Biography

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     Amelia, originally from the Midwest, is a dance performer and maker based in NYC. She developed a love for the form from her first teacher, her mother. She graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology. 

     Amelia has been an Artist in Residence at Chashama ChaNorth, Chez Bushwick, School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, and Associate Artist studying under Deborah Hay at Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work has been presented at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), Lubov Gallery (NYC), Center for Performance Research (Brooklyn), and other spaces throughout the US and France. She has performed with Alexis Zaccarello (NYC), Pheobe Berglund (NYC), Juli Brandano (NYC), Christine Bonansea Company (NYC/Berlin), and other artists based in NYC and beyond. Her teachers, Selene Carter (Bloomington, IN) and Kathleen Hermesdorf (San Francisco, CA), have been highly influential in her process.

     She makes dances with her long time collaborator and friend Leah Fournier under their imaginary company name, Middle Space Dance. When she is not making dances she is teaching mediocre pilates mat classes or practicing stand up comedy while working as a bartender. Amelia is currently a Performance Project Fellow at University Settlement in Manhattan.

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Artist Statement

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     I make dances because I believe in creating space for inclusivity and dialogue, both verbal and nonverbal, around the human condition. I believe in the potential for movement to invite in empathy, the subconscious sensitivity that develops while sharing air, space, and time with other bodies, and the endless resonance of collective experience. I experiment within the confines of my own dance training with a commitment o rewrite the outdated, patriarchal structures this form typically lives in.

     Within my creative work I inhabit nonlinear process, actively denying both the capitalist agenda of generating product and the hierarchies embedded in the desire for productivity. I often work collaboratively as a means of challenging my work to be more inclusive. This work plays with materiality and questions consumer, tourist, and capitalist culture. I am interested in bad dancing, the mundane, and failure. My current ongoing research, more deeply investigates dance practice as ritual, the intersection of soma, routine, and spirituality.

     Lately I find myself sitting with unanswerable questions. What does it mean to be a dance artist and how does that role survive in our culture? My identity as an artist feels vital to my existence, and my ability to process injustices and experience empathy, but does this fit into a larger picture? Who am I helping, if not just myself? And as I evaluate my own privilege in contrast to all the challenges of being an emerging artist in NYC, I feel certain I must constantly be questioning accessibility in an attempt to create a communal sense of gathering I find both vital and unique to live performance.