Beth Gill

Beth Gill is a Queens-based artist, who makes contemporary dance and performance in New York City. She has accumulated a body of work that critically examines issues relating to the fields of contemporary dance and performance studies, through an ongoing exploration of aesthetics and perception. Ranging from short-term improvised structures to long-term choreographed performances, her work has been commissioned by The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, The Chocolate Factory Theater and Dixon Place as well as performed internationally.

Beth is a 2012 Foundation for Contemporary Art Fellowship recipient. In 2011 she was awarded two New York State Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and the Juried Award for the choreographer exhibiting some of the most interesting and exciting ideas happening in dance in New York City today. Her most recent work Electric Midwife was named one of the ‘Best Dances of 2011,’ by Time Out New York, as was her previous work what it looks like, what it feels like for 2008.

Beth is one of seven choreographers profiled in Michael Blackwood’s documentary New York Dance: States of Performance, which premiered in the Lincoln Center Dance on Film Festival in 2010. The documentary continues the focus of his two highly regarded previous documentaries: Making Dances: Seven Post-Modern Choreographers (1980) & Retracing Steps: American Dance Since Postmodernism (1988).

As a contemporary artist her work has received attention and fueled responses within academia. Most recently her work has been included and taught within the University of Illinois’ Dance Department’s curriculum, and published in MIT’s distinguished performance journal The Drama Review.

Gill’s mission is to use the experience of dance, theatrical design and sound within the framework of live performance to shift the way we see, sense and understand the space around us. Her choreographic body of work uses a timeless and rigorous investigation of form as an entryway into explorations of contemporary dance ideologies, which seek to reflect contemporary societal concerns.