Artist Statement

Nancy Karp, choreographer has been making work in the San Francisco Bay Area for four decades. She has created more than 80 dance works for her company Nancy Karp + Dancers founded in 1980. Karp and the company have toured throughout the U.S. and abroad, including artist residencies in Germany, India, and Japan. She has been awarded commissions by the Für Augen und Ohren and Sprachen der Künste Festivals in Berlin, the Kyoto International Contemporary Music Forum, a site-specific work for 32 performers, and the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco, among others. Numerous grants and awards for her work include the Bay Area Dance Award for Lifetime Achievement, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship to India, choreography fellowships and dance company grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, the City of Emeryville Community Promotions grant program, the Alameda County Arts Commission, the Rockefeller Foundation/MAP Fund and numerous others. An active member of the San Francisco Bay Area arts community, she served as a trustee and Arts Committee chair of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (1993-2000), directs the dance company's outreach school program, and was a mentor in the CHIME Choreographers in Mentorship Program. Nancy Karp + Dancers has made Emeryville its home at the Emeryville Artists Cooperative since its inception in 1980.