samuel b. hanson

Samuel Bennett Hanson is a dancer, writer, and artist who has performed in the work of Hilary Carrier, Isabel Lewis, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Mina Nishimura, Diana Crum, Yve Laris Cohen, Yvonne Meier, Simone Forti, Alexandra Pirici, and Alexandra Barbier. His research interests include improvisation, dance criticism and print media, experimental presenting and curation, dance on film and video, and public education. In his role as Teaching Assistant Professor at Dance at Illinois, he is excited to be working on creating an online departmental journal and expanding K-12 teaching curricula. Samuel’s choreography tends toward the intimate, made for specific performers and smaller spaces. Before living in New York from 2014-19, he worked closely with Utah-based choreographer Ashley Anderson as a performer, curator, and editor through her platform loveDANCEmore, an incubator of experimental dance for the Western United States, which he now serves remotely as executive director. He has taught dance and special education in elementary, middle and high schools in Utah, Illinois, and New York City and has guest lectured on dance and education policy at Davidson College, Weber State University, the University of Utah, and the University of the Américas Puebla. He holds an undergraduate degree in performance and media from the University of Utah and an MFA in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Press

The most challenging piece of the evening (and for Utahns at large) was Samuel Hanson and Katie Meehan’s “kathryn and katherine.” Meehan danced alongside Katherine Adler—schoolmate in the U’s Modern Dance program. The opening (Meehan later said was inspired by Fleetwood Mac LP covers) consisted of backward bows with candles was just annoying enough to make the climax interesting. As the two performed a simple task sequence of darting across the stage to chug Budweisers (yes, beers in a dance performance), they would also incorporate beautiful movements, ultimately leading into arm windmills. The piece was just sheer entertainment, yet had an aesthetic that begs to ask questions of the viewers for weeks to come. They took the greatest risk of the evening and disappointingly weren’t rewarded for it.

-Austen Diamond, Salt Lake City Weekly, Nov 20, 2010, Review: Sugar Show Preliminaries

Hanson’s improvised pieced put two individuals, who had supposedly never seen each other before, in a common space. The dancers, both wearing black blind folds, started across from each on staircases with railings. A musical score by the growling and smoky Tom Waits permeated the vast space between the dancers. They began to develop improvised solos. They were so far apart my attention felt divided. I stopped trying to look at them and sat back to enjoy the music. The music stopped abruptly after roughly five minutes. Hanson himself started speaking over the sound system. He started to instruct the dancers on how they should interact. The piece took a turn toward curious. How would they navigate his instructions and complete his far fetched tasks? Massaging each other in a non-dance manner? Impromptu symbolic posing to take pictures? Hanson’s commentary was what made the piece successful. His quick wit and immediate acute commentary on what we were seeing and what the dancers should and shouldn’t be doing gave context to their entire interaction. Without his narration it would be just another improvisation with two dancers wearing blind folds. The lights turned off and the dancers walk away, never removing their blind folds.

-Juan Aldape, loveDANCEmore, Oct 20, 2010