"with deep explorations in movement, sound, and design, spencer creates keenly nuanced work."
​-New York Dance & Performance ('Bessie') Awards 2023

marion spencer (she/her/hers) is an interdisciplinary dance artist living in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn.​ Through a weaving of dance, sound and installation practices, marion's work creates poetic ecosystems within which to wonder, feel & dream. She creates both solo and ensemble performances that excavate the personal, the systemic, the unknown, the wild, the cellular and the beautiful. marion's current artistic research investigates mycorrhizal networks - the roots of fungi that connect tree roots underground, creating a network that shares nutrients and resources between ecosystems. She is asking: in a time of extinction, what can we learn from these ancient, non-human teachers that center collectivity, cooperation and curiosity?

marion is a 2023 New York Dance & Performance (‘Bessie’) Awards Nominee for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer. Her work has been presented in NYC by La MaMa Experimental Theatre, Roulette Intermedium, Center for Performance Research, Danspace Project, Gibney, New Dance Alliance, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, NYU Tisch Dance, and more. She has been an Artist in Residence at MacDowell, The American Dance Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Gibney, The Field Center, Amherst College, Mana Contemporary and New Dance Alliance, among others. 

​​as a performer, marion has had the pleasure of collaborating with Joanna Kotze, Laurie Berg, BAND|portier, Laura Peterson, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Michelle Boulé, Tyler Rai and as a guest performer with David Dorfman Dance and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. As a teacher, marion has been on faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Gibney, Peridance, Greenwich Country Day High School, MOtiVe Brooklyn, Freeskewl and hosted her own class outdoors in Prospect Park from 2020-2021. She has been a guest teaching artist at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, University of Maryland-College Park, Amherst College, University of Washington, Velocity Dance Center, Western Washington University, Bellingham Rep, Louisiana State University and Dancing Grounds. marion has toured her choreographic work and teaching practice nationally to Durham NC, Catskill NY, Seattle WA, Amherst MA and to her former home- New Orleans LA. marion also teaches Pilates and is a Craniosacral Therapist. She holds an MFA in Dance: Interdisciplinary Research from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (2025), and a BA with Honors in Geography from Vassar College (2009).

choreographic reel:

​artist statement:
the child of two Mesoamerican Archaeologists, I was raised understanding “work” as the intersection of physical labor, radical thought, imagination and honoring those who came before us. I take these lessons from my mother and father into my artistic work to this day. 

i identify as an interdisciplinary dance artist- I dance, I sing, I write, I draw, I build things. Through a poetic and subversive weaving of movement, sound & installation practices, I create performances that invite witnesses to wonder, feel and dream. I make both solo and ensemble works that excavate the personal, the systemic, the unknown, the wild, the cellular and the beautiful. My work finds kinship with the lineage of experimental artists, organizers and dreamers who create in the cracks and crevices as feminine and feminist resistance to our “imperialist white supremacist capitalist heteronormative patriarchy,” as named by scholar and activist bell hooks. hooks teaches us how these interweaving systems of oppression seek to disembody us all. Being in the body is a radical act. Taking lessons from hooks, I embrace a creative process that calls upon experimentation, embodied and theoretical research, and intuitive wisdom.

my work is understanding where i came from
​my work is asking how we transform this world together, one rehearsal at a time
my work is listening from the back of the eyes and to the marrow inside my bones
my work is constructing utopias from our current dystopia
my work is unlearning
my work is building relationships that will endure the revolution

i make to make sense of the world and move towards the horizon of a better one.

cover photo by Whitney Browne of h o r i z o n  presented by NYU Tisch Dance (May 2025) | portrait photo by Anna Maynard