CV
education and training
Ph.D. University of Roehampton (London, UK) — Dance Studies & Disability Studies (2024)
o Dissertation Title: Potentializing Crip Choreographic Practices
M.F.A. Goddard College, Interdisciplinary Arts/ Dance (2014)
B.F.A. The Juilliard School, Dance (2003)
Anti-Racism and Social Justice in Dance - Ohio State University (2022)
Anti-Racism in the Arts: The Basics (Ohio State University) (2022)
Racial Equity Learning Series, (Marymount Manhattan College), (2018-2020)
The Kane School of Core Integration, Pilates Mat & Apparatus Certification (2004)
Lincoln Center Institute Teaching Artist Training Program (K-12) (2003)
recent experience
L-e-a-k-y — A Disability Community Dance Project
New York, NY. 2024-2025 (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.
Crip Movement Lab, (Co-creators/directors Elisabeth Motley & Kayla Hamilton)
New York, NY. 2021- Present
Co-creator/director/teacher of Crip Movement Lab: a critical methodology for creating, practicing, and teaching dance accessibly and inclusively to multi-disabled dancers and their non-disabled accomplices.
Crip Movement Lab is one of the first dance methodologies to examine disability as a framework for dance practice, prioritize difference, and shift the focus from ableist dance practices to inclusive and Disability Justice-informed movement. Shared at Movement Research MELT (’22, ’23, ’24), International Human Rights Conference, Florida Atlantic (’24), Sarah Lawrence College (’23), University of Maryland (’23), Creative Momentum: InterdepenDance Collective Vancouver (’22), International Federation for Theater Research (’22), and University of Michigan (’22).
Art Spark Texas — Working Group: Visioning the Future of Accessible Dance Education
Austin, TX. May-Oct 2024
· Work alongside key stakeholders in the field of disability dance to generate new strategies for accessible dance practice.
· There are sharp divisions between integrated dance and disability dance. This work will allow for robust discussion and a prioritization of disability dance led by disabled artists.
Disrupting Harm in Dance // Crip Movement Lab: Invitations for Un-tethering Dance Practice from Systemic Ableism
www.disruptingdance.com, August 2023
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.
Mourning Movements: Gestures, Rituals and Choreographic Practices of Navigating Care
London, UK — The Place w/ Dance Studies Association, Sept. 2023
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.
Dance Lab New York — Assistant Choreographer & Access Worker for Jerron Herman
New York, NY. June 2023
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.
Disability Dance Working Group — The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
New York, NY. 2022-2024
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.
Hollow Organ — A Disability Community Dance Project
New York, NY. 2022
Developed ethical strategies, methods, and proposals for collaborating with multi-disabled artists. Researched and practiced how disability dance might emerge from medical archives. (Supported through a choreography commission grant from New York State Council on the Arts - NYSCA).
Researched counter-dance practices that unsettle the Medical Industrial Complex, which is critical for disabled dancers who work with situated knowledge or lived experience.
Colored Shadow — A Disability Choreographic Work
New York, NY. June 2021
· Created an original disability choreography during a Movement Research Artist in Residency Program w/ production support from The Arts Society of Kingston.
· Colored Shadow began with questions about how my disability might offer a framework for choreographic practice and explore(s) methods for generating choreography from my disability experiences. These questions arose from decades of masking my disability and struggling to comport my bodymind inside the parameters of conventional able-bodyminded dancing and choreography, which I had spent most of my dancing life honing.
Anarchivic Relief – A Crip Choreographic Object
New York, NY. June 2021
· Created a book-like choreographic object which reimagines and re-composes the documents of my medical archive for the purpose of making an alternative visual and textual experience of my disability.
· Engages with the values, artistry, and politics of my experiences with recurring brain disease – encephalitis. It prioritizes disability neurodivergence, and madness as proficiency and positions embodiments commonly associated with seizure, psychosis and cognitive, and physical disability as original creative processes of the bodymind.
National Dance Organization – Disability Culture Methods w/ Elisabeth Motley and Petra Kuppers
Webinar, October 2021
Co-led a webinar with disability culture performance artist Petra Kuppers
A collective conversation on the useful-ness of working with/ creating dance scores as a method for generating disability dance
Associate Professor of Dance, Marymount Manhattan College
New York, NY. 2015-present
Teach practice-based courses in choreography, improvisation, and theory courses titled Cripping the Arts, and Critical Approaches to Dance.
