Draft:Dayna Hanson

Dayna Hanson is an American filmmaker, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist based in Seattle, Washington. Hanson’s work, noted for its humanism and originality, has been presented and screened internationally. Hanson is a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography. and a 2011 United States Artists Foundation Fellow.

Education and early career
Raised in Tacoma, Washington, Dayna attended St. Olaf College then studied short fiction writing at University of Washington, where she studied with American poet Colleen McElroy and American literary translator Suzanne Jill Levine. While at University of Washington Hanson received the Loren D. Milliman Prize for Short Fiction for her short story, “The Favorite.”

Shortly after receiving her B.A. in English literature with a concentration in creative writing, Hanson encountered dance and performance work by Maguy Marin, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and The Wooster Group. Hanson paused her creative writing and took up choreography instead. “Determined to eschew formal training and the influences of other choreographers, Hanson taught herself to dance, beginning with footwork and slowly graduating to the upper body.”

After creating and performing a series of short pieces in cabaret settings in Seattle, she co-founded The Run/Remain Ensemble in 1989 with filmmaker/director Gregg Lachow, cellist Lori Goldston and her brother, Kyle Hanson. Megan Murphy, then a performer with Needcompany joined Run/Remain and the group created seven full-length multidisciplinary performances, several of which were presented by On the Boards, between 1989 and 1991.

33 Fainting Spells
In 1994 she co-founded 33 Fainting Spells with Gaelen Hanson. Between 1994 and 2006, 33 Fainting Spells produced six evening-length dance theater pieces, including The Uninvited, Sorrow’s Sister, Maria The Storm Cloud, September September, Dirty Work and Our Little Sunbeam. The company was commissioned and presented by dozens of venues across the U.S. and in Europe, including On the Boards, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, Walker Art Center, Dance Umbrella Austin, Miami Light Project, New York Live Arts, Institute for Contemporary Art/London, Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Jacob’s Pillow, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Spoleto Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts and many others.

During the company’s third season in New York, dance writer Elizabeth Zimmer wrote in The Village Voice, "33 Fainting Spells has its finger on the cultural zeitgeist as few American dance theater groups do...these women can do just about anything.” On their dissolution in 2006, Lane Czaplinski, former Artistic Director of On the Boards, told The Seattle Times, "They cleverly used choreography, both modern and pedestrian movements, as well as text and music in very low-fi, yet tremendously effective ways. 33 has served as a tremendous role model for how artists can live outside of New York and achieve national and international reputations.”

33 Fainting Spells received grants and awards for their work from National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, MAP Fund and Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, among others.

Dance film
Also under the banner of 33 Fainting Spells, Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson produced a dance film festival, New Dance Cinema, in partnership with Northwest Film Forum, from 1999 - 2005. Screening titles on film that had never been seen in the Pacific Northwest, like Rosas Danst Rosas by Thierry De Mey and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, they introduced dance film to Seattle audiences, helping to ignite interest in the form in the region.

For their first short dance film, “Measure,” produced by Carlo Scandiuzzi, the pair adapted a duet Dayna Hanson originally choreographed in the Run/Remain Ensemble then remounted in 33 Fainting Spells’ 2000 piece, September September. A "soft-shoe routine in a hallway,” “Measure” “illustrates the way the camera excels at revealing deep space.” “Measure” screened at New York Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival and more than 50 other festivals worldwide and is featured on Dance for Camera, Vol. 1, released by First Run Features. In 2024 Measure was added to an international catalogue of historically significant works in dance film at Tanz digital . Measure was edited by Lynn Shelton, who had collaborated with Hanson and Hanson on their 2002 piece, Dirty Work.

Hanson’s later short dance films include Entry (with Gaelen Hanson), Diesel Engine, A Moving Portrait of Me and My Dad, Cold Light Day and Din, which appears on the compilation 13 Chambers.

Later dance works
After 33 Fainting Spells’ dissolution, Hanson created a solo performance, Spirit Under the Influence, which drew from disparate sources, including Bruce Lee’s 1971 interview on The Pierre Berton Show, author Caroline Myss’ lecture on love and Gena Rowlands’ climactic scene in John Cassavetes’ Opening Night. Hanson enlisted her two sons and her parents in video scenes and interviews that explored some of her deepest spiritual concerns.

