Ursula Eagly makes bizarre performances full of darkness, humor, and other contradictions.
Ursula’s work has been commissioned by Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, and the Howl Fesitval. It has also been presented by The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Chocolate Factory, Dance New Amsterdam (A.I.R. Splice), Dance Theater Workshop (main stage, Studio Series, Fresh Tracks), Danspace Project (DraftWork), Movement Research at the Judson Church, the New Museum, The Old American Can Factory, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, P.S. 122 (Avantgardearamathon, Howl Festival, Schoolhouse Roxx), and Ur. Her work has toured internationally to Macedonia and Albania and nationally to DiverseWorks in Houston, Texas and The Gilded Pony Festival in Troy, New York.
Ursula has been honored with grant awards from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s USArtists International program, Dance Theater Workshop’s Suitcase Fund, and the Queens Council on the Arts (two individual artist grants and one Individual Artist Initiative award). Ursula has been a Topaz Arts’ Dance in Queens 2010: Solo Flight artist in residency, a 2008-2009 Dance New Amsterdam Artist-in-Residence, and an UrCOUSIN at Ur, your neighborhood dance palace.
Ursula is also dedicated to her work as a performer. Since 2006, she has been a core performer in Yoshiko Chuma’s A Page Out of Order series, a project with which she’s toured throughout Albania, Macedonia, Japan, and Romania, collaborating with incredible local musicians and performers. They’ve performed on proscenium stages like Japan Society in New York and the National Theater of Albania in Tirana; on a long, narrow red carpet at Lincoln Center Out of Doors; in living rooms in Japan; and, for two seven-hour-long endurance performances, at Issue Project Room’s indoor/outdoor space on Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. From 2006-2010, Ursula collaborated with choreographer Kathy Westwater, delving into a process-oriented somatic investigation of the pelvis. She has also performed in several dances by Christopher Williams and Rebecca Davis.
Ursula writes about performance, most recently contributing to Artforum and Critical Correspondence. She edited the catalogue for Juliette Mapp’s March 2010 Back to New York City curatorial platform at Danspace Project.
Ursula is an active member of the New York performance community. She has taught at Dance New Amsterdam as part of the Guest Artist Series. From 2003 to 2009, she supported artists through her work as Danspace Project’s Development Coordinator. Previously, she edited Arts International’s magazine (ai) performance for the planet.
Ursula grew up in Indiana and graduated from Princeton in 1999 with the Francis LeMoyne Page Theater Award for Excellence in Dance and the Class of 1955 Grant for her senior thesis in dance. She now lives in Jackson Heights with her husband.
photograph by Rai Shizuno