About Kathy & Lance

Kathy Westwater has created experimental dances since 1996. Her work responds to the social landscape in which it manifests, taking up our most challenging experiences such as pain, as in her “Bessie” Award-nominated work Rambler, Worlds A Part (2019). With other major works she has explored the built environments of monuments (Anywhere, 2016) and landfills and parks (PARK, 2008-present); war and body horror (Macho, 2008); intersections of human and animal culture (twisted, tack, broken, 2005); psycho-physical states of fear (Dark Matter, 2002); and interactive virtual environments (The Fortune Cookie Dance, 1999). Her dances have been seen at New York Live Arts, Chocolate Factory Theater, Gibney, Danspace Project, 92nd Street Y, Movement Research, Dance Theater Workshop, Joyce SoHo, Franklin Furnace, Temple University, Pratt Institute, Reed College, and parks and public spaces. Kathy is the recipient of the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, the first woman to receive the prize. She has received numerous additional awards, grants, and residencies from National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Arts Center on Governors Island, Snug Harbor, Yaddo, and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She lives with her husband in the Bronx.

Lance Gries has been a New York-based dance artist for almost 40 years. He has taught and shown his choreography in many NYC venues and around the world, He has received numerous grants and awards, including a “Bessie” Award for his dancing with The Trisha Brown Company and a nomination for his solo, Etudes for an Astronaut (2011). These days, he mostly engages in and relates to dance practices as another resource to explore life. The Covid pandemic led him into a new career of service as a life coach, combining his interests in somatic awareness, neuroscience, mindfulness and spirituality. He is currently revisiting The FIFTY Project, a video collection of 50 improvisational duets, with 50 colleagues that celebrated his 50th birthday in 2013, formatting it as an accessible online archive.

kathywestwater.org

photo: Maria Baranova