Peggy Piacenza is a Seattle choreographer, video artist, and performer who has toured both nationally and internationally. She is the co-founder of Base, a non-profit organization dedicated to elevating risk and invention in dance, performance, and multidisciplinary art. Peggy’s work draws from her explorations in improvisation/performance techniques, religion and gender studies, and inter-disciplinary collaborations. In recent years her stage-based work has expanded to include installation and video. Her choreography has been commissioned and presented by Bonfire Gallery, Bratislava Movement Festival in Slovakia, Dance Theater Workshop in NYC, and in Seattle as part of Velocity Dance Center’s Guest Artist Series, On the Boards, Composer/Choreographer, D-9 Dance Collective, Northwest Film Forum, and 4Culture. In 1992, she co-founded Seattle’s repertory dance company, The D-9 Dance Collective.
Piacenza’s contemporary dance career began in Seattle in 1991 when she first performed with Seattle-based choreographer Pat Graney, touring signature works throughout the US, Europe and South America. From 1996–2004 she worked in collaboration with co-directors Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson of the Seattle-based dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells. Since then, she has performed in the work of many choreographers, such as Bebe Miller, Stephanie Skura, Deborah Hay, Lionel Popkin, Beth Graczyk, and others. She also performed in two evening-length works conceived by Dayna Hanson, Gloria’s Cause (2010) and The Clay Duke (2014). She can also be seen acting in Hanson’s feature-length film Improvement Club (2013). She is currently performing with NYC/Toronto-based performance collective, Same As Sister (S.A.S.).
Piacenza is a 2010 graduate of Smith College’s Ada Comstock Scholars Program where she majored in Religion and Gender Studies. In Spring 2011 she became the inaugural recipient of the Helen Gurley Brown Magic Grant, underwriting her creative project to bring Cambodian and American artists together in Cambodia for a month of cross-cultural dialogue and dancing associated with classical and contemporary dance forms. In December 2012, a documentary film based on her time in Cambodia was completed, and subsequently hosted by Velocity Dance Center’s Speakeasy Series.
Photo by Doug Arney