“The piece began with a dreamy, quiet, and specifically delicate quality. I became absorbed into the dawning of this world… The unexpected humor, their rage, then their touching connection and empathy. It was over too soon.”
— Austin Selden, dance-maker on A Body (Un)Becoming
— Austin Selden, dance-maker on A Body (Un)Becoming
A Body (Un) Becoming
Thank you to all who came out to our performances!
“Every moment in this dance happens either at the pace of discovery or evolution, leaving a lot of time for the viewer’s mind to drift in and out of our own imaginative landscapes” - Alyza DelPan-Monley, Seattle Dance (2025)
Read our feature in Lavender Magazine by Shane Lueck
Read an interview of our collaborators in Hill & Lake Press by Josie Owens
Read an interview by David Anderson in AnderScene
Read our feature in Lavender Magazine by Shane Lueck
Read an interview of our collaborators in Hill & Lake Press by Josie Owens
Read an interview by David Anderson in AnderScene
A Body (Un)Becoming is a dance duet with live musicians that explores the tension between decay and transformation. In this performance, the body meets disintegrating materials through acts of touch, labor, and experimentation. The piece investigates what new forms can emerge through pressure, heat, and attention which is also reflected in the kinetic sculptures made from eggshells. By animating overlooked materials—including an aging female-identified body— the work challenges fixed ideas of being and utility: fragile, reforming, and ongoing.
Directed by Beth Graczyk
Performed by Leah Wilks, Beth Graczyk, cellist Laura Sewell & vocalist Thomasina Petrus
Music by Aaron Gabriel
Lighting Design: Jeff Forbes (Portland), ILVS STRAUSS (Seattle), Mike Grogan (Minneapolis)
Costumes Asa Thornton
Photos by Effy Grey
Directed by Beth Graczyk
Performed by Leah Wilks, Beth Graczyk, cellist Laura Sewell & vocalist Thomasina Petrus
Music by Aaron Gabriel
Lighting Design: Jeff Forbes (Portland), ILVS STRAUSS (Seattle), Mike Grogan (Minneapolis)
Costumes Asa Thornton
Photos by Effy Grey
Thank you for all who came to our recent Portland, Seattle & Minneapolis Shows!
Center for Performing Arts, Minneaplis, MN May 2026
Center for Performing Arts, Minneapolis, (Music residency) MN Nov 2025
Dekum Street Theater, Portland, OR, Oct 2025
BASE, Seattle, WA, Oct 2025
Center for Performing Arts, Minneaplis, MN May 2026
Center for Performing Arts, Minneapolis, (Music residency) MN Nov 2025
Dekum Street Theater, Portland, OR, Oct 2025
BASE, Seattle, WA, Oct 2025
Beth Graczyk is a choreographer, educator, scientist, writer and Artistic Director of Beth Graczyk Productions.
Her interdisciplinary practice explores the friction between concrete knowledge and the more elusive, felt experiences of the body. Drawing on themes of uncertainty, materiality, and perception, she creates structures rooted in visceral impulses that foreground perspectives often overlooked, including femme identifying, neurodivergent, LGBTQIA2+ bodies, and non human forms.
At the core of her work is an attention to vulnerability, connection, and the layered interplay of histories, evolutionary, psychological, and cultural, that shape embodied experience. Through an ongoing dialogue between dance, science, and material experimentation, Graczyk creates spaces where language recedes and the body becomes both a site of transformation and a witness to the natural world.
She is drawn to both human and non human forms through the visceral imagination, with a particular interest in communicating the tactility of touch across dance, performance, writing, and other media. Her work attends to how texture emerges through contact with oneself, with others, and with environment. Much of her research explores the body as a material site of tactile engagement, generating improvisational scores from language prompts such as, “Your spine tells a story, an echo of its history of having a tail and existing on all fours,” or “Crumble. Condense. Pressurize. Heat. Form fully. Repeat.” These prompts are lived through the body and, over time and sustained attention, refined through practices drawn from lineages such as Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores and Single Image work.
