Choreographer/composer Tatyana Tenenbaum’s work employs breath, voice, fascia and musculature to excavates spaces of memory, power and transformation. Her Jewish ancestors wove their voices – literally and metaphorically – into the tuneful stories of the Broadway stage. She draws from this lineage while grappling with the lived residues of American violence buried in its form, feeling and pleasure.
Her work sits at the juncture of experimental music and dance has been described as “rich polyphony” (The New Yorker) and “transcending the fraught history between utterance and stance through an exacting inquiry” (Critical Correspondence).
Her multidisciplinary work has been commissioned and presented by ISSUE Project Room, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Movement Research, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, School for Contemporary Dance & Thought, Temple University, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks, Center for Performance Research, Roulette Intermedium and AUNTS, among others. She co-organized collective terrain/s at Danspace Project in 2019 with Lydia Bell and Jasmine Hearn, which featured the voice and choreographic work of Hearn, Tenenbaum, Tendayi Kuumba & Greg Purnell, and Samita Sinha.
She is a co-recipient with Hadar Ahuvia of the New Jewish Culture Fellowship. Their collaborative work has been presented at LaMaMa Moves! Dance Festival, Center at Westpark, and the Maryland Jewish Museum’s exhibition Material/Inheritance.
Tatyana has performed and collaborated with Yoshiko Chuma & the School of Hard Knocks, Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik, Jennifer Monson, Emily Johnson/CATALYST, Andy Luo & lily bo shapiro, and the DOING AND UNDOING collective. Sound design and musical collaborations include: Levi Gonzalez (Craft of the Father), Juliana May (Folk Incest, Family Happiness). She was a founding co-organizer for Brooklyn Studios for Dance, a multi-year co-organizer for CLASSCLASSCLASS, and a co-curator for Movement Research’s 2014 fallow time Spring Festival. She attended Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute in 2017.
In addition to the many lineages and networks of learning listed above, Tatyana has been a longtime student of Barbara Mahler and received dual degrees from Oberlin College & Conservatory of Music. She is currently on faculty for Movement Research’s Sounding Body series.
Her most recent multidiscplinary endeavor is the feature documentary film Everything You Have Is Yours , which is inspired by the work of artist, comrade and friend Hadar Ahuvia in conversation with other New York City-based Jewish and Palestinian dance artists. The film grew out of her side hustle as a videographer and is currently screening at festivals and communities across the country.