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artist statement

2010 - present

My research attends to rhythms of growth, decay, and transition. Through improvisation, I search for meaning and metaphor within spontaneous material, embracing chance, coincidence, and juxtaposition. I invite patience and subtlety into both process and performance. I move between scored improvisation and set choreography, experimenting with relationships to sound and duration while cultivating a sensitive, responsive performance presence – an approach informed by my study of butoh. I draw from stories found in poetry, fiction, and lived experience as sources for theme, structure, gesture, and text. I am deeply interested in the sentient body: how it gathers experience, moves through systems, processes cycles of change, and negotiates the tensions between fate and agency.

bio

Madelyn Sher is a dance and theater artist from Staten Island, New York. She has performed at Triskelion Arts, BRIC, Knockdown Center, Theater for the New City, Danspace Project, JACK, in galleries, hallways, backyards, warehouses, lawns, and at the end of a pier. Madelyn has danced in works by Nami Yamamoto, Chloe London, Bebe Miller and Angie Hauser, Olive Prince, Vangeline Theater, Duane Lee Holland, evan ray suzuki, REDi Dance Company, Alexander Davis, and others. As an actor, she was a recurring guest star on a TV show called The Baker and the Beauty, a romantic comedy that premiered on ABC in 2020 and became the number one show on Netflix in 2021. She performed for several seasons with Bronx Arts Ensemble/Lehman Children's Theater Company, which brings classic fairytales with a modern spin to young Bronx audiences. 

Madelyn's choreographic work has been presented at various venues and festivals in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts including WestFest, Cosmic Cherry Festival, Queer Butoh Festival, The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, CREST, SMUSH Gallery, and Triskelion Arts. In 2024 Madelyn received the Lehman Alumni Choreography Fellowship to set a new work on students (entitled Suchness) for the Dance in Dialogue series. Her work has been supported by a PASS residency at Snug Harbor Botanical Gardens & Cultural Center, a DCLA Premier Grant from Staten Island Arts, and an Emory Project Grant, an Axial residency at The Croft (Horton Bay, Michigan) and a solo residency at annex:art (San Fidel, New Mexico). Her short dance film, Looking Inwood, won her the Promising Filmmaker Award at CUNY Film Festival 2018. Madelyn is the 2025 Arts Fellow in Dance at Emory University where she teaches undergraduate students, choreographs for the Emory Dance Company, and develops her own professional work (premiere April 2026). She has an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College.

Madelyn is also an educator and administrator. She values arts and education organizations which inspire communities and new generations of art-makers and audiences. For five years she produced Groundswell Series, an annual site-specific outdoor dance festival that brings dance into shared spaces in parks and playgrounds in Brooklyn, NY. She completed marketing internships with Pentacle -working directly with The Yard in Martha's Vineyard - and Movement Research. Madelyn has worked in New York City elementary and middle schools for several years, teaching and assisting dance, drama, and music classes. She has taught at the college-level at Smith College and Emory University, teaching courses in Contemporary/Modern Dance, Ballet, Butoh, and Dance for Everybody. She frequently teaches community classes through the NY Butoh Institute and School for Contemporary Dance and Thought. 

 
2010 - present

dance reel

a mix of

choreography and improvisation

choreography reel

College commissions, festival curation,

and more

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