Her approach to directing has been shaped by practices of live direction, where directing emerges as an active dialogue rather than an imposition of form. She is interested in listening, shaping, and communicating in real time, attending to how meaning arises through ongoing exchange between performers, materials, and environment. Instability is not a problem to be resolved, but a generative condition. Her work investigates how coherence emerges through oscillations of action, image, and form, and how bodies continually adapt, transform, and find orientation within states of uncertainty.
Her interdisciplinary practice explores the friction between concrete knowledge and the more elusive, felt experiences of the body. Drawing on themes of uncertainty, materiality, and perception, she creates structures rooted in visceral impulses that foreground perspectives often overlooked, including femme identifying, neurodivergent, LGBTQIA2+ bodies, and non human forms.
At the core of her work is an attention to vulnerability, connection, and the layered interplay of histories, evolutionary, psychological, and cultural, that shape embodied experience. Through an ongoing dialogue between dance, science, and material experimentation, Graczyk creates spaces where language recedes and the body becomes both a site of transformation and a witness to the natural world.
She is drawn to both human and non human forms through the visceral imagination, with a particular interest in communicating the tactility of touch across dance, performance, writing, and other media. Her work attends to how texture emerges through contact with oneself, with others, and with environment. Much of her research explores the body as a material site of tactile engagement, generating improvisational scores from language prompts such as, “Your spine tells a story, an echo of its history of having a tail and existing on all fours,” or “Crumble. Condense. Pressurize. Heat. Form fully. Repeat.” These prompts are lived through the body and, over time and sustained attention, refined through practices drawn from lineages such as Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores and Single Image work.
Her approach to directing has been shaped by practices of live direction, where directing emerges as an active dialogue rather than an imposition of form. She is interested in listening, shaping, and communicating in real time, attending to how meaning arises through ongoing exchange between performers, materials, and environment. Instability is not a problem to be resolved, but a generative condition. Her work investigates how coherence emerges through oscillations of action, image, and form, and how bodies continually adapt, transform, and find orientation within states of uncertainty.
Desire Motor
Thresholds
Other Collaborations
Biography
Beth Graczyk (she/her) is a choreographer, director, performer, and educator who has been based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn) for the past 11 years. With a 24-year career as both an artist and scientist, Graczyk builds interdisciplinary bridges across fields. She is the Artistic Director of Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc. (BGP, founded 2020), a nonprofit that merges art and science while centering queer and neurodivergent perspectives. Since 2006, she has choreographed and presented work across the US and internationally (Japan, China, India), with presentations by Velocity Dance Center, Gibney, On the Boards, ODC, La MaMa, JACK, CPR, Movement Research amongst others. Her recent dance documentary Waiting for the Bus (2024) with Michael Wolfe was selected for NY Global Lift-Off, Sans Souci, Winter Film Festival, and the 2026 Minnesota Shorts Showcase. She has taught Improvisation, Composition, Contemporary Forms and Interdisciplinary Practice as a guest artist at University of Washington, University of Michigan, Peridance, Montclair University, De Sales University, and others. Her work has accerlerated in development through residencies at Marble House (VT), Vashon Island Residency (WA), and Hambidge (GA). She holds a double degree from the University of Washington in Dance & Molecular Biology and an MFA in Dance from Montclair (a recent 2026 graduate). In parallel, she is a biochemist & co-author of 11 science publications and currently conducts neuroscience sensory research in the Ruta Lab at The Rockefeller University. She has numerous artists including Corrie Befort, Torben Ulrich, John Maria Gutierrez (G^2), Aaron Gabriel, Amy Chavasse, and has danced for Sara Shelton Mann, Mark Haim, Raja Kelly, Molly Scott, K.J. Holmes among others. @bethgraczyk
Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc is a 501(c)(3) based in NYC
Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc is committed to anti-racism and de-colonization practices through self-education, community engagement, and sustaining connections and support with individuals and organizations engaging in the work.
Video & edit: Rooftop, Beth Graczyk
Photos: Effy Grey
Photos: Effy Grey