Abigail Levine

Abigail Levine is a choreographer and writer working in New York City. Her work is rooted in dance, but moves across media—performance, text, drawing, sound. Her multi-year commissions, Redactions (Chocolate Factory Theater, 2022) and Restagings (Fridman Gallery, 2017-2019) have been supported by fellowships and residencies at MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Los Angeles Performance Practice, Target Margin Theater, and Center for Performance Research, and project and emergency grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts and New Music USA. Abigail collaborated with pioneering electronics composer Alvin Lucier on a staging of his Orpheus Variations (ISSUE Project Room, 2020) and performed with both Marina Abramovic and Yvonne Rainer in their retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art. Abigail’s critical writing has been published in Documents in Contemporary Art, Art21, Women & Performance, Performance Art Journal (PAJ), Movement Research Performance Journal, and her creative works in Interim Poetics, Peripheries, La Vague Journal, and Imagined Theatres. Abigail has taught in the Dance Departments at Wesleyan University and Florida State University and is currently on faculty at The New School and University of Texas at Austin’s UTNY program. Abigail's latest work, Six Quiet Dogs, will premiere in 2025. 

Long bio

Abigail Levine is a choreographer and writer working in New York City. Her work is rooted in dance, but moves across media—performance, text, drawing, sound. Abigail's work probes the cultural legacy of minimal and conceptual art, an engagement marked by both kinship and critique.

Levine’s multi-year projects, Redactions and Restagings, have been supported by MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grants, New Music USA project grants, and the Center for Performance Research Mellon Artist in Residence program. They premiered at The Chocolate Factory Theater (2022) and Fridman Gallery (2017, 2018, 2019) respectively.

Past works have been presented throughout the US, in Cuba, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Greece and Taiwan at venues including Movement Research Festival, Mount Tremper Arts Festival, Danspace Project, Roulette, Gibney Dance, The Kennedy Center, Human Resources LA, Trinosophes Detroit, and internationally at SESC São Paulo, Benaki Museum (Athens), Hemispheric Institute Encuentro (Montreal), Prisma Forum (Mexico), Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (Cairo), Festival Escenario Urbano (Caracas), Días de la Danza (Havana) and Taipei Fringe.

Levine performed with both Marina Abramovic (2010) and Yvonne Rainer (2018) in their retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art and collaborated with pioneering electronics composer Alvin Lucier on a staging of his Orpheus Variations at ISSUE Project Room in 2020. She has also performed in the work of Clarinda Mac Low, Carolee Schneemann, Asad Raza, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Will Rawls, and Mark Dendy. Levine regularly works in close collaboration with composers, sound artists, and improvisors, including Judith Berkson, Derek Bermel, Erik DeLuca, Paula Matthusen, Dave Ruder, Cleek Schrey, and Tyshawn Sorey.

Levine’s critical writing has been published in Documents in Contemporary Art, Art21, Performance Art Journal (PAJ), Movement Research Performance Journal, and her creative works in Interim Poetics, Peripheries Journal, Women & Performance, and Imagined Theatres. She was the 2013-15 editor of Movement Research's digital performance journal Critical Correspondence. Levine is a founder and performance curator of New Ear, Inc. at Fridman Gallery.

Levine holds a Masters in Dance and Performance Studies from New York University under the advisement of André Lepecki. She has taught in the Dance Departments at Wesleyan University and Florida State University and at the College of Fine Arts at University of Texas at Austin’s UTNY program. She is currently on faculty at The New School’s College of Performing Arts.