Beth Gill
(NY)
Returning Choreographic Fellow: 2013, 2016, 2020, 2022, 2024
- Beth Gill is a Guggenheim, Doris Duke Impact and Bessie Award winning choreographer based in New York City since 2005. Imbued with experimentalist and traditionalist values, her formal and exacting works are toned with the themes of obsession, alienation, objectification, female sexuality and rage, and transformation. Meticulous and rigorous in her approach, she builds with the imagination and structural complexity of a long form novelist or large scale architect. Exploring aesthetics and perception, she has produced an evolving body of work that utilizes abstraction, psychology, design, dance, and drama in ways that are progressive and timely.
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At 38 years old Gill has consistently produced critically acclaimed works, commissioned by The Joyce Theater as part of their NY Quadrille series (Pitkin Grove), The Walker Art Center with ADF and The Yard (Brand New Sidewalk), The Chocolate Factory Theater (Catacomb; Electric Midwife), New York Live Arts (New Work for The Desert), The Kitchen (what it looks like, what it feels like), and Dance Theater Workshop (Eleanor & Eleanor).
She has toured her work nationally and internationally, Honors include: NEFA’s National Dance Project Grant, Princeton’s Hodder Fellowship, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Artist in Residence Award, New York City Center’s Choreography Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Grant, and a 2017-2018 Joyce Theater Comprehensive Creative Residency.
Early in her career, Dance Magazine named her one of the top 25 artists to watch in 2012 and Time Out New York called her work Electric Midwife one of the best dances of the year. In 2011 she was awarded two New York State Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and the Juried Award for the choreographer exhibiting some of the most interesting and exciting ideas happening in dance in New York City today. Gill was one of seven choreographers profiled in Michael Blackwood’s 2010 documentary New York Dance: States of Performance. Her work then became a part of the catalog of dance online presented through On The Boards TV.
Beth began studying dance as a child at The Westchester Ballet Center under the tutelage of Rose Marie Menes and Tami Horowitz. She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
FREAK:FUNK
January 5 – 17, 2025
FREAK:FUNK is not a title, but rather a linguistic and physical impetus to think about cultural intersections broadly and specifically. Working exclusively with women during this residency Gill will explore diagrammatically a series of current interests and curiosities: diy art-making and materials, interracial friendship, rhythmic interruption, magical thinking, Soul Train and bricolage.
Nail Biter
February 12 – 20, 2022
Collaborators in Residence: Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Jennifer Lafferty, Marilyn Maywald Yahel [Performers], Baille Younkman [Costume Designer], Jon Moniaci, [Composer], Michelle Fletcher [Manager]
Returning Choreographic Fellow Beth Gill came to MANCC for the fourth time to continue developing her work Nail Biter. In this new work, fantasy and imagination act as powerful liberating catalysts for creating new selves and futures. It brings to life otherworldly characters, amalgamations of Gill and her dancers, that speak across culture lines to a collective unconscious. Reaching towards science fiction and ancient myth, Nail Biter’s characters communicate visually through archetype and metaphor.
Nail Biter is a three-year project co-commissioned by Fisher Center at Bard, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Walker Art Center. This single creative process spanning 2021 – 2023 will produce three related, site-responsive presentations culminating in a large-scale proscenium production.
While in residence at MANCC, Gill met with FSU Art Professors, Rob Duarte and Carolyn Henne, who spoke with Gill to work through technical considerations of the material elements she was investigating, namely body casting and robotics. Gill also hosted a sharing of the work in process and discussion with members of the FSU School of Dance Faculty.
This residency is supported, in part, by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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