Bridget Ryan is from Davis, IL and received her B.A. in Dance and International Studies from Denison University in 2019. She has worked with choreographers including Molly Shanahan, Sandra Mathern-Smith, Kat Gurley, Celia Perarnaud, Brandon Welch, Michael J. Morris, Umeshi Rajeendra, Momar Ndiaye, and Julie Fox. In 2020, Bridget was based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where she taught contemporary dance at the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Mesh Academy of Dance, and several other local schools and studios. Bridget has presented work at the Detroit Dance City Festival's Choreographers Showcase, Rooted Residency, and in Mariposa Collective productions. She is curious about dance as a practice of holding multiplicities, cultivating presence and connection (with the earth, space, others, self), and expanding possibility. She finds daily joy in the way that her body experiences and responds to life. Currently based in Boulder, Colorado, Bridget dances as a freelance artist and is Executive Director and a company dancer with Wild Heart Dance.
About the Work
My current work and research interests exist at the intersection of contemporary dance, improvisation, and somatic curiosity. I am interested in rigor and sustainability: in how we can practice, make, and perform with depth, attention, and care for the bodies involved. I am curious about stillness, the possibilities that emerge when we give something our full attention and commitment, and what becomes perceptible when we slow down or push the capacities of the body.
I make dances about the experience of being human in a body. I am drawn to the irreproducibility of live performance and the intimate relationship between audience and performer: the shared act of seeing, being seen, and attending to what is happening now. I consider the relationship between audience and performer as an active exchange of attention. I am interested in dancing with others as a practice of (re-)imagining relationships, negotiation, and discovery.
Writing and literature continually inform my thinking, as does the complexity and contradiction of human experience. Through improvisation and embodied inquiry, I seek to create spaces for presence, sincerity, curiosity, and possibility.