As a Disabled person in dance higher education, it is critical to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of dance classrooms. My teaching draws in diversity and differences and recognizes various learning and personhoods within education systems, which positively impacts the broader dance ecosystem.
choreography / residencies
Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist in Residence (2024-2025)
Access Movement Play Residency (AMP) supported by Mellon Foundation
Dance Lab NY, Rehearsal Director for Jerron Herman (2023)
Dance/NYC Dance. Disability. Artistry. Residency Program (2022)
Movement Research Artist in Residence, NY. (2019-2021)
O+ Festival, Kingston, NY. Colored Shadow Evening length (2021)
Arts Society of Kingston, NY. Colored Shadow Evening length (2021)
Movement Research at Judson, NY., Chorea (2019)
Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grant, NY. (2018)
Dixon Place, NY. Excerpt 15 Excerpt (2017)
Danspace Project DraftWork, NY. Flinch/Speck Evening length (2016)
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, MASS. Flinch/Speck Evening length Commission (2016)
Gibney Dance Work Up 2.0, NY. Flinch/Speck Excerpt (2016)
AIR, Center for Performance Research, NY. Duck & Goose Evening length (2015)
AIR, Chez Bushwick, NY. (2015)
The Juilliard School Summer Dance Intensive, NY. (‘04, ‘05, ‘06, ‘14)
Center for Performance Research, NY. Drill Piece Evening length (2013)
Springboard Dance Festival, Montreal, CAN. Belly Machine Evening length (2013)
Dance Conversations at the Flea, NY. Drill Piece Excerpt (2013)
West End Theater, NY. Drill Piece Excerpt (2013)
VA. Regional High School Dance Festival, Drill Piece Excerpt (2013)
Trisha Brown Improvisational Collaboration, NY. (2011-2013)
Center for Performance Research AIR, NY. Drill Piece Excerpt (2013)
Mascher Space Co-op/ Fidget: Philadelphia, PA. Drill Piece Excerpt (2013)
Center for Performance Research AIR, NY. Underwater Evening length (2012)
Chocolate Factory Theater, NY. Drill Piece Excerpt (2011)
Causey Contemporary Gallery, NY. Underwater Evening length (2011)
Rooftop Dance, NY. Underwater Excerpt (2011)
Dance New Amsterdam RAW Directions, NY. Underwater Excerpt (2011)
Movement Research at Judson, NY. Underwater Excerpt (2011)
SUNY Purchase College, NY. Guest Artist (2010)
WAX works at Triskelion, NY. Underwater Excerpt (2010)
Toybox Theater Company, NY. Choreography for Theater (2009)
Joyce SoHo, NY. We Are Here After Evening length (2010)
Wave Rising Series- John Ryan Theater, NY. Waiting Room Evening length (2009)
Joyce SoHo, A.W.A.R.D. show finalist, NY. (2009)
Movement Research at Judson, NY. Waiting Room Excerpt (2008)
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council –SITELINES, NY. (2008)
The Juilliard School Commission, NY. (2008)
Dance New Amsterdam’s OBJECT series, NY. (2008)
Dance Theater Workshop’s Fresh Tracks, NY. (2008)
HERE’s American Living Room Festival, NY. Bridge Evening length (2007)
Dance New Amsterdam, Raw Materials, NY. (2007)
The Wooster Group, NY. ICE Festival, Choreography for Theater (2006)
The Whitney Museum, Vision Into Art, NY. Choreography for Theater (2006)
1st, 2nd Dance Festival Oltre Passo, Lecce, Italy- Commission (‘04, 2005)
Stella Adler Studio of Acting, MAD AIR, NY. (2005)
The Juilliard School Commission, NY. (2005)
Assistant Director- Shi-Zheng Chen and the Handel & Haydn Society, MASS (2003)
awards & grants received
Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Artist in Residence. Awarded to create disability community dance work, L-e-a-k-y, 2024-2025
Access. Movement. Play. Residency - supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Awarded to research and develop L-e-a-k-y, a disability community dance work, 2024
New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Choreography Commission. Awarded to develop Hollow Organ, a disability community dance project, 2022
Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Awarded to support the public production of full-length work, Colored Shadow (2021) and previously Drill Piece (2015), 2021, 2015
Dance/NYC Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship. Awarded to develop Crip Movement Lab, 2020
Movement Research Artist in Residence. Awarded to develop disability dance work Colored Shadow (2021) and choreographic object Anarchivic Relief (2021), 2019-2021
Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award, Awarded to conduct disability dance research at University of Roehampton (UK), 2018-2019
Andrew Mellon Foundation Space Grant, '12, '14, '2016
The Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stages Grant, 2013
