Elisabeth Motley

Elisabeth Motley (she/her) is a crip/mad choreographer, scholar, and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work, through choreographic practices, seeks to understand how crip representations undermine legibility and instead celebrate indeterminable-ness. Motley examines embodiments and emindments of disability as original forms of creativity and, in turn, thinks through the crip/mad as a necessary cultural and political creative model. Elisabeth has been a 2019-2021 Movement Research Artist in Residence, a 2020 Dance/NYC Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellow and was a recipient of the 2018-2019 Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award. Motley has shared her work at Movement Research at Judson, Center for Performance Research, Danspace Project’s DraftWork, Arts Society of Kingston, Gibney Dance, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, HERE, Festival Oltre Passo – Italy, Springboard Danse Montreal, and The Whitney Museum among others.

Motley was a BAX Parent Space Grantee and has been an Artist in Residence at Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has performed the works of Pat Catterson, Yvonne Rainer and collaborated with Trisha Brown on an improvisational series. Elisabeth has received The Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stages Grant (2012, 2013) and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (2013, 2021). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Marymount Manhattan College and is studying toward a Dance Practice-as-Research Ph.D. at University of Roehampton, focusing on crip/disability studies.

[Image Description: elisabeth, cast in a neon green light, is twisted over the edge of a large wooden triangle. Pressing their cheek, forearms, breasts into asphalt – their feet and legs twist upward and behind them. elisabeth is wedged, surrounded by the topography of other large wooden triangles and rhizomes. Photo by Iki Nakagawa.]