Danielle Russo is a choreographer, performer, and artivist based in New York City. Her choreography has been presented nationally at the American Dance Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Governors Island, Jacob's Pillow, Lincoln Center, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, and The Yard; and internationally in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, Panama, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Choreographic commissions range from the proscenium stage to both public and private installations. However, her independent work concentrates on performance and interactive technology for unconventional formats and environments. This includes immersive and place/site-specific models of engaging new audiences in architectural, historical, and politically charged spaces, frequently in the public realm.

She has been awarded fellowships and residencies with C.N.N. - Ballet de Lorraine (FR), Danscentrum Jette (BE), Nadine Laboratory for the Contemporary Arts (BE), New York Community Trust (US), Independent Artists Initiative WUK (AT), Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (US), LEIMAY (US), Mana Contemporary (US), Performing Arts Forum (FR), and Springboard Danse Montréal (CA), among others. She is a multi-year grant recipient of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs through the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAF, LAS), as well as the Andrew Carnegie Corporation of New York, Dance/NYC, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYS DanceForce with New York Council for the Arts (NYSCA), One Brooklyn Fund, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2022, she was a national semifinalist and grantee of the Expensify Community Justice Youth Advocacy Award.

Internationally, she has been curated and presented by the Anita Villalaz Teatro Nacional (PA), CGC skyltfönster (SE), C.N.N. - Ballet de Lorraine (FR), Danscentrum Jette PLATFORM (BE), Dance Italia (IT), El Graner (ES), National Academy for the Performing Arts (TT), Stockholm Kulturhuset (SE), Performática (MX), Quartier des Spectacles at Place des Arts (CA), Scotiabank Dance Centre (CA), Studio 516 (KR), Usine C (CA), and Werkstatten und Kulturhaus Im_flieger (AT), among others.

Previous national engagements include the American Dance Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, International Writing Program, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lincoln Center for Performing Arts at Damrosch Park, Los Angeles Design Festival, The Forge, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, PARISH for No)one. Art House and Solange Knowles/Saint Heron, The School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and The Yard.

Additional local highlights include Armory Arts Week (c/o SPRING/BREAK Art Show, (un)Scene Art Show), Brooklyn Historical Society, Julian Schnabel’s Casa del Popolo, CPR - Center for Performance Research, Domino Park, Governors Island, Gowanus Art + Production, HERE Arts Center, The High Line Nine, La MaMa (fabNYC), and Moynihan Station, to name a few. She and her projects have been featured in The Creators Project by VICE, as well as in Cultured Magazine, Dance Magazine, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, L.A. Entertainment Weekly, Medium, Refinery29, and The Village Voice, where acclaimed dance critic Deborah Jowitt commended Russo for her “dramatically eloquent athleticism.” Recent commissions and collaborations with neighboring non-profit and grassroot organizations include Climate Week NYC; The Freedom School of the Children’s Defense Fund at Red Hook Initiative; Green Light District and SYEP at El Puente; New York Choral Society; NYU Grossman School of the Medicine; Open Culture NYC for The Metropolitan Opera’s Dancers, Chorus, and Orchestra; and LMCC's esteemed River to River Festival for Amy and Jennifer Khoshbin's THE SUN SEEKERS.

She is uniquely a professor of both dance practice and critical dance and performance studies, alike.

Currently, she is Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University, where she specializes in intermedia and interdisciplinary dance. Previously, she was faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, University of Iowa, SUNY Purchase, CUNY Queens College, and The Joffrey Ballet School’s BFA and Professional Divisions.

She teaches a range of lecture, practicum, project, seminar, studio, and hybrid courses for undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students. This includes choreography, choreography for site-specific to immersive dance theater, critical ethnography, curatorial practices in dance and performance, dance criticism and critical theories, dance as social practice, decolonizing dance history, history of art and performance-based activism, improvisation, interdisciplinary devising, intermedia dance, movement modalities, and somatic research. In 2022, she was recruited by the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase to teach on behalf of the Departmental Chair, Professor Darrah Carr, while on sabbatical. In 2021, she was selected by the Dean and the Office of the Provost to create and teach a brand-new course, entitled Performance as Protest, in the inaugural semester of the global Big Ideas Course Series at New York University. Outside of her work in universities and collegiate programs, she has taught numerous workshops at international institutions and festivals across Europe, and North and Central America.

Russo holds a BFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, BA in Anthropology from New York University’s College of Arts and Science, and MFA in Dance from Hollins University/American Dance Festival where she attended on fellowship.

Outside of her own devising, she danced for The Metropolitan Opera for several seasons.

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

American Guild of Musical Arts   •   Society of Dance History Scholars   •  American Dance Guild   •   World Dance Alliance - Americas   •   Fractured Atlas