Hannah Seidel

Hannah is a Michigan-based dancer, educator, maker, researcher, mom, and gardener. Her research interests lie at the intersections of play, improvisation, and the therapeutic aspects of movement.

“Seidel puts sparkling fire into her movements.”
- Quinn Batson, Offoffoff.com, New York City, NY
 

“…full of beautiful extensions and strong holds which then undid themselves in frantic impulses which coursed like electricity through Seidel’s muscular body.” 
- Casey Carlsen, City Newspaper, Rochester, NY

Choreography Clips 10:00 choreography excerpted.

Home Place (2014) is an interdisciplinary conversation on Carpatho Rusyn heritage including movement, text, and found sound. (work in progress video)

Untitled (2012) A trio commissioned for performance with music by Robert Patterson.

Beware Moving Bodies (2012) is a site-specific evening-length work asking performers and audience to engage in a mutual process of curiosity and unfolding, rather than assuming, identities.

Untitled (2012) A group work commissioned for performance with music by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez.

Where You Begin (2011) considers the subtle shifts that can occur in established relationships over the passage of time. It is understated and personal, intentionally leaving the interpretation of “relationship” open to the viewer.

Illegal Motion (2011) playfully intermixes gendered movement and sound, highlighting the power of women dancing with prowess, passion, and athleticism.

Encounters (2010) was created for a quartet of college freshman, serving as an introduction to contemporary modern dance for some and an investigation into personal expressivity for others. It portrays in microcosm the experience of entering school, meeting new people, and struggling with identity.

My professional experience in New York City showed me the wealth of information I can glean from my fellow dancers. As a company member of Gibney Dance and the Erica Essner Performance Co-op, each dancer contributed movement material to the creation of new repertory works. My personal style was clarified while being simultaneously augmented by the movement voices of my peers. The ability to learn from one’s peers has become an important component in my teaching. I encourage students to recognize the vast amounts of knowledge in each classroom, and to know that each of them contributes an important piece to this whole. This work was developed through such a process.

Lucky Penny (2011) This solo plays to the quirky personality of the dancer it was created for (as a final performance before graduating with a BFA).

if wishes (2010) is a reshaping of one movement of an earlier work (2006), a duet for two dancers whose costume sleeves extend beyond the hands. The hyperbolic reach of the dancers paradoxically deters easy relation with each other.

In Every Other Direction (2007) is a solo I performed numerous times in various locations from New York University’s Tisch Theater to Michigan’s Calumet Theater. It was inspired by a quote from Harry Nilsson’s 1971 animated movie, The Point: “A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.

Contemporary practice in the studio:

Transitions can be frustrating, satisfying, trying, exuberating, and pretty much any other -ing you can think of. When they “work”—when physical and mental pathways flow seamlessly together with common purpose—our joyful, connected bodies can fly. When we’re “having a bad dance day” our connectivity and groundedness are usually suffering. 

My classes employ a warm up incorporating principles of release technique and Bartenieff Fundamentals to locate safe alignment in one’s unique body. Drawing on multiple somatic practices, we will work to strengthen and ground ourselves, moving seamlessly in and out of the floor and becoming comfortable with the possibilities of inversion and advanced floor work. Improvisational investigation of class concepts helps to bring us into the full expressive range of our bodies. From here, we can explore our individual versatility, fluidity, and capacity for expansive, dynamic movement. The class will culminate in a phrase challenging each dancer to indulge in transitional and athletic risk taking, safe in the efficient movement patterns and calm internal connectivity developed throughout class.

Contemporary practice in the classroom:

Due to my strong conviction in the multi-faceted intelligence of dancers, I relish teaching seminar courses as much as I do studio courses. Language is powerful. Whether it be movement or body language, the written word, or spoken expression, language opens access to resources, and its creative application can bring joy and facility into any investigative process. Students of dance often assert that with movement as a living language, who needs the written word to communicate? Students of non-movement-based fields make the opposite argument. I believe that to fully articulate ourselves as artists, we must be able to traverse this divide. This can be done by expanding the understanding of research held by many students: body language at a club can be experienced ethnographically, investigated through further research in history and cultural studies, and woven into choreographic inquiry or one’s experience of technique class. For this reason, I enjoy offering movement, dance research, composition, history and aesthetics, somatics, and pedagogy classes equally. Each has something essential to offer to the development of the intelligent moving and thinking individual.

Hannah Seidel grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She has been an Associate Professor of Dance at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) since 2015.

Hannah’s choreography has been presented across New York and the Midwest including two pieces commissioned for performance with live music by the Society for New Music in New York. Festival performances include Midwest RAD Fest, Regeneration, Dance Days of Buffalo, Going Dutch, the Grand Rapids Ballet Summer Festival, and an invited SUNY Brockport Alumni concert. Hannah’s choreography for the evening-length, water resources-focused work Submerge (2018) brought together composers, select musicians from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and faculty from GVSU and the Annis Water Resources Institute. Submerge was shared with communities on Lake Michigan, TRIO program students, and the Dance Studies Association and Society for Freshwater Science conferences. Locally, work with students has been seen in the Michigan Dance Festival’s Gala Concert, ArtPrize opening ceremonies, and seasonal Grand Valley State University concerts. Hannah is currently working on a collaboration with composer Bill Ryan and the New Music Ensemble to be presented at Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in February 2024.

Hannah’s credits as a performer in New York City include David Appel, the Erica Essner Performance Co-op, Mariah Maloney, Tiffany Mills, and Gibney Dance with whom she also offered movement workshops to survivors of domestic violence for six years. Hannah has previously been on the Advisory Council of the National Dance Education Organization, Lecturer at Purchase College, Education Programs Coordinator for Dance New Amsterdam in New York City, and summer intensive teacher at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts and Interlochen Center for the Arts. She has presented research at the Dance Studies Association and National Dance Education Organization conferences and has been published in the journal Research in Dance Education.

Hannah received her BA from Pomona College, MFA from SUNY Brockport, completed the 92NY’s Alternate Route Dance/Movement Therapy training program, and is the recipient of two National Dance Education Organization President’s Awards and GVSU’s Pew Teaching Excellence Award.

Sunday February 25, 2024 11:30am and 2:30pm
Meijer Gardens: Garden Pavilion
”Utopia: A Music and Dance Ambient Experience”
GVSU’s New Music Ensemble and Dance Company present composition by Bill Ryan, choreography by Hannah Seidel
Grand Rapids, MI

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Saturday March 2, 2024 9:00pm
Midwest RAD Fest
”words for Touch”
Kalamazoo, MI

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Sunday March 3, 2024 11:30am
Midwest RAD Fest
Master class: Contemporary Movement Forms
Kalamazoo, MI

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Sunday March 10, 2024 7:00pm
ways of knowing:
A shared evening: Hannah Seidel with Mariah Maloney & Edgar L. Page
St. Cecilia Music Center, Dexter Ballroom
Grand Rapids, MI

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Monday-Friday June 24-28
Accelerate Dance Intensive,
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI

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Tuesday July 9, 2024 6-7:30pm
Adult Master Class Series: Contact Improvisation (open level)
Wellspring, Epic Center
Kalamazoo, MI

seidelh@gvsu.edu