Name
Elizabeth Ward

Born
I was born in Detroit in 1977.

Living
I’m living in Vienna for the past two years.

Profession / vocation
I work as a performer and a dancer.

Webpage
I don’t really have one, but I started to make a Tumblr-page.

I dance, because
That’s a good one. I think, it’s a two part plane. One is that I always have, and the other is, because I love it.
The dance vocabulary is so much embedded in my body, and it actually just makes me really happy to dance.  I’m really this person that whenever I get stoned at a party, I wanna start doing Ballet. (Laughing) It’s so ridiculous! I trained in Ballet, and I really feel, it’s that language, that movement which I embedded in myself since a young age. I really just feel very at home in that. Maybe dancing is a way of going back home. And of course there are dance parties. I love being in big groups of people dancing together. I love that communal way of being together, moving together. It’s so human. It’s such an essentially human act that brings joy. I just believe in it.

Everytime when I perform, I
I’d like to take it like some kind of mediation, or almost prayer. It’s some way of being in reality, like a hyperreality that can only take place with the audience. It has a lot to do with navigating through these states of being nervous, but also with really being present, with the room and with the material.

Sounds like art is almost religious
Yeah, I know, it’s so terrible to say, but let’s say it so, in a way it functions that way for me.

South Tyrol is to me like
South Tyrol to me is a very unique place. I’ve been there two times, and both times it really made me happy to be on a farm, to be in this countryside. I don’t know a countryside that looks like this anywhere else. This mix of different cultures, hearing the Italian down in Bolzano, but then the German up in the mountains… these old buildings and these beautiful mountains and the rivers down below. It’s really a unique and special place, it makes me happy.

South Tyrol compared to a region in America is like
You know, I really tried to think about it when I was there last, and I was thinking, we don’t really have a place like that which I’m aware of. Maybe the majesty of the Dolomites would be more like something out west. Maybe it’s like Colorado, but I’ve never been there.

Elections in America: who is going to be next president?
This is a terrible question. I am also terrified of that answer and I really don’t know. Somehow I had thought it would be Hillary Clinton, but now Bernie Sanders is doing better in the primaries - which is really cool. But it’s also terrifying, because the country has so many conservative people and the idea that it could go to one of the republicans is really scary. I don’t know. Let’s see, we have 10 more months of anxiety until we know that answer.

Last and next travel?
My last travel: I went to Salzburg for a week for work. My next travel: I go to Berlin for two months, also for work. I don’t have anything planned more.

Money is to me
The first thing that came to my mind is: a pain in the ass. But, actually it’s just a means to do things.

I’m enthustiastic about
Last week I went to an exhibition in Vienna at the Kunsthalle about “Political Populism”, and I saw this video installation by Hito Steyerl: “The Factory of the sun”. I really enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it sitting there and watch it. The dancing as a form of resistance, I quiet identify with. And this crazy room, it made me think like: can I build one of these rooms? With these blue lines everywhere. There was a dance team in front of a green screen, a science fiction story, with dance moves. They were making a video game. Each of the characters had been killed in public uprisings in the last year. There was something about “Deutsche Bank” being this evil entity, and there was this complex in Berlin at the Teufelsberg, a disintegrating geodistic dome and them dancing… They were wearing shiny gold unitards a lot. There was something dystopic about it and utopic. That was exciting.


 

Upcoming project
On Friday and Saturday I’m showing a dance that I’ve been working for the last couple of years at WUK in Vienna, it’s called “everything is in everything.”

Biography
Elizabeth Ward is a choreographer, dancer and performer based in Vienna. She uses ballet as an active language to relate and expose performance spaces, whether they be traditional theaters or re purposed industrial venues. For the last several years she has worked with electronic dance music as accompaniments to these ballets.
Previous work has been show in NYC (The Kitchen, Chocolate Factory, Danspace Projects, Dixon Place, AUNTS, Movement Research at the Judson Church), Barcelona (La Poderosa), Berlin (Flutgraben), Detroit (Trinosophes), L.A. (Pieter PASD), Athens (Kiniterias), Seattle (Velocity), Copenhagen (ANA), Vienna (WUK), Brussels (BAINS Connective), and Portland, Oregon (Disjecta).
As a performer she has performed or collaborated with DD Dorvillier, Miguel Gutierrez, Cathy Weis, Andrea Maurer, Yvonne Meier, Claudia Bosse, The Bureau for the Future of Choreography, JMY Leary, Vanessa Anspaugh, Marten Spangberg, Jennifer Lacey, Liz Santoro, Anne Juren, Linda Austin, Roland Rauschmeier, Heather Kravas, and Antonija Livingstone amongst others. She has taught workshops combining ballet and improvisation at Tanzquartier (Vienna), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), DOCH (Stockholm), classclassclass (NYC), Dance New Amsterdam (NYC), Wayne State University (Detroit), Pieter PASD (L.A.), Dancecentrum (Gotenborg), SNDO (Amsterdam), Griffon Studios (Athens), and Iceland Academy of Arts (Reykjavik).


Images:
Elizabeth Ward: "everything is in everything". Photo: Paula Court
Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun (2015), German Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed