I craft sensoriums — stages that ​​extend their arms and hug the audience whereby the dance entangles them.

The aftermath of my creative practice is physically rigorous, conceptually curious, and environmentally engaged. It is detailed and carefully prescribed in its structure and sequencing, but it is steeped in larger inquiries and experiments of place and social atmospheres. I produce magnified, porous worlds that feed off sensory stimulation and an awakening of the familiar: parlors flooded by 450,000 white roses, cement pillars suspending bodies with industrial cellophane, foyers carpeted in inexhaustible bubble wrap, the spoon-feeding of German chocolate cake to a string of strangers, 3 miles of geofenced storytelling, bare bodies dipped in magenta clay, vacant pools swamped in 10,000 pounds of dry soil, and the ravaging of ripe nectarines. With voyeuristic spectatorship and virtual consumption at the forefront of our social disposition, my work plays and nudges us back towards the three-dimensional vulnerability and carnal necessity for real time and shared space.

I deeply believe in the power of collective movement as a means to redefine the limits and preconceived notions of what choreography can be and how it can serve an immediate, local purpose. With an emphasis on public access and experiential design, ​my​ dances deliberately prompt audience​s​ through ​its ​spaces and places — encouraging new perspectives, understandings, and interactivity with the ​artists, landscape​s, and communities seen, heard, felt, and amplified by the work.

Danielle Russo

Click to expand images: Katrina Cunningham and Lynda Senisi in The Lower Room at the Ace Hotel in 2012, captured by Whitney Browne; Jason Collins in Salome, and the Anatomy of Invisible Corners on Governors Island in 2016, captured by Luke Ohlson; Garth Johnson in Which the clouds do drop in Quartier des Spéctacles at Place des Arts in 2012, captured by Adolfo Pardo; Joshua Stansbury and Jason Collins in Since thou wast precious in my sight during Armory Arts Week in 2015, captured by Whitney Browne; Danielle Russo and Lauren Muraski in That one should open like an eyelid and lying there beneath it simply eyelids at the Ace Hotel in 2012, captured by Whitney Browne; Motrya Kozbur in The Lower Room at Usine C in 2012, captured by Danielle Russo; Participatory audience in The Sun Seeker Induction Ceremony during the LMCC’s River to River Festival on Governors Island in 2022, captured by Barbara Hermor; and Vanessa Vargas, Christine Flores, and Jason Collins in Southside, Brooklyn for Final Notice, captured by Nima Chaichi in 2021.