Kathy Westwater has choreographically pursued experimental dance forms since 1996. Her work responds to the social landscape in which it manifests, often by taking up our most challenging experiences such as pain and illness, as with her Bessie-nominated Rambler, Worlds Worlds A Part (2019). With other major works she has explored the built environments of monuments (Anywhere, 2016) and landfills and parks (PARK, 2008-present); war and body horror (Macho, 2008); intersections of human and animal culture (twisted, tack, broken, 2005); psycho-physical states of fear (Dark Matter 2002); and interactive virtual environments (The Fortune Cookie Dance, 1999). In 2022 she premiered PARK Ephemera, an exhibition of multi-media work from her fifteen-year inquiry into Fresh Kills Landfill, once the largest landfill in the world. Westwater is the recipient of the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, the first woman to receive the prize. She lives in the Bronx with her husband.
ID: A photo of dancers in motion. In the foregrounded and in profile, the long hair of a dancer whose eyes are closed is suspended above her head.; other dancers behind her are doing individuated movement, seemingly striking or grasping the air. Photo by Ian Douglas.