The A.W.A.R.D. Show Finalist, 2009
The Hector Zaraspe Choreography Award, 2003
teaching experience
Marymount Manhattan College, Associate Professor of Dance, NYC, 2015-Present
Movement Research Winter MELT, NYC. Crip Movement Lab, ’22, ’23, ‘24
Sarah Lawrence College, NY., Guest Teacher. Instruction of Crip Movement Lab: Accessible & Inclusive Dance Practice to undergraduate & graduate dance majors, 2022
University of Maryland, MD. Guest Teacher. Instruction of Crip Movement Lab: Accessible & Inclusive Dance Practice for undergraduate and graduate Dance Pedagogies courses, 2022
Creative Momentum: InterdepenDance Collective Vancouver, BC. Guest Teacher. Instruction of Crip Movement Lab: Accessible & Inclusive Choreographic Practice to InterdepenDance Collective Disability Residency participants, 2022
University of Roehampton, Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award, UK. Guest instruction of BA & MFA choreography and improvisation courses, Lecturer in Dance Politics & Sociology, Lecturer in Key Perspectives and Ways of Knowing, 2018-2019
Manhattanville College, Adjunct Dance Professor, NY., Instruction of contemporary dance technique to Dance & Theater BA majors, 2014-2015
Peridance Center, International Certificate Program Faculty, NYC,. Instruction of dance improvisation to professional level certificate program dance students, 2014-2015
Bowdoin College, ME. Guest Artist & Teacher. Instruction of contemporary and improvisation dance to BA Dance Majors, 2015
The Juilliard School High School Summer Dance Intensive Faculty, NYC. Instruction of dance improvisation courses, creation of original choreography, ’04, ’05, ’06, 2014
Snow College, UT. Guest Artist & Teacher. Instruction of dance improvisation courses, creation of original choreography, 2014
Springboard Danse Montreal, CAN. Emerging Choreographer, Instruction of dance improvisation courses, creation of original choreography, 2013
Dance New Amsterdam, NYC. Guest Artist Faculty. Instruction of contemporary and improvisation dance, 2013
The Imagine Project, NYC. Instruction of creative dance to disabled children Pre-K-2nd Grade, 2005
Centro Dimensione Danza, Lecce Italy. Guest Teaching Artist. Instruction of contemporary and improvisation dance, ‘04, 2005
Lincoln Center Institute Teaching Artist, NYC. Instruction of creative dance at NYC Elementary P.S. 084 & P.S. 075, 2003
invited talks
International Human Rights Conference, Florida Atlantic University – Crip Movement Lab (FL, 2024)
Dance Studies Association Conference, The Place, UK. – “Mourning Movements: Gestures, Rituals and Choreographic Practices of Navigating Care,” Elisabeth Motley & Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban, (UK, 2023)
National Dance Education Organization, Webinar – Disability Culture Methods w/ Elisabeth Motley & Petra Kuppers (2023)
NYC Department of Education & Office of Arts and Special Projects – Teaching Students with Disabilities: Elisabeth Motley & Kayla Hamilton (2023)
Old Dominion University, VA. – Guest Speaker Series: Accessible Teaching in Dance (2023)
International Federation for Theatre Research Conference - Performance & Disability Working. Presentation of Paper “Crip Movement Lab as a Generative Framework for Movement and Creative Practice” (Reykjavik, Iceland 2022)
NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program - Guest speaker in Yo-Yo Lin’s course “Media-making as a Healing Practice” Talk on Anarchivic Relief (Creating a Framework - Reclaiming the Archive: Ownership and Legibility (NY. 2022)
University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies - Hosted by Dance/NYC’s Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program and Gibney Dance. Presentation on Crip Movement Lab with co-founders Kayla Hamilton + Elisabeth Motley (Virtual, 2022)
Dialogues in Dance Lecture Series, “Indeterminable Bodies: Thinking Through Crip Choreographies” Marymount Manhattan College (2021)
US-UK Fulbright Scholar Award and University of Roehampton’s Center for Dance Research - “Indeterminable-ness: Choreographies of Neurodivergence” (UK, 2019)
NYC Seminar Guest Lecture “Movement Research / The Judson Church Theater and Visual Rhetorics of Disability” - Marymount Manhattan College, (2020, 2021)
Progressive Pedagogy Lecture Series. Co-presented with Prof. Catherine Cabeen - Marymount Manhattan College (2021)
additional performance experience
Petra Kuppers, Crip Mad Archives (2023)
Pat Catterson (2016, 2018)
Yvonne Rainer-Trio A, Trio A With Flags (2017)
Trisha Brown: Improvisational Project (2011-2013)
Charlotte Griffin- Repertory (2015)
Sue Bernhard Danceworks- Repertory (‘04, 2003)