I am a choreographer, dance artist, biochemist, writer, and filmmaker committed to exploring the tensions and harmonies between perceived facts and the deeply felt human experience. My work engages in intersectional dialogues that amplify often overlooked perspectives, including those of female-identifying, neurodiverse, LGBTQIA2+, and non-human entities. Central to my practice is the creation of structures born from visceral impulses, probing the interplay between uncertainty and materiality—especially in relation to pleasure, perception, vulnerability, and connection.
Three interdisciplinary projects exemplify my principles, practices, and experimental performances:
Desire Motor is a series of 12 interconnected works that transform material objects to embody the dissonance between internal desires and external realities. To date, six pieces have been completed: Beast, One of You Is Fake, Thirst, Thesis Things Do Not Bellow Long Together, Precipice, and Decay Delay. This series is the culmination of years of research and practice as a performer, choreographer, and scientist. In each piece, I adopt multiple roles—choreographer, performer, writer, fabricator, and filmmaker—tailored to the specific demands of the work.
·Thresholds is a collaborative installation-performance hybrid, born from a desire to work across disciplines within science, social justice, disability awareness, and art. This project uses movement, sound, film, and text to explore the diversity of human consciousness and sensory processing at the boundaries of perception. In 2023, I directed the short film Waiting for the Bus as a way to engage audiences in dialogue.
Curatorial Programming: Throughout my career, I have cultivated a curatorial practice that fosters community, supports artists, and stimulates dialogue at the intersection of art and science. These programs aim to: 1) unite artists and scientists to inspire new dimensions in their practices; 2) introduce audiences to innovative artists and scientists; and 3) create a supportive environment where both artists and audiences can explore ideas collaboratively.
Over the past 22 years, I’ve worked as both a solo dance artist and a collaborator across a wide range of disciplines, including neuroscience, medicine, architecture, theater, music, and visual art. From 2010 to 2014, my mentor, interdisciplinary artist and athlete Torben Ulrich, profoundly influenced my understanding of art history, practices, and approaches. His guidance challenged me to continuously explore new constraints and possibilities, deepening my choreographic practice and helping me embody the sensation and philosophy of non-binary thinking.
I invite audiences to engage with my work in ways that resist quick conclusions or easy explanations. My goal is to provoke curiosity and inspire a sense of expansion through visceral interactions with bodies, materials, and spaces. This requires developing new forms of invitation and interaction that foster a more flexible understanding of what art experiences can be.
Extended Biography
Beth Graczyk is a choreographer, a performer, and a scientist. For the past 22 years, Graczyk has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Japan, Ecuador, France and India, participating in over 50 dance projects both as a dancer and a choreographer. Concurrently, she has contributed to 10 science publications in the field of cancer research, including a first author paper in Analytical Biochemistry.
Graczyk began generating work through practicing and performing improvisation with dancers and experimental musicians between 2002-2008 in Seattle. During this period, she produced several one-off events and series, including 12 Hour Play, a non-stop durational improvisation with dancers and musicians, running from 6pm-6am. Her primary music collaborators and co-producers were Jason E. Anderson & Tom Baker. In 2008, Graczyk shifted focus to choreography, with the desire to generate performances that contained kinetic and imagistic realizations of visual, sonic and narrative ideas. Having come from an improvisation background, Graczyk interweaved improvisation, creating hybrid set & un-set performance pieces. She co-founded/co-directed the Seattle-based company Salt Horse (2008-2016) with choreographer Corrie Befort and musician Angelina Baldoz. Together, they generated 4 evening-length works, 4 commissions, and toured nationally. In 2016, Graczyk started a new performance company with Befort. They premiered Rose Blue, in 2016 at Triskelion Arts in New York and toured to BASE in Seattle.
In 2012, Graczyk met up with Torben Ulrich, a Danish icon and transdisciplinary artist who initiated a project with Graczyk and Baldoz called Cacophony for 8 Players. This work developed over a period of 2 years with Ulrich proposing extensive research on the ideas of 8 artistic voices of the past including Bharata Muni and Maya Deren. Ulrich challenged Graczyk to understand these voices and their ideas through their own writing and utilize them as a landscape for creating a new work. Ulrich radically shifted the nature of Graczyk’s approach to choreography by continuously posing new challenges and constraints, and through infusing the sensation and practice of non-binary thinking.
