Press

“Niehoff has made a couple of small, tight works this year. Both are kinetically evocative and even more powerful for the clear boundaries she places on the material and performance. In an interview before the 2005 Relatively Real, Niehoff wondered if dance could actually do everything she wanted to accomplish as an artist. If she continues in the vein, the answer is a resounding yes.”
Sandra Kurtz, Seattle Weekly
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“These seven dancers were virtuosos. Movements whipped through their bodies, an impulse starting at one foot and traveling to a shoulder with such clarity and articulation, you could see it hit each joint along the way.”
Janice Steinberg, San Diego Union-Tribune

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Lingo dancetheater has been an interdisciplinary performing ensemble since 1996, performing their adventurous and athletic works of dance theater around the world. International engagements include Canada, Japan, Ecuador and Cuba. Most notable national performances include Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Inside/Out in Massachusetts, On the Boards’ New Performance Series, The Southern Theater in Minneapolis, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Evergreen State College, West Coast Bagnolet Platform in Los Angeles, and The Dancing on the Edge Festival in Vancouver, among others.

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Biography

KT Niehoff, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Lingo dancetheater, received her dance, music and performance education from such mentors and visionaries as Joy Kellman, Jimmy Tripp, Stella Adler, Lisa Sokolov, Duaine Wolfe, Katie Duck, Laurie DeVito, Daniel Lepkoff, Nina Martin, and Michele Miller. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater history/acting from New York University, receiving training from The Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting as well as the Experimental Theater Wing. In 1998, 2000 & 2002 she was the recipient of a Seattle Arts Commission Individual Artist award. She was recipient of a 2001 Artist Trust Fellowship.

Ms. Niehoff began choreographing in the Northwest area in 1995, and founded her company, Lingo dancetheater, in 1997. Since then, her work has been presented throughout the United States and internationally in Canada, Japan, Ecuador and Cuba.

Her work has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project, the National Performance Network, Meet the Composer, Composer/Choreographer Project, King County Arts Commission, Arts International, Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, Allied Arts, and multiple artist residencies at Centrum in Port Townsend, WA. Her work has been commissioned by Cornish College of the Arts, the d-9 dance collective, and Milton Academy in Boston.

Ms. Niehoff is co-director at Velocity Dance Center in Seattle, which she founded in 1996 with her partner, Michele Miller, where she teaches regularly. She has taught technique, composition, and improvisation for the better part of a decade at institutions such as the DC Improvisation Festival, The School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam), Oberlin University (Ohio), Estudio 3 (Madrid), Dance Space Center (NYC), The Muse Ballet School (Osaka, Japan), Humanazarte (Quito, Ecuador), Cornish College of the Arts, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Evergreen College, the University of Oregon, and the University of Washington.

As a performer, Ms. Niehoff has danced with MAGPIE, an improvisational dance/music group based in Amsterdam (1999-2002). She was a member of the Pat Graney Company (1992-1995), and a founding member of the D-9 Dance Collective. She has danced independent projects for Ann Carlson and David Rousseve, Lance Greis, Amii LeGendre, and Joy Kellman and Company. For her performing with Ms. Kellman, she has received notable reviews from both the New York Times and The Village Voice.

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Repertory

The latest event from Seattle choreographer KT Niehoff, INHABIT, dismantles the clarity of audience and performer by brushing up against, toasting, dancing, snacking, chatting and intertwining with an intimate audience literally hosted in the home of the space. INHABIT is a dance, a party and a ritual – a performance offered as a risk and a gift and a part of a human feast.

INHABIT is an intimate 50 minute, non-proscenium work, an invitation to our living room for the evening. The audience become guests and the dancers become givers in this visual, sensorial and intellectual feast. As givers, the dancers construct an environment for a shared experience, greeting guests as they arrive to usher them from the debris of their day into the present.

INHABIT upends the presumed separation of life and art with kindness and expertly constructs a range of proximal vantage points for guests to watch the performance unfold. Throughout the evening, Inhabit also incorporates snacking, toasting, chatting and hosting. These simple, surprising encounters dash usual performance expectations and give easy permission for each guest to own the world of the work as their own.

As the Lingo quartet of Bianca Cabrera, Dustin Haug, KT Niehoff and Aaron Swartzman enter their sixth year of working together, they specifically shirk spectacle for intimacy. INHABIT offers each company member’s profound understanding of Niehoff’s signature movement style which combines hypnotic states of inversion, lushly virtuosic partnering and hyper-mobile, spinal delicacy. In addition, Inhabit excavates the private, performative prowess exclusive to each artist by demanding a physical and emotional unearthing of how they distinctively dwell in place and body.

INHABIT is a dance, a party and a ritual. A performance offered as a risk and a gift. A powerful reflection on our choices of how, where and with whom we dwell.

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