Dahlia Nayar's multimedia work investigates the performance of minoritarian Quiet and seeks unlikely sources of virtuosity. Her work has been supported by a Vermont Performance Lab residency, a Bates Dance Festival New England Emerging Choreographer Residency, a National Dance Project Special Grant and a National Dance Project Touring Award for 2016-17. Stanley Street is a multimedia dance work that has been adapted for galleries, grange halls, a Buddhist church and has toured to alternative spaces throughout the United States. Previously, Dahlia's work has been selected and performed at venues including the Venice Biennale/Danza Venezia Showcase for Emerging Choreographers, Dance Place in Washington DC, the Next Stage Dance Residency at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY, the Hammer Museum in LA, and the American Dance Festival. In addition, her site specific projects have been performed at the National Botanical Gardens, the Kennedy Center, and the Complejo Cultural, in Puebla, Mexico. Dahlia has been a guest artist at several universities including: Boston University, Bowdoin College, Duke University, Keene State College, Lawrence University, Long Island University in Brooklyn, Marymount Manhattan College, Smith College, The Ohio State University and several others. Additionally, Dahlia has had the honor of performing for other artists including: Gina Kohler’s dream [factories] at the Park Avenue Armory, for Margaret Paek’s Resident Artists at Danspace and the Whitney Museum, and Projet In Situ at Mass MoCA. She is also featured in works by filmmakers Abigail Severance and Roberto Mighty.

Dahlia is a recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship and the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Choreography. She holds an MFA in Dance/Choreography from Hollins University. She is honored to serve on the boards of Wideman Davis Dance and the Chicago Dancemakers Forum. She is currently working towards her PhD in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. Her project considers embodied manifestations of Quiet in minoritarian performance. Her study curates a constellation of contemporary artists working in dance, theater, sound, and visual art with an attention to how Quiet emerges through bodies in relation to layered contexts and multiple subjectivities. She proposes that, as a minoritarian aesthetic, Quiet activates an ephemeral commons through resonance and attunement that allows expansive possibilities of relationality.

Dahlia is sustained by a lifelong investment in the art and practice of collaboration with Loren Kiyoshi Dempster and Margaret Sunghe Paek of the Uh Oh Trio.

(Note: this site is purely for archiving performances and research, and to announce upcoming performances and exhibits. No donations solicited or accepted. Any old links for donations via fiscal sponsorship are not functional).