In 2014, Graczyk worked with palliative care doctor and composer Hope Wechkin. This collaboration became The Withing Project, which examines the question of how we connect to ourselves and others focusing on end-of-life care and connection. This project was with director Cathy Madden and neuroscientist Leanna Standish. Graczyk taught movement practices developed from the process of choreographing for this work to medical students at the University of Michigan.
With a relocation to New York City in fall 2014 from Seattle, Graczyk launched a project consisting of primarily solos, called Desire Motor. Coming from an extensive history of collaboration, Graczyk wished to find space for a solitary creative practice around the nature of desire, and how humans dislocate or blend their innate internal desires, wants, and longings with an external reality. She has created 6 works in the series: Beast, One of You Is Fake, Thirst, Thesis Things Do Not Bellow Long Together, Precipice, and Decay Delay: Cycles of Formation. These works have been supported in development through New Arts Program (PA), a Marble House Residency (VT), and an AIRspace Studio Residency at Abrons Arts Center and have been produced and presented by Gibney (Work Up 3.0), La MaMa Moves Festival, Oye Group, Pioneers Go East Collective, CPR, Movement Research, Chez Bushwick, and Jack.
As a dancer, Beth has worked extensively with several dance artists including Sara Shelton Mann (2014-Present), the feath3r theory (2014-2017), Mark Haim (2011-2015), Scott/Powell Performance (2005-2011) Locate Performance Group (2002-2006), Sheri Cohen & Co. (2000-2004), and Corrie Befort (2003-2005).
Graczyk earned a double degree in Dance and Molecular Biology in 2002 from the University of Washington in Seattle. She worked as a Research Scientist in biochemistry at the University of Washington from 2002-2014 and at The Rockefeller University since 2014. Her work as a scientist has traversed molecular and structural studies of cell division with Dr. Trisha Davis, structural studies of blood coagulation factors associated with human disease with Dr. Jan Breslow, visual perception studies with neuroscientist Dr. Guadalupe Astorga, and currently structural studies in olfactory receptors in insects in the laboratory of Dr. Vanessa Ruta. Graczyk has given talks on the creative process in dance and science and with her former boss, the department chair of Biochemistry, Trisha Davis.
* Photo credit - Effyography
Three interdisciplinary projects exemplify my principles, practices, and experimental performances:
Desire Motor is a series of 12 interconnected works that transform material objects to embody the dissonance between internal desires and external realities. To date, six pieces have been completed: Beast, One of You Is Fake, Thirst, Thesis Things Do Not Bellow Long Together, Precipice, and Decay Delay. This series is the culmination of years of research and practice as a performer, choreographer, and scientist. In each piece, I adopt multiple roles—choreographer, performer, writer, fabricator, and filmmaker—tailored to the specific demands of the work.
·Thresholds is a collaborative installation-performance hybrid, born from a desire to work across disciplines within science, social justice, disability awareness, and art. This project uses movement, sound, film, and text to explore the diversity of human consciousness and sensory processing at the boundaries of perception. In 2023, I directed the short film Waiting for the Bus as a way to engage audiences in dialogue.
Curatorial Programming: Throughout my career, I have cultivated a curatorial practice that fosters community, supports artists, and stimulates dialogue at the intersection of art and science. These programs aim to: 1) unite artists and scientists to inspire new dimensions in their practices; 2) introduce audiences to innovative artists and scientists; and 3) create a supportive environment where both artists and audiences can explore ideas collaboratively.
Over the past 22 years, I’ve worked as both a solo dance artist and a collaborator across a wide range of disciplines, including neuroscience, medicine, architecture, theater, music, and visual art. From 2010 to 2014, my mentor, interdisciplinary artist and athlete Torben Ulrich, profoundly influenced my understanding of art history, practices, and approaches. His guidance challenged me to continuously explore new constraints and possibilities, deepening my choreographic practice and helping me embody the sensation and philosophy of non-binary thinking.
I invite audiences to engage with my work in ways that resist quick conclusions or easy explanations. My goal is to provoke curiosity and inspire a sense of expansion through visceral interactions with bodies, materials, and spaces. This requires developing new forms of invitation and interaction that foster a more flexible understanding of what art experiences can be.
