ABOUT
Dean Moss
Dean Moss is an interdisciplinary choreographer and video artist whose practice investigates the sense of becoming, and the fluidity of self. He directs a project based production company called Gametophyte Inc. Its work has been presented internationally, and commissioned by New York Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Anthology Film Archives; Danse Visions Festival International de Cin´e-Video-Danse, Nantes France; Ksirarnawa Art Center, Denpasar Indonesia; The New Visions Art Festival, Hong Kong, China; FNB Vita Dance Festival, Johannesburg, South Africa; The Seoul International Dance Festival, South Korea; and The Kitchen, NYC, among many others.
Moss arrived in New York in 1979 on a ballet scholarship with the Dance Theater of Harlem. He studied directly under Martha Graham, toured with the Louis Falco Dance Company, and performed in the Paris company of Broadway’s revival West Side Story, all in the early 1980’s. Subsequently he danced ten years (1983-93) with the post-modern choreographer David Gordon in The Pick-up Performance Company: the artist’s experiential introduction to contemporary art. Moss became the Curator of Dance and Performance at The Kitchen Center for Experimental Art and the Avant-Garde (1999-2004, Curatorial Advisor until 2009).
Recognized for performance curation as well as innovative performance works, he has lectured internationally in video, interdisciplinary choreography and arts management, at Tokyo University of the Arts, Kookmin University in Seoul, and Harvard University in the Visual Arts department, (for which he received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning). Moss lectured on Dance Dramaturgy and Audience Participation works at Yale University, was Resident Faculty at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Dance Faculty at Princeton University and Sarah Lawrence College; and co-lectured on multimedia performance composition for visual artists at Rhode Island School of Design.
Moss is an Asian Cultural Council Fellow; American Academy in Jerusalem Fellow; a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Resident; the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography; the Doris Duke Impact Award in Theatre; a Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Artists Grant; plus Fellowships in both Choreography and Multidisciplinary Works from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His most recent experimental video untitled:embrace has been an Official Selection in several international film festivals, and he was awarded a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” for his work Spooky action at a distance.
Currently Dean Moss is Distinguished Visiting Faculty in the department of Kinetic Imaging (hybrid media, video, performance, sound and animation) at Virginia Commonwealth University; and a director of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, an artist run grant giving organization founded by Jasper Johns and John Cage.
Gametophyte Inc.
Gametophyte (ga•me´to•phyt´) the company name is from the greek meaning to marry and to grow. The word refers to the reproductive cycle of small plants that produce in true form neither flowers, fruits nor seeds, commonly called “moss”. Founded in 2002 by Dean Moss, Gametophyte Inc. is the production structure which organizes his various creative endeavors.
Based in Brooklyn, Gametophyte Inc., has produced performances, exhibitions and screenings of Moss’ work internationally including: The Bitgoeul Citizen Cultural Center, Gwangju Korea; The Seoul International Dance Festival; Ksirarnawa Art Center in Denpasar, Indonesia; New Visions Art Festival, Hong Kong and the FNB Vita Dance Festival in Johannesburg South Africa. Nationally works have been commissioned and presented by The New York Museum of Modern Art; The Yerba Buena Center for Art; The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; Yale University/World Performance Project; The Walker Art Center; DiverseWorks; The Brooklyn Arts Exchange; The Danspace Project; Dance Theater Workshop, and The Kitchen.
General Operating support for Gametophyte Inc. has been made possible in part by the Map Fund, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Build Grant, The Dance/NYC Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund, DanceForce, and Individual Donors.
Board of Directors: Josh Lubin-Levy, Charlotte Mendelaar, Christopher Warnick, Marya Warshaw and Dean Moss.
photo credit: Tim Trumble - Dean Moss (2010)