Kendra Portier

About the Artist

Kendra Portier is an NYC + DC-area based maker, teacher, and performer. The projects she takes on are primarily dance works that evolve through her visual arts practice and transdisciplinary interest in mathematics, science, pedagogy and somatics. Alongside choreographed works, her creative projects manifest through work(s) on paper, including collage, screen-printing, and mixed-media design. Portier's current project explores Color though three intertwined performance-print installments: magenta (Burnish, premiere 2019-20 season), green, and saturation.  Portier's choreography has been presented internationally; receiving multiple awards including 2012 Harkness Choreographer in Residence (NYC), 2012 Dance New Amsterdam Splice Commission, 2013 Bates Dance Festival Emerging Choreographer (ME), 2014 Arts for the People Grant (NJ), 2014 Gowanus Arts + Production Artist (NYC), 2015 Caroline H. Newhouse Scholarship, 2015 CRAWL Artist at Gowanus Loft Residency, 2015 and 2018 Tisch Dance Space Grant (NYC), 2015-2018 University Fellowship Block Grant (IL), 2016 Mary Elizabeth Hamstrong Award (IL), and for her current research, intertwining Color Theory and Choreography (Burnish: Magenta #01-03), the 2018 Wanda M. Nettl Prize for Choreography (IL). She has held faculty and guest artist positions at numerous dance programs, and is Artist in Residence at the University of Maryland. She holds a BFA from the Ohio State University and an MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

Artist's Statement

Dance is a revelatory vehicle. I create visceral performance experiences by shaping + juxtaposing emotion, sound, space, and movement. I draw from my visual art practice and use varied degrees of autobiography and abstraction to open a unique poetic vein. Each process is a way for me to make sense of experiencing the world; piece by piece. I am haunted by the complexity of basic human themes and attracted to concepts often considered metaphysical. This leads me to explore concepts such as evacuation, familial trauma, color, Dressage, and ambition. I construct maniacally complex patterns that are difficult to get through and pierce formality with something more feral, alive, and intimate. Disorienting physical scores send the performers wildly plummeting through the space. Overdone hugs, excessive flapping, and the useless skill of catching a ball between the chin and chest, become tasks to acquire attention rather than experience Love. Ambition is animated into an absurd physical poem, wherein failed lifts crash into humorous and heartbreaking piles. By doing this work, I put faith in the body as an intuitive guide, unearth strategies for navigating the present, and confront beauty, apathy, patience, and chaos. I trust the choreographic process and methodically comb, smash, and rebuild the material in detail. I do this to test the limits of the material and to propose that such unyielding labor and generous attention is transformative. I am constantly negotiating the possible outcomes and the necessity of this work. This inspires me to work towards untangling concepts of self and move towards a more radically defined social choreography. And to do so, by making dances.