Linda Austin Dance

Bio

Linda Austin, co-founder & director of Performance Works NorthWest in Portland, Oregon, began making performance and dance in 1983, when her first piece was presented at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church. As an active participant in the downtown New York dance and performance community until 1998, Austin presented work at Performance Space 122, the Danspace Project, the Kitchen, and Movement Research at Judson Church. From 1992 to 1994 she lived and made work in Mexico, returning in Mexico City in 1998 for a two-month residency sponsored by Movement Research and funded by the U.S./Mexico Culture Fund.

In 1998, needing a more expansive and stable environment for the creation of work, Austin moved to Portland, Oregon, bought a small church, and with lighting designer Jeff Forbes, converted the space into a dance studio cum small performance venue and founded the performing arts non-profit Performance Works Northwest. PWNW serves as parent organization for Linda Austin Dance as well as the catalyst for other projects such as the 2008 Tuning Project, curated by Karen Nelson, which brought Tuning Score innovator Lisa Nelson and Contact Improvisation founder Steve Paxton, to work intensively with a group of talented dancer/improvisors from around the country. Since her move back to the west coast, Austin’s performance has  been presented at PWNW, Conduit, On the Boards’ Northwest New Works, Velocity, and PICA’s TBA Festival, while making occasional forays back to NYC.

Awards include the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Merce Cunningham Award (2017), a Fellowship in Performing Arts from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (2014), as well as Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1992) and the Oregon Arts Commission (2007 & 2019). Her work has been supported by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and Movement Research, as well as residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, PICA’s Creative Exchange Lab, the Ellis Beauregard Foundation and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Her writing has appeared in Berm, The Movement Research Performance Journal, the literary journal FO A RM and a 2003 collection from MIT Press, Women, Art & Technology.

Portfolio: Current and Recent Projects

External links

• VIDEOS OF RECENT WORK
• A 2014 interview with Linda by Emmaly Wiederholt with photos by Gregory Bartning

Selected Past Projects

• (Un)Made: making, unmaking, transforming and transmitting ourselves and performance material in a three-part multi-year project that begin with the 2015 Solo Relay Series, continued in 2016 with the last bell rings for you, culminating in 2017 & 2020 with two versions of a world, a world. See more at unmade.net
• The Word Hand, a collaborative performative drawing project with Linda Hutchins and Pat Boas, which premiered in October 2014 at PWNW.
• Hummingbird, an “overtly silly and deadly serious” solo transforming failure into moments of beauty, laughter and pathos. Premiered in June  2014 at Seattle’s NW New Works Festival at On the Boards.
• Three Trick Pony, a collaboration with sculptor David Eckard and composer Doug Theriault that premiered in September 2013 at PICA’s TBA Festival in Portland.
• A head of time (2012), an evening-length work for 8 performers and 300 blankets that churned up movement, sound, video, and text in its probing of internal and external time. A 6-week installation of this project was featured at The Art Gym in April 2011, part of an exhibit devoted to the choreographic process titled “Dance: before, after, during.”

Gallery