Photo by Christopher Annas-Lee
Evita
May 26 - June 16, 2024 @ Axelrod Performing Arts Center (Deal, New Jersey). Directed by José Zayas, Choreographed by Kelsey Burns, Music Direction by Michael Gilch, Set & Lighting Design by Christopher Annas-Lee, Production Stage Manager Jackie Robinson, Technical Direction Gil Mason-Butch
Photo by Else Went
Romeo & Juliet
This touring production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Emma Went, started in NYC in April of 2023 before traveling to middle and high schools in the tri-state area. Directed by Emma Went, Choreographed by Kelsey Burns, Original Composition by Ray Duncan, Produced by Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.
Photo by Christopher Jones, 2021
The Coronation
In this wordless, experimental film, a powerful goddess meets her match.
WINNER - Best Underground Film - Cannes World Film Festival
WINNER - Best Experimental Film - Amsterdam International Film Festival
WINNER - Best Dance Film - Berlin Indie Film Festival
Follow along for more updates here.
For a full list of awards, click here.
Created by Kelsey Burns & Emily Penick
Direction: Emily Penick
Choreography & Dance: Kelsey Burns
Set & Costume: Kate Fry
Composition: Meredith Butterworth
Editing: Jacob Midkiff
Filmed 2021, Completed 2022.
Anna O.
Kathryn Wilson and I created an excerpt of this piece five years ago, and had the pleasure of resurrecting and elaborating on it for this year's Nasty Women Unite Festival. Mathias Goldstein's voice gives life to Sigmund Freud's case study writings on his time treating a young woman he calls "Anna O."
Concept and Direction: Kelsey Burns, Kathryn Wilson
Choreography: Kelsey Burns
Voice work: Mathias Goldstein
Performed by Kelsey Burns and Kathryn Wilson at Nasty Women Unite Festival 2018
Choreography: Kelsey Burns
Performed by Kelsey Burns, Kelsey Greenway, Maddy Sher, Rina Espiritu, and Kendra Prat
Premiered at Union Square's NYC Dance Week Kick Off 2018
Blue Magic
Kelsey & Co. presents "Blue Magic," a new piece choreographed by Kelsey Burns for the Union Square kickoff of NYC Dance Week 2018. Featuring music by Loscil, Robyn, and Waikiki.
Choreography: Katiti King, Kelsey Burns
Music: Maya, Azam Ali and Loga R. Torkian
Lighting Design: Barrett Hall
Presented at Gibney Dance Theatre.
Three Years
This solo piece has been an ongoing collaboration with NY-based choreographer Katiti King. We began working on this shortly after my grandfather's death in 2015 and have been developing it ever since. Though still rooted in the original spark -- meeting death -- we are using simultaneously grounded and fluid movement to communicate continued movement through uncertainty, feeling lost and found and lost again.
Choreography and Performance: Kelsey Burns, Abdiel Jacobsen
Original Composition: Giovanni Spinelli
Premiered at NYC's Dixon Place Theatre in collaboration with Dance Week, March 2017.
To view in full, click here.
Thread
In my last work with dancer Abdiel Jacobsen, we combined modern dance and ballroom partnering to explore the possibilities of embodying rhythm with a messier arrangement of leading and following than we had ever worked with before. Clothed in the traditional Vietnamese tunic áo dài, we pushed up against our usual comfortable boundaries in partnered dancing, which meant new-- or no-- footwear was required.
A Walk In Our Heels
A contemporary ballroom dance piece performed in the round, featuring two ballroom dancers, a singer, and a percussionist. Born out of a celebration of the latin/rhythm ballroom tradition, this piece also poses a direct challenge to ballroom’s traditional aesthetic. Since the footwear of ballroom is split along gender lines, the blurring of this duality became the primary theme of this piece, which opened the door into questions of sexuality—how do the high heels affect the dynamic between male and female bodies within different styles (cha cha, rumba and bolero) —and explorations of stylized presentation? Our collaboration with singer Greg Osei and percussionist Meredith Butterworth helped us to explore the language we use to talk about gender, bodies, and the rhythm which latin dance relies on.
Choreography: Kelsey Burns, Abdiel Jacobsen
Performance: Kelsey Burns, Abdiel Jacobsen, Greg Osei, Meredith Butterworth
Arrangement and Original Composition: Greg Osei, featuring songs by Prince and Kate Bush
Premiered at Common Roots Festival 2016, at the Martha Graham Studio Theatre in New York City
To watch in full, click here.
Spring Awakening
A production of Duncan Sheik's musical revisioning of the original play by Frank Wedekind, created for CAS Theatre of NYU. We went for a raw, intimate staging of this show in the round, with minimal tech and design. Even with just 13 chairs and 4 clip lights, the cast brought this story of repressed desires and conflicting lessons to life.
Direction: Stephen Morrash
Choreography: Kelsey Burns
Book: Duncan Sheik
Presented at Kimmel Center NYU in Spring 2015
Concept, Direction, Performance:
Kelsey Burns, Ashley Renee Thaxton, Kathryn Wilson, Annie Higgins, Kasey Connolly, Rachel Francavillo, Katherine Romans
Design: Raphael Mishler
Costume: Whitney Locher
Consulting Direction: Jessie Austrian, Ben Steinfeld, Fiasco Theatre
Premiered at the Jerry H. Labowitz Theatre in Fall 2014 before touring to LA in Spring 2015.
Show Us Womanish
An all-female production of William Shakespeare's historical tragedy "Julius Caesar." This show was collaboratively conceived and directed by seven women studying various applications of theatre and movement at Gallatin NYU. We prioritized experience over gender, power dynamics over sex politics, and put together a version of this tale with a ton of heart, sweat, and tears, and even more blood.