Gwen Welliver is a choreographer and dancer who works across performance, teaching, opera, and drawing. Since the 1990s she has been tracing various manifestations of line in performance and visual art asking us to think about form in terms of transition.
Welliver is a Bogliasco Foundation Fellow, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow and the recipient of a Van Cleef & Arpels Bogliasco Special Fellowship in Dance, Bogliasco and Baryshnikov Arts Center Joint Fellowship, and New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement. Her work has been generously supported by the American Dance Festival, Bennington College, Bogliasco Foundation, Center for Performance Research, Columbia University, Dance Theater Workshop Studio Series Commissioning and Creative Residency Program, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Fund, FSU’s Council on Research and Creativity, Gibney and the Howard Gilman Foundation, Guggenheim Museum Works & Process, La MaMa, Lincoln Center Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Mellon Foundation at Center for Performance Research, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, MIT Press’s PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Movement Research Fall Festival, Museum of Arts and Design, Nasher Museum, New Music USA’s Live Music for Dance Program, New York State Council for the Arts at Movement Research, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Program, New York Live Arts with support from the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Opening Nights and the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Suitcase Fund. Welliver’s choreography for opera premiered in visual artist and director Jennifer Wen Ma’s contemporary production, Paradise Interrupted, at the Spoleto Festival USA, with international touring at Lincoln Center Festival, Singapore Festival of Arts, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Taipei National Theatre and Concert Hall, and the MGM Cotai Theater. As Rehearsal Director for Trisha Brown (2000–2007), Welliver oversaw the company repertory throughout national and international touring, remounted Brown’s choreography for opera at La Monnaie/De Munt and Festival d’Aix-en Provence and directed the revival of seminal works for the touring exhibition Trisha Brown: Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1961–2001. Welliver is a ‘Bessie’ awardee for Sustained Achievement in Dancing for her decade of performance with Doug Varone and Dancers (1990-2000). Her dedication to teaching spans decades and four continents: the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Dance Faculty at Florida State University.
