Since 2006 we have collaborated somatically to create feminist statements that strive to break down heteropatriarchal racism and sexism through abstract dances that denounce the hypersexualization of the white ciswoman and speak out through her. Our non-hierarchical methodology processes content by filtering information between us; feelings are recognized and recreated physically through energetic transference and psychoanalytically through communication and mirroring. Our 8 collaborations premiered in NYC where we are committed to building sustainability for artists and directly serving marginalized families through lactation work, reproductive justice, and somatic improvisation workshops. Works: Durational Duet (The Invisible Dog Art Center, 2024), Zero Station (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, 2023), (gloria rehearsal (excerpt))LIVE (Jane Hotel, 2022), gloria rehearsal (excerpt) (Baryshnikov Arts Center, 2022), Gloria (Abrons Arts Center, 2021, and New York Live Arts, 2022), Body Comes Apart (New York Live Arts, 2019 and 2020, archived in The New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Division), Basketball (PS122 and Baryshnikov Arts Center), Rude World (PS122 and The Chocolate Factory Theater), Tulip (Roulette, 2013, Danspace Project, 2012), Beautiful Bone (The Chocolate Factory Theater, 2012). Residencies/Awards: 2023/2024 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Extended Life Award, 2021/2022 Artists in Residence at Movement Research, 2021 Jerome Hill Fellowship Finalists, 2020/2021 Jerome Foundation AIRSpace Residency at Abrons Art Center, 2019 FCA Emergency Grant, 2019 BACSpace Residency at Baryshnikov Art Center, 2018 Family Residency at Mt. Tremper Arts, 2018 Bessie Schonberg Fellows at The Yard, 2018 DiP Artists at Gibney, Featured in The New York Times “Best Dance of 2017”, 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance (Molly Lieber), 2016 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space Residency, 2013 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award Nomination Emerging Choreographer, 2013 NYFA Fellow Finalist Award. We have had the pleasure of teaching at Connecticut College (2015), Sarah Lawrence (2018), The New School (2019), and Pratt (2023), and at Sarah Lawrence again in Fall of 2023.

Molly Lieber received a 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance and was featured on the March 2016 cover of Dance Magazine’s Issue on New York’s Freelance Dance Stars. She has performed in works by luciana achugar, Donna Uchizono, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Maria Hassabi, Juliette Mapp, Wally Cardona, Vanessa Anspaugh, and others. Look out for her soon in upcoming performances by Antonio Ramos and the Gangbangers. She is a Distinguished Graduate Student Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a dual-degree MFA candidate in Dance with a Certificate in Women and Gender Studies. She teaches at Movement Research and works as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). Molly has two children, Ruby, 5, and Gloria, 2.

Eleanor Smith is a choreographer, freelance dancer, improviser, and teacher. She performed in the works of Ivy Baldwin Dance from 2009-2019, Molly Poerstel from 2013-2024, and Katie Workum Dance from 2013-2021. Eleanor has also performed in works by Vanessa Anspaugh, Anna Azrieli, Levi Gonzalez, Juliana F. May, Julie Mayo, and robbinschilds. She studied Authentic Movement with a group of artists called Duvet from 2020-2022. Outside of dance, Eleanor has studied with Resmaa Menakem and Bayo Akomolafe. Eleanor received her MFA (2023) with Honors in Dance at Hunter College, CUNY, where she also taught and served on the White Anti-Racist Caucus.

Teaching

Molly and Eleanor have been guest artists at Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Pratt University as well as adjunct faculty at The New School and Sarah Lawrence College. Molly has taught at Movement Research since 2015. As an IBCLC, Molly teaches lactation and reproductive justice classes. 

Current Teaching
Sarah Lawrence College, Fall 2023, Performance Project course:

In this course we will work together through improvisational movement scores and emergent performance explorations to create an original dance that is authored, in part, by all involved. Texts and readings of feminist scholarship will be used to underline the interdependence between them and our creative process. Systems of creation will be grown, researched and established together in collaborative processes. Among other things, to collaborate takes time, care, trust, dialogue, energetic transference, and a willingness. This way of working can cultivate sensitivity and class will use this to inform our experiences and practices of making and performance. -ES

This course builds a performance project with the artists Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith. As objects of their own work, since 2006, the artists position themselves as recognizable images of female objectification, only to deconstruct and reconstitute these forms through embodied movement and connection. There is a sense of reclaiming the image; sometimes it speaks out through itself or moves in unexpected ways, and sometimes it is deconstructed altogether. This process converses with shaping something from subjectivity as a feminist approach, as well as an understanding of feminism as an activation of voices that were silenced. Surveying feminist scholarship by Sara Ahmed, Gloria Anzaldúa, Marquis Bey, Eva Hayward, bell hooks, Jennifer Marchisotto, and Rebecca Solnit cites the intersecting presence of trauma within their scholarship and underlines the intrinsic relationship between trauma and transformation. A practice of companion text reports and reflective writing correlates to, or buoys, the embodied project of bringing the image back to life. Class will focus on embodied language, epistemologically trans rhetoric and crip rhetoric, as transgressions of binaristic systems, and to demonstrate words that come from bodies and create new bodies of language. -ML

Collaborators

Thomas Dunn designs lighting throughout US and abroad. Gloria is Thomas’ third production with Molly and Eleanor, previously Body Comes Apart and Basketball. Other selected design credits includes works with; Wally Cardona, Steve Cosson, Annie Dorsen, DD Dorvillier, Daniel Fish, Beth Gill, Trajal Harrell, Jennifer Lacey, Noémie Lafrance, David Levine, Tina Satter, Ong Keng Sen, and Jay Scheib. Thomas is the recipient of a Kevin Kline Award for Outstanding Lighting Design, The Little Dog Laughed, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis as well as a Bessie Design Award, Nottthing Is Importanttt, DD Dorvillier/human future dance corps.

James Lo (sound design) is a product of suburban Detroit, the New England Conservatory, and Columbia University.   He has created scores for choreographers Oren Barnoy, Neil Greenberg, Elena Demyanenko, Katie Workum, Heather Olson, Mei-Yin Ng, Sarah Michelson, Maria Hassabi, Jennifer Monson, Levi Gonzalez, Ralph Lemon, RoseAnne Spradlin, and Lucy Guerin among others. As a younger man, he received New York Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Awards for John Jasperse's furnished/unfurnished and for Donna Uchizono's State of Heads, and was named one of Treblezine.com’s 50 favorite drummers for his work with the bands Chavez and Live Skull.  In addition to sound design, Lo has worked as an embedded systems engineer for Robert Ashley, Elizabeth Streb, and David Behrman, and as an enterprise software consultant for many major financial services and life sciences companies.