News
2024-2025
Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist in Residence
L-e-a-k-y — A Disability Community Dance Project (May 2025 Brooklyn Arts Exchange premiere)
Led by Elisabeth Motley, L-e-a-k-y is a community dance project with Disabled dancers Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban, India Harville, and Cory Nakasue, supported by a Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Residency with previous support from an Access. Movement. Play. (A.M.P.) Residency — and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
L-e-a-k-y is a radical access-as-performance dance work created for ONE disabled audience member. It troubles conventional product-oriented performance and instead prioritizes the small, slow interdependence that disability culture-building requires. L-e-a-k-y envisions new practices for the primacy of disabled voices to come together on their own terms.
august 2023
Disrupting Harm in Dance // Crip Movement Lab: Invitations for Un-tethering Dance Practice from Systemic Ableism
www.disruptingdance.com
With Kayla Hamilton, contributed writing for the Disrupting Dance website representative of Crip Movement Lab’s anti-ableist dance practice philosophy.
A broad and accessible web-based offering for dancers including definitions of ableism in dance. Offers questions to ask when facilitating accessible and inclusive dance practices.
september 2023
Mourning Movements: Gestures, Rituals and Choreographic Practices of Navigating Care
(London, UK — The Place w/ Dance Studies Association)
Co-created a disability choreography lecture-video essay with disabled dancer Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban. Presented at Dance Studies Association Conference Symposia
We discuss and embody the possibility of mourning as a ritual for unsettling normativity and compulsory able-body-mindedness. Through a dance which griefs production-oriented pasts and imagines disabled futures, we negotiate an ethical creative labor structure for re-imagining cross-disability dance practices that embrace discordance as care.
june 2023
Dance Lab New York — Assistant Choreographer & Access Worker for Jerron Herman
Assisted Jerron Herman and conducted access work for 8 disabled and non-disabled dancers.
Built upon/strengthened my dance access work. This project illuminated ongoing gaps and discrepancies that exist for disabled dancers participating in non-disabled dance spaces.
2022-2024
Disability Dance Working Group — The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
New York, NY.
Worked alongside Disabled artists Kayla Hamilton, Petra Kuppers, India Harville, and Joselia Hughes to create a national disability dance residency program (Access. Movement. Play.)
A.M.P. supports emerging and multi-marginalized artists who are often excluded from opportunities in the dance world. The residency offers time, space, and resources designed by and for disabled artists to further their artistic work.
july 13, 2022
Crip Movement Lab (Kayla Hamilton + Elisabeth Motley) Guest Artists in Petra Kuppers’s MELT Workshop with Movement Research: Starship Somatics
june 24, 2022
International Federation for Theatre Research Conference - Performance & Disability Working Group (Reykjavik, Iceland)
Presentation of paper: “Crip Movement Lab: Disability as a Generative Framework for Movement and Creative Practice”
june 20, 2022 4:30-6:30 pm EST
Crip Movement Lab (co-founders Kayla Hamilton and Elisabeth Motley) at InterdepenDance Collective (Vancouver, BC)
march 14, 2022 6:00-8:00 pm + march 26, 2022 12:00-2:00 pm EST
Crip Movement Lab (co-founders Kayla Hamilton and Elisabeth Motley)
Movement Research 2021/2022 Festival
https://movementresearch.org/event/16631
february 25, 2022
Invited Talk with NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and Yo-Yo Lin’s course “Media-making as a Healing Practice”
Talk on Anarchivic Relief (Creating a Framework - Reclaiming the Archive: Ownership and Legibility)
february 22, 2022 6:00 pm EST
Crip Movement Lab (co-founders Kayla Hamilton and Elisabeth Motley)
Hosted by Dance/NYC’s Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program and Gibney Dance, in collaboration with the University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies.
