photo by Robert Redfield

Bio

Catherine Galasso is a choreographer and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn. Since 2006, she has created seven evening-length cross-disciplinary dance works with project-specific casts, as well as numerous short performance pieces for dance venues, galleries and museums. Real-life idiosyncratic characters are frequent sources of inspiration for her pieces, such as the man with the Guinness record for being struck by lightning seven times, and French cinema pioneers, the Lumière Brothers. 

Her works have been performed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Bibliotheque National de France in Paris, Harvard University’s Carpenter Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Joyce SoHo, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon Place, BAX, Dance New Amsterdam and the International Theater Festival in Pristina, Kosovo. While based in San Francisco from 2006-09, Galasso was offered a three-year residency at ODC Theater by then artistic director Rob Bailis. During her time at ODC, she was the first choreographer to be commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society (2009), and the youngest commissioned by the San Francisco Foundation (2011). 

Her 2011 work, Bring On The Lumière! was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award, and is featured in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies. Residencies include the LMCC Swing Space (2009), Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center (2013 & 2015), Headlands Center for the Arts (2012), Atlantic Center for the Arts (2008 & 2010), Chez Bushwick (2013). In 2011 Galasso was selected for a year-long mentorship program with choreographer Ralph Lemon through the Margaret Jenkins CHIME Program, and she is currently in residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Extended Life Dance Development Program.

Her Fall of the Rebel Angels performance series (2012-2015) inspired by the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, culminated in June 2015 on Governors Island as part of the 2015 River To River Festival.

Her next project is DECAMERON NOW, inspired by Giovannie Bocaccio's 14th century novellas.

Galasso was born in New York and grew up in Italy. Her father is Michael Galasso, the award-winning composer for theater, film and dance. She received a painting degree from the art high school in Venice Italy, and a BA in Film from Cornell University.