PAT GRANEY COMPANY

Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney received Choreography Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts for 11 consecutive years, as well as from Artist Trust, the Washington State Arts Commission, the NEA International Program, National Corporate Fund for Dance and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2008, Ms. Graney was awarded both the Alpert Award and a US Artists Award in Dance. In 2011 Ms. Graney was the recipient of the ‘Arts Innovator’ Award from Artist Trust and the Dale Chihuly Foundation, and was honored to receive the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award 2013-2017. In 1981, Graney presented her first full evening of work entitled ‘go red go red, laugh white,’ set to the writing of Gertrude Stein. She went on to choreograph more work to Stein’s writing as well as the writing of Julio Cortazar and Raymond Carver. Departing from the written word, Graney started exploring the use of music combined with American Sign Language to create Colleen Ann, a work commissioned for the French/American Dance Exchange in 1986. In 1987, with Beliz Brother, she created a work for 7 gymnasts on 7 sets of uneven parallel bars, set against the backdrop of Marymoor Park in Seattle and in 1988 Graney created an original work for Pacific NW Ballet. Seven/Uneven toured to the Serious Fun Festival at Lincoln Center and went on to appear at MayFest in Glasgow in 1991. Following the gymnastic works, Ms. Graney began to create a body of work related to women with Faith (1991), Sleep (1995), and Tattoo (2001). In between creating this Triptych of works, Ms. Graney created the full evening work Vivaldi, choreographed 150 gymnasts for the Goodwill Games, and worked with 130 female martial artists for the Movement Meditation Project in 1996. Following the 12-city national tour of Tattoo, Graney created the Vivian girls (set to the artwork of Henry Darger) with music by Martin Hayes and Amy Denio. In 2008, Graney created House of Mind, an installation performance work set in a 5000 square foot raw space featuring an eighteen foot high wall containing 4000 miniatures, a wall of 100,000 buttons with water flowing over it, a closet of giant little girls’ dresses, hundreds of gold shoes, a 50 x 4 foot-long room covered with 1940’s police reports and a large scale video installation by Ellen Bromberg. Ms. Graney’s interest in working with incarcerated women began in 1992 while touring the US and abroad with Faith, a contemporary dance work. Keeping the Faith (KTF) is a non-religious arts-based residency program that features dance, expository writing, American Sign Language and visual arts, and culminates in performances. This project has been conducted in over 20 prisons in the US and abroad. Keeping the Faith/The Prison Project is one of the longest-running prison arts programs in the US. Ms. Graney premiered the new work Girl Gods at On the Boards in Seattle and the work toured to Montclair State, NJ, Munich, Germany, Los Angeles and Miami. In 2016 Girl Gods won 2 New York Dance and Performance Awards known as ‘Bessies’, one for Best Overall Production and one for Visual Design. In 2017 Ms. Graney began work on ATTIC, the 3rd piece in the House of Mind Trilogy during a residency at CalArts in June. A site-specific work, ATTIC was set to premiere in June of 2020 but is premiering in 2022, due to Covid-19. Ms. Graney was selected for a ‘Crosscut Courage Award’ from Seattle’s Public Television Station KCTS in Arts