ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Savannah Gaillard began dancing at Manassas Ballet Theater. She furthered her technique with Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, D.C., the Ailey School, and Future Dancers and Dancemakers (NYU Tisch). Conquering the stage at the Kennedy Center in D.C. for three consecutive years, she was featured in the Nutcracker with Ballet West and American Ballet Theater. Recently, she debuted off-Broadway in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma, “Dream Ballet”, directed by Daniel Fish and choreographed by John Heiginbotham.
At NYU, she danced in works by Wayne McGregor (staged by Davide Di Pretoro), Ronald K. Brown, Sidra Bell, and Rodney Hamilton, and various student works. Simultaneously, she furthered her dance education in Berlin and Tel Aviv dancing under the instruction of Meg Stewart, Judith Sanchez-Ruiz, Leila McMillan Shahar Binyami, Ohad Naharin, and many more. Savannah was a beneficiary of a partial tuition scholarship through NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and Princess Grace nominated finalist. Infatuated with philanthropy through dance, health, and wellness, she aspires to perform nationally/internationally, graduate May 2020, and recharge her community with art and good health.
The impact of international crisis’ spurred an explosive passion for motion graphic design and animation. Savannah’s interests of dance and motion graphics push her to revolutionize the contemporary dance industry through her physical choreography and ostentatious design. Savannah has debuted the meshing of her animation and performance talents in Lightbox NYC’s Digital Art Festival November 2020.
Artistic CV
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ARTIST STATEMENT
As a performance artist and choreographer, I produce durational, multimedia, and interactive
presentations to create alternative representations of the Black body in physical (improvisation scores) and virtual spaces (animated environments). My scores are rooted in Structuralist analysis: observing the weight, movement, multidimensionality, and interrelation of a subject (i.e., painting, poetry, the body) to form lingual movement nodes. I am recently inspired to use Concrete Poetry (word arrangements where the meaning or essence is conveyed in visual form) as a vehicle to inform my composition and movement language. I appreciate its concentration on the structural material of a text and not the emotions or feelings. Contrarily, reading autobiographies and memoirs of Black and queer artists conjoin these observations and serve as informers. Studying their process and life experience gives warmth to an archetypal mechanical nature in dance and, ultimately, in digital art.
My creative process includes questioning how systems in the physical world translate virtually. I animate codified movements in digital environments to analyze how removing a subject from its original context can change its meaning. This act strips away assigned labels or assumptions of a person so their individual definitions can shine through. Using these methods, I aim to re-contextualize systemic constructs and decentralize their importance. Blasting into infinite digital spaces and mashing articulations of multiple worldviews, I invite myself and collaborators to travel along this new journey of multi-dimensional performance art making.
Photography: Erica MacLean