Kendra Portier

I was born in a blizzard, on the land of Myaamia and Hopewell peoples, the Mound Builders before them, now known as Ostrander, Ohio. My family is an extensive forest with deep communing roots. My parents are wild, solid, and kind - my mom, a tiny motorcycle-ridin’ woman from Detroit; my dad, born in the Netherlands, his parents before him born in Indonesia. I am eldest of four.

Drawing from her visual arts practice, Kendra’s work lives in embodied study, tested and realized through choreographic processes that shape thought, emotion, and texture through movement. She has facilitated and promoted dance across the globe from San Diego to Salzburg, Dushanbe to Athens (Greece, Georgia, and Ohio). Her teaching and choreographic roster is extensive: over thirty academic-commissions, faculty positions at multiple NYC-based dance orgranizations, and multiple festivals, workshops, practices, and more. Portier collaborates and performs in a range of interdisciplinary projects - from a decade long tenure with David Dorfman Dance to more recent projects with Lisa Race/Race Dance, Jasmine Hearn Collaborates, Betsy Miller, Janessa Clark, and All Together Now - a new, intergenerational, trisection choreography by Tendayi Kuumba, Annie-B Parsons, and Donna Uchizono.

Portier holds a BFA with Honors from the Ohio State University and an MFA in dance with specialization in visual design from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is awarded the Maya Brin Endowed Professorship in Dance.

BANDportier

BAND is a project-based dance collective, directed by Kendra Portier. Bringing together independent, multi-hyphenate artists, BAND/kp creates collaborative choreographic constructions for performance and practice. Their recent body of work is a study of color + ecology, culminating in works such as Burnish #08, untitled vital glacier, …And with this lies the need to be together, and red dirt glitter (in-process).

BAND has been presented by and received support from DanceNow (NYC), Art for the People (NJ), Dance New Amsterdam (NY), NYS DanceForce (NY), Dixon Place (NY), Gowanus Arts+Production (NY), CRAWL / the People Movers (NY), New York University’s Tisch Summer Dance (NYC), Bates Dance Festival (ME), MadDash at the University of Maryland College Park, the Madden Dance Project at the Clarice Performing Arts Center (MD), Zenon Dance Company commission, DancePlace (D.C.), among others.

COLLABORATORS

red dirt glitter / Kaitlin Fox, Christina Robson, Bree Breeden, MK Ford, Adam Crawley aka DJ Plié (Music).

Pantone / Bree Breeden, Jessie Young, Allie James, Greg Catellier, Kristen O’Neal, Tristan Koepke, Rebecca Steinberg, Daniel Miramontes, Brit Falcon, MK Ford

previous / Adriane Fang, Stevie Oakes, Candace Scarborough, Marielis Garcia, Sydney Lemelin, Chris Brusberg (Lighting), Anna Adams Stark, Laurel Snyder, Jasmine Hearn, Marion Spencer, Sarah Beth Oppenheim, Edward Rice, Simon Thomas Train, Aya Wilson, Sydnie Liggett, Molly McSherry, Katie Stehura, Sara Gibbons, Emma Judkins, Patrick McGrath Needham, Leighton Lachman, Meg Madorin, Dante Brown, Marcos Duran, Rebecca Lubart, Megan Adele Bascom, Meghan Frederick, Morgan Griffen, Theresa Elwell, Madeline Wilcox, Jenna Riegel, Michael Ingle, Leah Wilks, Alexis Miller, Phoebe Ballard, Lindsey Jennings, Mary Kate Ford, Natalie Stehly. Sound: Mike Wall\SoundFORmovement and Albert Mathias.