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Shannon Gillen

Headshot Shannon Gillen

Shannon Gillen is one of NYC’s most sought after choreographers with an established and passionate audience following and commissions at prestigious national and international venues including Treffpunkt-Rotebuehlplatz, Springboard Danse Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, HERE Arts Center, Judson Church, Tangente Theater with the Montreal Fringe Festival, PULSE Art Fair as part of Art Basel in Miami, the Joyce SoHo season and as a finalist in the The AWARD Show!, with LMCC’s Sitelines Series as part of NYC’s River to River Festival, Bryant Park Presents, Festival Oltre Passo in Italy, The Juilliard School, and Steps Repertory Company for the The Joyce Theater and Jacob’s Pillow, among others. In a 2013 Brooklyn Magazine article that named her as one of city’s top twenty artists, Gillen was championed for her ’emotionally compelling’ work that ‘transcends the things it references and achieves a sort of platonic ideal of intelligent and elevated movement’. Gillen recently returned to NYC from Europe to found the dance theater company VIM VIGOR. You can learn more about the company’s initiatives and progress while staying up to date on upcoming events, workshops, job opportunities, and auditions by visiting our website www.vimvigordance.com to sign up for our mailing list.

shannon gillen dance

Before returning to NYC, Shannon danced as a full time company member for the esteemed Johannes Wieland Company at the Staatstheater Kassel, Germany. She danced in 56 international performances and was singled out in the press for being ‘in top form, a feat of strength’ (HNA, German News). While dancing in Germany, Gillen burst into the choreographic scene receiving 3rd Prize at the International Solo-Tanz Competition in Stuttgart and commissions at the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg and the TIF Theater in Kassel. She was also selected as a THINK BIG choreographer in residence with the Staatsoper in Hannover, creating a piece that premiered at the TANZ Theater International Festival. After returning to the United States, she was commissioned by NYU/Tisch and SUNY Purchase and was noted in The Brooklyn Rail for her ‘fierce physicality and rigorous inquisitiveness in her work.’ These latest creations premiered at the Pepsico Arts Center and New York Live Arts this past Spring.

Gillen graduated from The Juilliard School with her BFA (2003) and from Tisch School of the Arts/NYU (2013), where she was awarded a full fellowship to obtain her MFA. Dedicated to the advancement of movement based education, Gillen is a leading contemporary dance teacher with a large following of dancers in both the professional and higher education arenas. She holds faculty teaching positions at SUNY Purchase College, Mark Morris Dance Center, Peridance Capezio Center and Gibney Dance, and is a regular guest teaching artist at The Juilliard School, The Hartt School, and New York University/Tisch School of the Arts. She is also on faculty at the Movement Invention Project at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a program dedicated to developing the improvisational and creative skills of tomorrow’s dancers.

V/M V/GOR: www.vimvigordance.com

shannon gillen dance class

Class Description

VIM VIGOROUS CONTEMPORARY FORMS

CLASS a physical and emotional rendering of form. Activating both athlete and artist, we will begin by generating heat throughout the body via tactile engagement of the skin, lush body-weight conditioning, and grounding exercises that draw forth the body’s natural liquid state. We will continue with floorwork sequences that explore the body’s natural stealth and sequential spine-focused exercises that reference gyrotonic principles of stabilization through contrasting directional forces, curvilinear motion and breath. This training is simultaneously coupled with improvisational and awareness propositions that aim to awaken the senses and their direct relationship with the moving body. Emphasizing strength and stamina while supporting healthy alignment, the class builds into long and complex phrase work drawn from Gillen’s latest research, affording dancers the opportunity to dig deep into the resources of the body while traversing surprising and challenging landscapes of size, direction, tone and texture. Sweat, surprise and full-bodied ardor awaits.

all studio colored photos: David Flores

black and white photo and performance photo: Staatstheater Kassel