2022 New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Choreography Commission Grant
Grant sponsored by Arts Society of Kingston, NY.
december 2021
Critical Correspondence: Cory Nakasue + Elisabeth Motley in Conversation
december 2021
Dance NYC Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program
https://www.dance.nyc/programs/funds/dda/artist-residency/grantees-2021-2022
october 9, 2021 @ 7:30 + 8:30 pm
O+ Festival: Elisabeth Motley / Colored Shadow
This event will be outdoors, attentive to Covid-19 protocols, and social distancing. https://opositivefestival.org/alumnus/elisabeth-motley/
june 2021
Dance Magazine: How Neurodivergence Informs Elisabeth Motley’s Creations by Meredith Fages
https://www.dancemagazine.com/elisabeth-motley/
june 11 + 12, 2021 @ 8:30 pm
Arts Society of Kingston Presents: Elisabeth Motley / Colored Shadow
This event will be outdoors, attentive to Covid-19 protocols, and social distancing.
Tickets $15 Friday, June 11 + $5 Suggested Donation Saturday, June 12
Location Cornell Creative Arts Center Parking Lot (Entrance at 88 Bruyn Ave. Kingston, NY 12401)
https://goo.gl/maps/W2KTFt9etzi9WP42A
august 2020
Recipient of Dance/NYC Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship
december 12, 2019
Movement Research at the Judson, NYC – Work in Progress of “chorea”
december 5, 2019
Research Presentation: University of Roehampton: London England “Indeterminable Bodies: Thinking Through Choreographies of Neurodivergence”
2019–2021
Movement Research Artist in Residence
2018–2019
Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award for Teaching & Research
University of Roehampton – London, England
november 7, 2018
Center for Dance Research
University of Roehampton – London, England
Lecture/Demonstration: How My Body Should Move: Borderless-ness and Fluidity Of Identity Through Movement
may–august 2018
Brooklyn Arts Exchange Parent Space Grantee, NYC
december 31, 2017
Dixon Place, NYC
Excerpt 15
november 2016
Danspace Project DraftWork, NY.
Flinch/SpeckWith Lea Fulton, Alvaro Gonzalez, Ariel Lembeck, & Elisabeth Motley
august 2016
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, MASS.
Flinch/SpeckWith Lea Fulton, Alvaro Gonzalez, Ariel Lembeck, & Elisabeth Motley
april 22–23, 2016
Gibney Dance New York, NY
Work Up 2.4
With Lea Fulton, Alvaro Gonzalez, Ariel Lembeck, & Elisabeth Motley
december 15, 2015
Center for Performance Research Brooklyn, NY
PSOH (Performance Studio Open House)
New work-in-progress showing
With Lea Fulton, Alvaro Gonzalez, Ariel Lembeck, & Elisabeth Motley
december 2, 2015
Trisha Brown Dance Studio New York, NY
New work-in-progress showing, Invite Only
With Lea Fulton, Alvaro Gonzalez, Ariel Lembeck, & Elisabeth Motley
july 2015
Faculty Peridance Teen Intensive
june 11+13, 2015
New Voices In Live Performance, Center for Performance Research
november–february 2015
Artist in Residence, Chez Bushwick
AIR Performance Feb 5 + 6
february 2015
Bowdin College- AIR
october 21–22, 2014
Health Wellness & Dance Panel, Lafayette College
august 2014, july 2013
Juiliard Summer Intensive
Guest Choreographer, Teacher
march 2–8, 2014
Snow College- Ephraim, Utah
Visiting Choreographer
november 8, 2013
Montreal, CAN
Drill Piece, Excerpt
september 20–21, 2013
Center for Performance Research, Williamsburg, NY. Performance of Drill Piece.
august 2013
Dance New Amsterdam Modern Guest Artist
june 9–28, 2013
Springboard Danse Montreal. E-Choreographer. Creation of Site Responsive Performance work at Usine C Theatre, Montreal, Canada
june 4, 2013
Dance Conversations at the Flea
april 18–21, 2013
West End Theater, NYC
march 7–10, 2013
Virginia Regional High School Dance Festival. Performance of Drill Piece, Repertory Master Classes
january 13, 2013
APAP Showcase, NYC
january 8, 2013
Mascher Space Co-op, Philadelphia, PA- Excerpt of Drill Piece
january 4, 2013
Center for Performance Research, NYC – Excerpt of Drill Piece