Rachel Bernsen
Choreographer
Teacher
OPEN TO INQUIRIES ABOUT:
Teaching
Choreographing
BIO:

I am a choreographer, dancer, educator and certified Alexander Technique teacher. My work reflects an ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary practice, collaboration, and experimentation. I'm currently originating a series of interdisciplinary Dialogues with a range of artists as a starting point for the development of a larger project. In July 2023 I was the choreographer for the first full production of the new musical NOISE, by César Alvarez, directed by Sarah Benson. An avid improvisor, I recently toured Germany and Belgium, performing with cellist and composer, Tomeka Reid, dancer Ayako Kato, and special guests including the saxophonist Caroline Davis and bassist Joe Morris. I also make dance films and hand-drawn animations.

 

In 2019, I performed with Yvonne Rainer and Emily Coates in a reconstruction of Rainer's Parts of Some Sextets (a seminal work from 1965) at Performa 19. In 2018 I made a piece with ten healthcare workers and caregivers, I Know You So Well, A Sound and Movement Choir for People Who Work in Healthcare, a multi-disciplinary work of movement, text, voice, in collaboration with writer Rachel Kauder Nalebuff.

 

I'm a founding member of Masters of Ceremony, an interdisciplinary collective with dancer/choreographer Melanie Maar and composer/performers Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. I've created multiple performance works with visual artist Megan Craig including Traveling In Place (2017) for The Yale University Art Gallery and Colorada (2015) for Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim in Neuenhaus, Germany.

 

I've worked with composer Anthony Braxton on multiple projects, including as choreographer for his Sonic Genome Project (Torino Jazz Festival, Torino, Italy), as choreographer and performer for his opera Trillium J (Roulette, NYC) and as a performer in his interdisciplinary Pine Top Aerial Music project. Other collaborative works with musicians and composers include vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, bagpipes player Matthew Welch and numerous projects with bassist and electronics artist Carl Testa and vocalist Anne Rhodes. I've been choreographer/movement director for other theatre works including Rachel Kauder Nalebuff's A Knock on the Door for the Reimagine Festival, and most recently for a production of A Christmas Carol, at Northern Stage in VT, adapted and directed by Carol Dunne.

 

I've presented work in New York City at The Austrian Cultural Forum's Moving Sounds Festival, Arts For Art, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop (NYLA), Roulette, The Chocolate Factory, The Vision Festival, Issue Project Room, Movement Research Spring Festival, Catch! Performance Series, The Poetry Project, The NOT Festival, Dixon Place, Jalopy Theater, and Movement Research at the Judson Church. In New Haven at the Yale University Art Gallery, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Artspace New Haven. I have been presented internationally at De Studio Sound in Motion Series and at The Free Music Festival in Antwerp, Belgium; Vienna, Austria; Amsterdam,The Netherlands; Bologna, Italy, and in Cologne and Kassel Germany.

 

I've taught at Yale School of Art, Bennington College, Trinity College, Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts, Miami Dade College (MDC Live Arts Lab), Yale University, Wesleyan University, Texas Woman's University, Dartmouth College, Movement Research, Tsekh Moscow Dance Agency Summer Dance Festival, Moscow, Russia, and in the dance department at The Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) high school. Since 2008, I've maintained a private practice in the Alexander Technique.