SAMANTHA SPEIS, Photo Courtesy of Urban Bush Women
We are thrilled to have Samantha Speis at NYU Tisch Dance to teach our Second Avenue Dance Company!
Samantha Speis is a movement artist based in New York City. She has worked with Gesel Mason, The Dance Exchange, Jumatatu Poe, Deborah Hay (as part of the Sweet Day curated by Ralph Lemon at the MoMA), Marjani Forte, and Liz Lerman. She is currently a member of The Skeleton Architecture, a collective of black womyn and gender non-conforming artists who use the practice of improvisation to create, organize, advocate, gather, play and challenge. Speis was the 2012 recipient of the Alvin Ailey New Directions Choreography Lab and recently was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Performer. Her work has been featured at the Kennedy Center (Millennium Stage), Long Island University, Joyce SoHo, Hollins University, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, Dance Place, and The Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Speis’ solo, The Way it Was, and Now, was commissioned by the Jerome Foundation to be performed at Danspace Project for the Parallels Platform Series, and was later invited to the Kaay Fecc Dance Festival in Dakar, Senegal. She has developed a teaching practice that explores pelvic mobility as the root of powerful locomotion and as a point of connection to the stories, experiences and lineages that reside in each of us. She has been a guest artist and taught workshops throughout the United States, South America, Senegal, and Europe. Recent projects include Walking with Trane co-choreographed with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and her collaboration with Chanon Judson-Johnson and Raelle Myrick-Hodges on Hair and Other Stories.