Desire Motor
“Her essence both in chemico-physiological and in the ontological meanings of the word, is desire. This essence is, at one and the same time, a lubricant and her being in itself. Her essence, her being, is desire, and this desire, which cannot be reduced to feelings although it originates in them, is but a desire for being.” – Octavio Paz, Appearance Stripped Bare
Biography
Beth Graczyk is a Brooklyn-based dance artist and scientist. She brings a decade of teaching nationally and internationally, working with populations spanning from non-dancers to advanced professionals. She is commissioned to make a new dance work with Interact Theater, a radical inclusion theater group with their LGBTQIA artists, and will tour through the MN Touring Arts Grant to 4 cities starting at the Mayo Clinic in July 2020. She has a collaborative partnership with John Gutierrez (G^2), in which they co-teach improvisation and create performance works together. In addition, Beth partners with BAIRA in Detroit as a teaching and creative collaborator, is a resident artist for NYC-based Pioneers Go East Collective, and is on Faculty at Peridance Contemporary Dance Center. Graczyk has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Japan, Ecuador, France, China and India for the past 17 years. Concurrently, she has contributed to 10 science publications in the field of cancer research. Graczyk travels annually to India to work as an educator and choreographer with Kerala-based artists Sen Jansen and Arunima Gupta. She co-directed the performance company Salt Horse in Seattle with Corrie Befort and Angelina Baldoz from 2008-2016. After moving to NYC five years ago, Graczyk launched a solo project called Desire Motor. In NYC, her solo works have been presented by Gibney, La MaMa, Judson Church, Jack, Triskelion, CPR, Movement Research, Oye Group, Kraine Theater, Chez Bushwick and through Pioneers Goes East Collective. As a performer, Graczyk has most recently danced for Raja Kelly, Sara Shelton Mann, Amy Chavasse, and Jen Salk/Chase Angier.