Dawn Stopiello

Dawn Stoppiello is a choreographer, dancer and media artist. Her choreography reflects her keen interest in visual rhythm, kinetic complexity and non-linear motion that has led to her development of a rigorous generative system used to build her choreographed material. An examination of the changing state of the human body as it responds to the increasingly technological world that surrounds it is a reoccurring and underlying theme in her works. With composer Mark Coniglio she is co-founder of Troika Ranch, a New York City based digital dance theater company committed to creating media intensive performance.

Stoppiello's dance career began in Portland, Oregon at the Jefferson High School for the Performing Arts. She left Oregon for Los Angeles where she received her degree in dance from California Institute of the Arts in 1989. During that time she was honored with a Princess Grace Foundation scholar-ship and performed professionally with Jazz Tap Ensemble and Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble. After graduation, she became a member of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company where she remained until 1992. Stoppiello has taught on the dance faculty of Loyola Marymount University, Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She was an invited panelist for the Beyond the Divide Symposium as part of the Adelaide Festival 2002 in Adelaide, Australia where she spoke on her work with interactive computer systems in live performance. Stoppiello has taught master classes at numerous universities around the country and has lectured on interactive performance in Monaco, Holland, England and throughout the United States. MIT Press / Leonardo Art Journal is publishing her article "FleshMotor" in it's forthcoming book "Women in New Media".

Through Troika Ranch, Stoppiello has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Meet the Composer, NYFA's New York Arts Recovery Fund, the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation and the Nancy Quinn Fund. She has been in residence at HERE Arts Center in New York City, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, Nebraska, the Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Institute for Studies in the Arts at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona and The Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida.