liana conyers

Liana Conyers, M.F.A., is a dance theater maker and educator who builds performance out of memory, identity, and the strange details of everyday life. Based in the mid-Atlantic but rarely still, she layers movement, text, sound, and unexpected turns into work that resists a single, tidy read.

She currently serves as Associate Dean of Academic Life and Performing Arts Faculty at Bard Early College in Washington, DC, where she teaches Black Aesthetics in Mass Media, Performance Art, and Movement Studies. Her work in and out of the classroom has been recognized with grants and fellowships from Bard College and, most notably, a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching. In 2022, she traveled to Singapore to research arts integration and teach at Pei Hwa, Changkat Changi, LASALLE College of the Arts, the Singapore School of the Arts, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Her original works have been presented at The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and The Chocolate Factory Theater. Solo works like #ImFxckingFunny and I Invited Oprah dig into identity and who gets to take up space, usually with more humor than the subject matter has any right to allow. She was a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Fellow and a Live Artery presenter, and has shown work at Emory University, Spelman College, the University of Oregon, and the University of Idaho. She was a 2023–2024 co-presenting artist with Dance Place in Washington, DC, and opened the 2024–2025 season with the premiere of #43 at the DC Dance Festival.

I view the arts as a means to connect with myself and the world around me. During my investigations, I am interested in how people form a sense of self, and I explore how identity and autobiography influence artistic practice and performance. In my work, I focus on the depth of the human experience. I believe that we are all complex creatures, with unique untold stories. I am interested in bringing these narrative moments into performance as a means to share the interconnectedness of human nature – what it means to be flesh, bones, lovers, friends, black, white . . . .

I am a multi-disciplinary artist utilizing collage, found objects, text, movement, sound, textiles, and film in my creative process. I am most interested in visceral experiences and physical nuances. The work I create provides me with space to bring the lived experience to live performance.

Founded in 2023, The B-Side is an intergenerational collective where people from different backgrounds and generations sit down, interview each other, and build performance and creative work out of what surfaces: memory, identity, the stories that don’t usually get told. I think of the group itself as a kind of ecosystem: different lives, histories, and ways of being, coexisting in one shared space and shaping each other in the process. The work that comes out of it isn’t polished or resolved; it holds belonging and struggle, joy and transformation, side by side, and asks audiences to sit inside that with us rather than watch from a distance.

Performances (video footage available upon request)

#43: Same shit, new city Liana Conyers in collaboration with mixed-media artist Valentina Vidali. District Choreographers Dance Festival at Dance Place – 2024

TLDR, Liana Conyers in collaboration with Jamal Abrams, Co-presentation series at Dance Place – 2024

Untitled, Creative Residency at The Chocolate Factory Theater – 2020

#ImFxckingFunny, Live Artery, New York Live Arts – 2020

#MeAndDaveChappelle, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Residency – 2019

Androids & Pearls, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Residency – 2018

I Invited Oprah, Dance and Process at The Kitchen – 2017

Jars of Pennies,  Movement Research at the Judson Church – 2014

Body Politics: tHiS iS mY bOdY,  Movement Research at the Judson Church – 2012