Artist Statement
As a choreographer and bench scientist I engage with the potential alignments and incongruencies of what is seemingly concrete facts with what is felt and observed within the human experience. At the core of my work is intersectional dialogue with others focusing on experiences that are often ignored including female-identified, neurodiverse, LGBTQIA+, and non-human forms in nature. Structures are initiated from visceral experiences of the interplay between perception and materiality relating to uncertainty, vulnerability, pleasure, and connection.
Beth Graczyk Productions, currently supports 3 projects:
Extended Biography
Beth Graczyk is a choreographer, a performer, and a scientist. For the past 19 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 3 works in the series: Beast, One of You Is Fake, andThirst. 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, and Jack. She has begun to build a 4th piece in the series Thesis Things Do Not Bellow Long Together which will show at Chez Bushwick as part of the Exponential Festival Jan 2020.
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. Until recently, the bulk of her research has been in basic science on cell division. 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
As a choreographer and bench scientist I engage with the potential alignments and incongruencies of what is seemingly concrete facts with what is felt and observed within the human experience. At the core of my work is intersectional dialogue with others focusing on experiences that are often ignored including female-identified, neurodiverse, LGBTQIA+, and non-human forms in nature. Structures are initiated from visceral experiences of the interplay between perception and materiality relating to uncertainty, vulnerability, pleasure, and connection.
Beth Graczyk Productions, currently supports 3 projects:
- Desire Motor, a solo project series of 12 works which embodies the dissonances arising between internal wants and external realities through material transformation of objects and movement. To date, 5 of 12 have been made: Beast, One of You Is Fake, Thirst, Thesis Things Bellow Long Together, and Precipice.
- Thresholds, a collaboration with neuroscientist Guadalupe Astorga, composer Aaron Gabriel, and actor Michael Wolfe. Spanning science and art, this project instigates dialogue on the diversity of sensory processing with a special focus on the application of top down perception as a mode of researching neurodiversity.
- Sunday Sessions, curated by Graczyk. Public improvisation workshops featuring diverse dance artists which rigorously utilize improvisation in their artistic work and have a teaching practice.
Extended Biography
Beth Graczyk is a choreographer, a performer, and a scientist. For the past 19 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 3 works in the series: Beast, One of You Is Fake, andThirst. 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, and Jack. She has begun to build a 4th piece in the series Thesis Things Do Not Bellow Long Together which will show at Chez Bushwick as part of the Exponential Festival Jan 2020.
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. Until recently, the bulk of her research has been in basic science on cell division. 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