WHO’S WHO

Keely Garfield, a native of London, England, is based in New York City. A spirit of philosophical investigation and compassionate concern continues to shape Keely’s path as an artist, and is central in her creative endeavor. Her company, Keely Garfield Dance (KGD) has been widely commissioned and presented at theaters and festivals nationally and internationally, garnering several Bessie awards and nominations. Keely has made work for other modern dance companies, theater, musicals, ballet, film, MTV, site-specific projects, museums, schools and universities. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, holds an MFA from UWM, and teaches at The New School. Her new work for The Wooden Floor will premiere at Barclay Irvine Theater, California in June 2023.  Alongside her artistic career, Keely works in the field of wellness, and is currently a hospital chaplain working in end-life, and trauma.  www.keelygarfield.nyc

Keely Garfield Dance (KGD) – Highlights include: Deep (The Joyce Theater, NY), Twin Pines (Danspace Project, NY), Disturbing The Peace (Zenon Dance Company, MN), Iron Lung (Groundworks Dancetheater, OH), Disturbulance (NYLA, NY), WOW (Gibney Dance, NY), Telling The Bees (Chocolate Factory, NY), Sinister Slapstick (Queen Elizabeth Hall, London), My Father Was A Spanish Captain (Tanzmesse, Frankfurt), Scent of Mental Love (A film for Radio Bremen/Canal Arte), Damsel (Dance Theater of Harlem, NY), Body Wisdom (Rubin Museum of Art, NY),  Gypsy (Sundance Theater, UT), Yeast Nation, The Triumph Of Life! (Perseverance Theatre, AK), Room at the Top (Adam Ant), Folk Dance In Gold (The Wooden Floor, CA), and further presentations at Celebrate Brooklyn! (NY), Milwaukee Danceworks (WI), Philadelphia Dance Projects (PA), The Southern Theater (MN), and Danse Vernissage (Montreal), Gibney Dance DIP Residency.

Jeff Berman is a New York City-based composer and musician. He brings together his experience as an instrumentalist and background in ethnomusicology to make work that amplifies the relationship between humans, society, spirit, and nature. Most recently, Jeff composed Heartwood, a percussion quartet for raw wooden instruments, performed at Big Reuse Recycling Center in Brooklyn. Jeff’s work has also been performed at venues including The Rubin Museum of Art, The Chocolate Factory Theater, and the Axelrod Performing Arts Center. Jeff collaborated with Keely Garfield Dance on Perfect Piranha in 2017.

Molly Lieber works as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in Brooklyn, and has two children, Ruby, 5, and Gloria, 2. Her feminist choreographic partnership with Eleanor Smith includes: (gloria rehearsal (excerpt))LIVE (Jane Hotel, 2022), gloria rehearsal (excerpt) (Baryshnikov Arts Center, 2022), Gloria (Abrons Arts Center, 2021, New York Live Arts, 2022), Body Comes Apart (New York Live Arts, 2019, Documented by The New York Public Library), Basketball (PS122 and Baryshnikov Arts Center, 2017), Rude World (PS122 and The Chocolate Factory Theater, 2015), Tulip (Roulette, 2013; Danspace Project, 2012), and Beautiful Bone (The Chocolate Factory Theater, 2012). Residencies and awards for Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith: 2023/2024 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Life Line Artist, 2021/2022 Artists in Residence at Movement Research, 2021 Jerome Hill Fellowship Finalists, 2020/2021 Jerome Foundation AIRSpace Residency at Abrons Arts Center, 2018 Bessie Schonberg Fellows at The Yard, 2018 DiP Residency Artists at Gibney, and featured in the “Best Dance of 2017” in The New York Times. Molly received a 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance and was on the March 2016 cover of Dance Magazine’s Issue on New York’s Freelance Dance Stars. She has performed in works by luciana achugar, Oren Barnoy, Donna Uchizono, Brian Rogers, Neil Greenberg, Maria Hassabi, Juliette Mapp, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey, Vanessa Anspaugh, currently with Antonio Ramos and the Gangbangers, and for Keely since 2013. She teaches at Movement Research and is a Distinguished Graduate Student Fellow and MFA Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a Certificate in Women and Gender Studies.

Paul Hamilton has collaborated with a wide range of choreographers, creating five original works with Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group; four with Keely Garfield; and Scaffold Room with Ralph Lemon, for which he received a Bessie nomination, and another nomination for his performances with Garfield and Jane Comfort. Other choreographers he has performed with include David Thomson and Melinda Ring. At the MoMA he performed in the Bruce Nauman Retrospective, and in works by David Gordon and Deborah Hay. His work as a choreographer was most recently seen in Kevin Beasley’s Sound of Morning, Performa 2021. He is currently a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence.

Opal is an artist based in New York City/Lenapehoking and the woods of the western Catskills/on the homelands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Some of their current creative practices involve communing with trees, growing & arranging flowers and writing queer speculative fiction. As a performer, they have collaborated with choreographers: Hilary Easton, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Heather Kravas and Tere O’Connor, among others.

Angie Pittman is a New York-based dancer-choreographer whose works sits in the Black Radical Tradition. Her choreographic work uses dance, text, and sound to illuminate nuanced and experimental portrayal of Black dance. Angie has had the pleasure of being able to create collaboratively with A Sef, Jasmine Hearn, Jonathan Gonzalez, Athena Kokoronis, and Anita Mullin. She holds a MFA in Dance and Choreography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a graduate minor in African American Studies and is a certified Professional teacher of the Umfundalai technique.  As a dancer, she has danced in work by Larissa Valez-Jackson, MBDance, Ralph Lemon, Tere O’Connor, Cynthia Oliver, Anna Sperber, Donna Uchizono Company, Jennifer Monson, Kim Brandt, Tess Dworman, Antonio Ramos, C Kemal Nance and many others.  As an educator, she has taught at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Movement Research, MoMA, Sarah Lawrence College, Marymount Manhattan College, and is currently an Assistant Arts Professor of Dance at NYU: Tisch School of the Arts.

Carolyn Wong is a lighting designer whose work includes Come Through (a collaboration between TU Dance and Bon Iver), Rockin’ Road to Dublin (US Tour), Une Autre Passion (Le Ballet du Grande Théâtre de Genève), Summer’s Winter Shadow (Ballet of Monte Carlo). Favorite New York creative collaborations include Dmitri Barcomi’s Moving Bodies, New Light Theater Project’s The Hollower, Charles Gershman’s IVANKAPLAY, Boomerang Theater’s Karpovsky Variations, The Construction Company.  She currently works as the Worldwide Associate Lighting Designer for Disney’s The Lion King.  She is an alumna of Oberlin College, and a native of San Francisco, California.  www.wongnumber.com

Becca Wintle is a musician and music therapist. She plays fiddle, guitar and sings lead vocals in The Farwells with her late wife Debra Clifford. She also plays in a UK-based string-band The Waggonhoppers. Born and raised in the UK, she has been playing fiddle since she was young, originally learning classical and then playing in an English country-dance band for many years. She later became interested in bluegrass and ultimately Southern Appalachian string-band music . She lived for 3 years in the U.S. with Debra, and has been teaching fiddle at the Ashokan Center’s Old-Time Rollick for 6 years. She also teaches online and in-person in New York City.