For her 2006 piece, We Never Like Talking About The End, she combined choreography and hyper-naturalistic theater with original documentary material on the subject of near-death experiences (NDEs), including video interviews with four NDE survivors. In this work Hanson also assembled a band, Today!, with collaborators Dave Proscia and Marguerite Brown. In 2007 Paul Matthew Moore joined the band, which scored several of Hanson’s later film and live works.

In 2010 Hanson created Gloria’s Cause, called “a delicious dance-theater exploration of the ironies inherent in the American Revolution” by American Theatre Magazine. Commissioned by On the Boards, the piece featured an original live score by Today! and was presented by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver, B.C., REDCAT, Fusebox Festival and Miami Light Project. In it, the cast of nine “dropped character mid-show for a vital segment in which they ate cherry pie and swapped real-life anecdotes about racism before returning to a freewheeling corporeal romp.

Commissioned by On the Boards in 2013, Hanson created The Clay Duke, a multi-media work examining the Panama City school board shootings of December 2010. Produced by ArkType, The Clay Duke was created with support from MAP Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and others and was developed and workshopped at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and Noorderzon Festival in Groningen, Netherlands before premiering at On the Boards. The Clay Duke featured Sarah Rudinoff, Wade Madsen, Peggy Piacenza, Dave Proscia and Thomas Graves. In an article on Crosscut.com, Hanson explained that “it wasn’t like she woke up one day and thought, Yes, it’s time for an artist to respond to this epidemic of people taking guns into public places. But it was the humanity that drew her in. The vulnerability, the weakness, even the banality of what she saw. And then, empathy took hold.”

Film and television
Hanson’s first feature-length film, Improvement Club, combines narrative with dance and original music by Today! to tell the story of a hard-luck performance troupe in search of an audience. “Often uncomfortably intimate and sometimes vicariously embarrassing, the movie is as good a representation of the dedication and tunnel vision required to make art as any ever filmed.” A fictionalization of the making of Gloria’s Cause, Improvement Club premiered in Narrative Competition at South by Southwest in 2013.

Hanson wrote, directed and choreographed an episode of HBO’s and Duplass Brothers Productions’ anthology television series, Room 104. Starring Sarah Hay and Dendrie Taylor, “Voyeurs,” Episode Six of Season One, received critical acclaim for threading the needle between experimentation and narrative impact. The episode “tells its story not through dialogue but dance. In telling the story of a housekeeper meeting a younger version of herself, Guggenheim fellow Dayna Hanson combines repeated motifs—tissues, a slice of cake, a card filled with cash—with bouts of classical and modern dance to explore age, growth, and the seismic event that turned one character into the other. Sometimes it resembles a music video, other times a ballet. Its greatest strength, though, is remaining compelling and illuminating for 30 straight minutes.” Sophie Gilbert wrote in The Atlantic, “The entire sequence feels like a mirage, or a dream dance, like the technicolor trip from Singing in the Rain transposed onto seedier surroundings. The episode is beautiful, and also like nothing I’ve seen on television before.

Hanson directed Confession, a legal thriller on the topic of sexual assault laws produced by Yale Productions and Convoke Media. Released in 2023 by Vertical Entertainment, Confession stars Michael Ironside, Clark Backo, Sarah Hay, Nolan Gerard Funk and Sterling Beaumon. Confession premiered at Woodstock Film Festival in 2022.

Collaboration
As a choreographer, actress, director, consultant and dramaturge, Hanson has worked with artists across disciplines, including filmmakers Lynn Shelton, Kim Tae-yong, and Wes Hurley; musicians including Dana Wachs/Voorhees and Wayne Horvitz; and theater companies Rude Mechs and Pig Iron Theatre Company. Hanson has worked on several projects by choreographer Heather Kravas. She produced Walking to Werner, a documentary directed by Linas Phillips, who also performed in 33 Fainting Spells’ final piece, Our Little Sunbeam. In her film work she has collaborated with Benjamin Kasulke and Sean Porter.

Nonprofit leadership
With Peggy Piacenza and Dave Proscia, Hanson co-founded a nonprofit art space, Base, in 2016. In response to the growing need for affordable creative space in Seattle, Base offers performance opportunities, low-cost rentals and unrestricted artist residencies with financial support.

Awards
MacDowell Fellowship, 2017

Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, 2013

MAP Fund, 2013 and 2010

Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award, 2012

United States Artists Oliver Fellowship in Dance, 2011

New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Production Grant, 2010

National Performance Network Creation Fund and Forth Fund Grants, 2010

Artist Trust Media Fellowship, 2009

Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography, 2006