SAMANTHA SPEIS

Samantha Speis is an improviser and movement artist based in the Bronx, NYC, and is Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women. She has worked with Gesel Mason, The Dance Exchange, Jumatatu Poe, Deborah Hay, Marjani Forte, and Liz Lerman. She is currently a member of The Skeleton Architecture collective of black womyn and gender non-conforming artists and was recently awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Performer. She has developed a teaching practice that explores pelvic mobility as the root of powerful locomotion and as a point of connection to the stories, experiences, and lineages that reside in each of us.

Speis came to NCCAkron in January of 2020 to teach as part of a survey series called 21st Century Dance Practices — the first of three programs of Ideas in Motion, a new joint initiative between NCCAkron, The University of Akron School of Dance, Theatre, and Arts Administration (DTAA), and the Mary Schiller Myers Lecture Series in the Arts. She was also the first artist to be interviewed by NCCAkron's Artistic/Executive Director Christy Bolingbroke for the Inside the Dancer's Studio conversation series.