Abigail Levine

Abigail Levine is an artist working between New York and Los Angeles. Rooted in dance but moving across media—performance, text, drawing, sound—Levine focuses on the poetics of our bodies’ work, how we record and value it. 

Levine’s multi-year projects, Redactions and Restagings, have been supported by MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grants, New Music USA project grants, and the Center for Performance Research Mellon Artist in Residence program. They premiered at The Chocolate Factory Theater (2022) and Fridman Gallery (2017, 2018, 2019) respectively.

Past works have been presented throughout the US, in Cuba, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Greece and Taiwan at venues including Movement Research Festival, Mount Tremper Arts Festival, Danspace Project, Roulette, Gibney Dance, The Kennedy Center, Human Resources LA, Trinosophes Detroit, and internationally at SESC São Paulo, Benaki Museum (Athens), Hemispheric Institute Encuentro (Montreal), Prisma Forum (Mexico), Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (Cairo), Festival Escenario Urbano (Caracas), Días de la Danza (Havana) and Taipei Fringe.

Levine performed with both Marina Abramovic (2010) and Yvonne Rainer (2018) in their retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art and collaborated with pioneering electronics composer Alvin Lucier on a staging of his Orpheus Variations at ISSUE Project Room in 2020. She has also performed in the work of Clarinda Mac Low, Carolee Schneemann, Asad Raza, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Will Rawls, and Mark Dendy. Levine regularly works in close collaboration with composers, sound artists, and improvisors, including Judith Berkson, Derek Bermel, Erik DeLuca, Paula Matthusen, Dave Ruder, Cleek Schrey, and Tyshawn Sorey.

Levine’s critical writing has been published in Documents in Contemporary Art, Art21, Performance Art Journal (PAJ), and her creative works in Interim Poetics, Women & Performance, and Imagined Theatres. She was the 2013-15 editor of Movement Research's digital performance journal Critical Correspondence, and is currently contributing editor at the Movement Research Performance Journal.

Levine holds a Masters in Dance and Performance Studies from New York University under the advisement of André Lepecki. She has taught in the Dance Departments at Wesleyan University and Florida State University and at the College of Fine Arts at University of Texas at Austin’s UTNY program. She is currently on faculty at The New School’s College of Performing Arts.