it in California and in Bali.

Rachel did her undergraduate and graduate work at UCLA in Ethnic Arts and Dance Ethnology. She lived in Indonesia from 1983-88 where she continued her studies on Indonesian performing arts. From 1989-1993 she directed the Festival of Indonesia, bringing over 200 artists from Indonesia on 12 different tours across the States.