Eliza Larson
Eliza Larson is a dance artist based in Portland, Oregon. She has been a choreographer and dancemaker for over 15 years. In addition to directing Fault Line Dance, she also co-directs the Mountain Empire Performance Collective, a long-distance dance company. Eliza is currently a member of FLOCK. She performs with Tahni Holt, whose new work Sensation/Disorientation will be presented by White Bird in January, 2017. Eliza received her MFA in Dance from Smith College where she was a Gretchen Moran Teaching Fellow in the Five College Dance Department.
As a choreographer, Eliza has been presented by Conduit Dance, Velocity Dance Center, PICA, FLOCK, Muddy Feet Dance Company, Evoke Productions, and the Southern Vermont Dance Festival. Her choreography has appeared across the country, most notably at Studio Two (OR), Velocity Dance Center (WA), The National Portrait Gallery (DC), Earthdance (MA), PortFringe (ME), and the Capital Fringe Festival (DC). Eliza graduated cum laude from St. Olaf College with majors in Dance and English before moving to the Pacific Northwest where she is an independent choreographer, performer, and teacher. She has performed in works by Kathleen Hermesdorf, Ohad Naharin, Colleen Thomas, Angie Hauser, Paul Matteson, Chris Aiken, Mark Haim, andAdele Myers among others. In 2013, Eliza was an inaugural member of CREAP - Creative Resident Engaged Artists of Ponderosa, an artist residency program in Stolzenhagen Germany. In February 2016, she was invited for a residency in Mazatlan, Mexico at EPDM under the direction of Omar Carrum to study Piso Movíl, mobile floor technique. Eliza has been a certified yoga instructor since 2011 and teaches yoga and dance throughout the Portland metro area.
Eliza is also a writer and scholar. Her writing has appeared in Kinebago, CQ, and DanceUSA. She co-curated a special folio for the Summer/Fall 2016 issue of Contact Quarterly, a journal devoted to performance and improvisation. Her writing also recently appeared in JODE, the Journal of Dance Education in a special issue on dance and technology and she is the author of Terpsichore’s Deck, a set of 52 choreographic cards to use in dance-making and choreography. Eliza's research on gender in dance has been presented at several conferences around the country including NDEO, CORD, and SDHS, and her chapter Behind the Curtain: Exploring Gender Equity in Dance Among Choreographers and Artistic Directors was recently published in Dance and Gender: An Evidence Based Approach, from the University of Florida press in February 2017.