Movement Workshop Group

Mixing Dance and Theater for a New Kind of Performance
Home     About Us     Works     Video     Press     Friends     Donate     Contact Us     Photographs     First Layer Festival      
Leslie Guyton     Eliza Lay     Liza Hostetler-Ingalls     Dana Fitchett     The Group      
About Us
 
The Movement Workshop Group is a contemporary dance theater company which is dedicated to collaboration & innovation in the genre of dance theater.  MWG was co-founded in 2005 by Leslie Guyton & Liza Hostetler-Ingalls.
 
Inspired greatly by the dance theater movement in Germany and Holland, The Movement Workshop Group has created three full-length dance theater productions.  They recently toured their latest production, Moontides, in New York City, Philadelphia and Boston.  Their next production Wanderlust will tour in the fall of 2010.

Artistic Director Leslie Guyton is currently collaborating on Wanderlust with
Artistic Associate Eliza Lay. 

MWG offers workshops once a month in Grotowski acting training, Graham dance technique, and MWG dance & acting improvisation & composition.






 

Works to Date:

Black Feathers (2005)
Dust to Dust (2006)
Moontides in 23,149 Parts (2008)

Wanderlust (2010)


 

The first of their collaborations was Black Feathers (2005), which premiered at John Hancock Hall in Boston. Black Feathers was created as a tribute to famed German choreographer Pina Bausch by honoring her aesthetic and process of developing work.



Following the success of Black Feathers, Guyton and Hostetler-Ingalls formed the Movement Workshop Group, a dance theater company dedicated to creating original dance theater hybrid productions. The pair aimed to stay true to Bausch’s development process, while also exploring other themes and ways of working.



Their first work with the group was Dust to Dust (2006), which was performed as part of the Destination Dance program at The Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center. Through this piece, the group examined the desperation of those currently affected by the American healthcare crisis through the aesthetic lens of the Depression-era American Dustbowl.



In February 2008, the Movement Workshop Group was commissioned to participate in a night of works in progress at the Dixon Place performance laboratory space in New York City, as part of Michael Burke’s Moving Men series. There they presented 20 minutes of Moontides in 23,149 Parts.  MWG then expanded Moontides to a full-length piece and toured it in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia in Fall 2008.



The group is currently preparing for the Spring 2010 tour of their next original dance theater piece, Wanderlust.