Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith are New York based feminist artists who choreograph to problematize femme objectification and shame in relation to dance. Their work explores a relationship to improvisation as a feminist exclamation where the methodology depends on knowing and caring for one another. Recent acclaimed works of Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith include Gloria (2021) performed at Abrons Arts Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and New York Live Arts and a critic’s choice by the New York Times, Body Comes Apart (2019, New York Live Arts) documented by the New York Public Library and the subject of an upcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Memory, and Basketball (2017, Baryshnikov Arts Center) featured in The New York Times “Best Dance of 2017.” Lieber received a 2016 “Bessie” for Outstanding Performance and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance at Queens College (CUNY). Recent teaching includes Bennington College, Connecticut College, The New School, Pratt, Sarah Lawrence College and Rutgers University. Granted a 2023/2024 Lifeline Award through LMCC, their work Zero Station premiered in the 2023 River-to-River Festival and was discussed in the Mnemedance Conference in Venice. Additional Awards and residencies: 2021/2022 NYSCA AIR Movement Research, 2021 Jerome Hill Finalist, 2020/2021 AIRSpace Abrons, 2019 FCA Emergency, 2019 BACSpace, 2018 Family Mt. Tremper Arts, 2018 Fellows The Yard, 2018 DiP Artists, NYTimes Best Dance of 2017, 2016 LMCC Process, 2013 Bessie Nomination Emerging Choreographer.

Molly Lieber received a 2016 “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performer and has performed in works by luciana achugar (since 2013), Oren Barnoy, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey, Keely Garfield, Beth Gill, Neil Greenberg, Maria Hassabi, Heidi Henderson, Juliette Mapp, Antonio Ramos, Melinda Ring, Donna Uchizono, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and others. She is currently dancing in projects for Malcolm-x Betts, Wally Cardona, and Sally Silvers. Molly is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance at Queens College (CUNY). She taught recently at Rutgers University, Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, and Bennington College. She earned an MFA in Dance and a Graduate Certificate Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Molly also teaches at Movement Research, and serves new dyads and families as an IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant). Her graduate research on queering lactation was awarded UWM’s 2023 Women’s and Gender Studies Paper and Project Award. 

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.