Lauded by Brian Seibert of The New York Times as “thrilling and rare,” Katie Workum began making dances in 1997. Since 2013, Workum has made Authentic Movement and improvisational forms the bedrock of her work. The current work takes form as a shifting and temporary monument to self, community and the present. She melds improvisational performance and practice together as an alternate, feminist model of working and presenting work. In 2023 Katie is also returning to her Dance Theater roots with Weena Pauly and together they are making a new work Monsters Mourning for a Spring 2023 premiere. She has been an artist in residence at Center for Performance Research, NYC and 2019 Marble House Project AIR for the development of her last pre-pandemic work Anna, Darrin, David, Eleanor, Jess, Katie, Leslie & Weena at Foley Gallery. Eva Yaa Asantewaa curated this piece as part of her inaugural Living Gallery Season at Gibney Dance Center. Asking questions of who and what can be included in performance she conceived of and mounted a 40 person improvisational dance within Nick Cave’s The Let Go at The Park Avenue Armory. Her short piece The Airy Road of the Meteor at Movement Research/Judson Church, was an experiment in group, community improvisation and co-creation, featuring 30 audience members (dancers and non-dancers) and one company member. She additionally has been presented/commissioned by Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) with Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Danspace Project, Mount Tremper Arts, The Chocolate Factory, PS122’s Catch/Coil, Gibney In the Works/American Realness, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Dance Theater Workshop, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dance New Amsterdam, 92nd St Y, Symphony Space, Galapagos Art Space, GAle GAtes, et. al., WAX and others. She is a current Andrew W. Mellon Artist-in-Residence at Center for Performance Research. She has been an Artist in Residence at MASS MoCA (2015), Chez Bushwick (2014), Dance New Amsterdam (2008, 2009), Mount Tremper Arts (2010, 2014), Tribeca Performing Arts Center (2006), and The Kitchen (2005). She has received funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant (2015) and New York State Council of the Arts (2010). She created many works in collaboration with Will Rawls, Leigh Garrett and Terry Dean Bartlett from 2000-2007. Workum was part of the curatorial team for DANCEOFF!, a dance cabaret series at Performance Space 122 from 2001-2007, which was also presented at Tanz Im August, Berlin, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, Symphony Space and Joe’s Pub. Workum holds a Master’s in Dance Education at New York University and she won the George B. Bryan Award for Scholarship in Theater Studies at the University of Vermont. She is on faculty at Gibney Dance Center where she teaches Authentic Movement and Improvisation. She has taught at BKSD, School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Dance New Amsterdam, Barnard College, New York University Experimental Theater Wing, and Lehman College.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I make dances that meld our common experiences with the expansive potential of the natural body. I like to create work that is both an investigation of the formal elements of dance: how bodies move within structures of space and time and the messier humany-ness of the dancers as people within these carriages. My dances can be textured with a specific time and place and utilize form, psychology and atmosphere create a dynamic push and pull within each piece.
In my improvisatioanl practice I have stripped set movement and content and the dances unfold in real time. This shift is the result of my ongoing examination of the duality between mind and body through a rehearsal methodology based in the improvisational technique Authentic Movement. With repeated practice expanded physical, intellectual and emotional possibilities grow, intertwine, and lead to a more integrated persona, performative availability and my understanding and embodiment of the form has profoundly shifted: my choreography is a simple yet bold willingness to be seen and see, and to create by listening to real time and space.
I am always interested in creating a generous and fluid space that allows the dancer and viewer to transmit a shared feeling, sensation or stirring of a private memory. I want to let the audience in on what we are doing and experiencing to broaden our specific viewpoints and bring us to a broader collective. I received my training on soccer fields, hockey rinks and dance studios, with cello lessons, musicals, plays, in math classrooms and from a deep involvement with the natural world. This personal and physical history informs my style of moving and creating work: rigorous, engaging full body commitment, but does not readily reference one dance technique or style. I generate material from improvisations, authentic movement as well as work with pre-ordained movement scores.
