Photo by André Daughtry
Kay Ottinger has moved through New York as a dancer, performance coordinator and curator since 2010. She has had the pleasure to perform with choreographers such as Ivy Baldwin, Okwui Okpokwasili, Ursula Eagly, Kathy Westwater, Kim Brandt, Rebecca Davis, Priscilla Marrero, Christopher Williams, Louis Malvacias, Molly Poerstel Taylor, and in the revivals of Lucinda Child’s Radial Courses and Carolee Shcneeman’s Lateral Splay.
Kay coordinated Movement Research at Judson Church and Open Performance from ‘14 - ‘18. She has conceived and curated improvisational group shows whose evenings were built around the combination of time, space, and performance practice. These have been witnessed at Judson Memorial Church, 2nd Story Pilates + Yoga, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Glasshouse, Brooklyn Fire Proof and apartment buildings in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
On Thanksgiving of 2024 Kay moved back to NY after 3 years living in Colombia where she was assisting her husband on a photography and video art project as well as teaching dance improvisation at Danza Común in Bogotá and Casa de Cultura La Chispa in Medellín. Currently, Kay is in the first year of getting an MBA (masters in business) from Baruch College Zicklin School of Business. With the current economic state of the arts she desires to research future sustainable “business” practices for artists and cultural organizations.
As a teacher and mover she continues expanding on her experience in Colombia and the performance practice she began in October 2020. With 3 artistic mentors she considered how dance can be learned, transmitted, and sown through radical forms of pedagogy. The practice has branched out and into themes of mentorship, artistic pedagogy, de-velopment and transmission. Where this work leads, and to whom its lessons may be shared, and formed again, is a continuous stream of next chapters of exploration. She is grateful to Eleanor Hullihan, Melanie Maar, and Samita Sinha for sharing their practices with her.
Please read more about her self-study project here