Extended Biography
Beth Graczyk is a choreographer, a performer, and a scientist. For the past 22 years, Graczyk has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Japan, Ecuador, France and India, participating in over 50 dance projects both as a dancer and a choreographer. Concurrently, she has contributed to 10 science publications in the field of cancer research, including a first author paper in Analytical Biochemistry.
Graczyk began generating work through practicing and performing improvisation with dancers and experimental musicians between 2002-2008 in Seattle. During this period, she produced several one-off events and series, including 12 Hour Play, a non-stop durational improvisation with dancers and musicians, running from 6pm-6am. Her primary music collaborators and co-producers were Jason E. Anderson & Tom Baker. In 2008, Graczyk shifted focus to choreography, with the desire to generate performances that contained kinetic and imagistic realizations of visual, sonic and narrative ideas. Having come from an improvisation background, Graczyk interweaved improvisation, creating hybrid set & un-set performance pieces. She co-founded/co-directed the Seattle-based company Salt Horse (2008-2016) with choreographer Corrie Befort and musician Angelina Baldoz. Together, they generated 4 evening-length works, 4 commissions, and toured nationally. In 2016, Graczyk started a new performance company with Befort. They premiered Rose Blue, in 2016 at Triskelion Arts in New York and toured to BASE in Seattle.
In 2012, Graczyk met up with Torben Ulrich, a Danish icon and transdisciplinary artist who initiated a project with Graczyk and Baldoz called Cacophony for 8 Players. This work developed over a period of 2 years with Ulrich proposing extensive research on the ideas of 8 artistic voices of the past including Bharata Muni and Maya Deren. Ulrich challenged Graczyk to understand these voices and their ideas through their own writing and utilize them as a landscape for creating a new work. Ulrich radically shifted the nature of Graczyk’s approach to choreography by continuously posing new challenges and constraints, and through infusing the sensation and practice of non-binary thinking.
In 2014, Graczyk worked with palliative care doctor and composer Hope Wechkin. This collaboration became The Withing Project, which examines the question of how we connect to ourselves and others focusing on end-of-life care and connection. This project was with director Cathy Madden and neuroscientist Leanna Standish. Graczyk taught movement practices developed from the process of choreographing for this work to medical students at the University of Michigan.
With a relocation to New York City in fall 2014 from Seattle, Graczyk launched a project consisting of primarily solos, called Desire Motor. Coming from an extensive history of collaboration, Graczyk wished to find space for a solitary creative practice around the nature of desire, and how humans dislocate or blend their innate internal desires, wants, and longings with an external reality. She has created 6 works in the series: Beast, One of You Is Fake, Thirst, Thesis Things Do Not Bellow Long Together, Precipice, and Decay Delay: Cycles of Formation. These works have been supported in development through New Arts Program (PA), a Marble House Residency (VT), and an AIRspace Studio Residency at Abrons Arts Center and have been produced and presented by Gibney (Work Up 3.0), La MaMa Moves Festival, Oye Group, Pioneers Go East Collective, CPR, Movement Research, Chez Bushwick, and Jack.
As a dancer, Beth has worked extensively with several dance artists including Sara Shelton Mann (2014-Present), the feath3r theory (2014-2017), Mark Haim (2011-2015), Scott/Powell Performance (2005-2011) Locate Performance Group (2002-2006), Sheri Cohen & Co. (2000-2004), and Corrie Befort (2003-2005).
Graczyk earned a double degree in Dance and Molecular Biology in 2002 from the University of Washington in Seattle. She worked as a Research Scientist in biochemistry at the University of Washington from 2002-2014 and at The Rockefeller University since 2014. Her work as a scientist has traversed molecular and structural studies of cell division with Dr. Trisha Davis, structural studies of blood coagulation factors associated with human disease with Dr. Jan Breslow, visual perception studies with neuroscientist Dr. Guadalupe Astorga, and currently structural studies in olfactory receptors in insects in the laboratory of Dr. Vanessa Ruta. Graczyk has given talks on the creative process in dance and science and with her former boss, the department chair of Biochemistry, Trisha Davis.
* Photo credit - Effyography