User:Sirendance/sandbox

Melissa Riker is Artistic Director/Choreographer of Kinesis Project dance theatre. She is a New York City dancer and choreographer who emerged as a strong voice in NYC dance as the modern dance and circus worlds combined during the 1990’s. Her dances and esthetic combine her training as a classical dancer, martial artist, theatre choreographer and aerial performer. She creates dances on site- and in context and her work genre is dance theater.

Audiences and critics have called Riker’s work “a Marx Brothers’ routine with soul,” “Captivating,” and “A movable feast.”  Laurel Graeber of the The New York Times called Riker’s choreography "...comically acrobatic, gracefully classical... visually arresting."

Her work has been on stage in venues such as Danspace Project, Judson Church, Joyce Soho, The Minskoff Theatre, The Cunningham Studio, West End Theatre and Dixon Place, outside at the Kalogris Sculpture Gardens, Adelphi University and annually since 2006 in Battery Park’s Bosque Gardens and The Cloisters Lawn.

Riker is the founding producer of Women in Motion, a 15-year-running, NYC-based organization dedicated to forwarding, celebrating and producing female choreographers. Women in Motion is now co-produced by choreographers Amber Sloan, Anne Zuerner and Erin Cairns Cella.

Riker creates and organizes flashmobs and experience based, spontaneous moments of dance for individuals as well as Superbowl half-time inspired events for Pepsi.

Residencies include: Dance Omi 2008, Earthdance 2006, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center 2011, TheaterLab 2014, Adelphi University 2014.

Ms. Riker has received commissions from Carson Fox and the Ephemeral Festival in 2013 and 2014, grants from the Puffin Foundation, 2006 and 2008 for her work Community Movements, dance work with community volunteers, Fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Space Grant Residencies from The New 42nd St Studio/Doris Duke Foundation, Gibney Dance Center, and The Joyce Theatre Foundation, and annual artistic merit grants from The Bowick Family Trust to support the continued work of Kinesis Project dance theatre.