Bio
Dana Kotler holds a B.A. in Biology (Hon.) and Dance Performance from Oberlin College and an M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She has danced professionally in New York, performing works by Dixie Shulman, Jill Sigman, and Mark Morris, among others. Her choreography has been shown in numerous New York venues including Williamsburg Art NeXus, Dance New Amsterdam, and One Arm Red. Her adaptation of Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda was part of the “Great Music for a Great City” series at the Graduate Center of CUNY. She has collaborated with opera directors Lydia Steier, Eric Einhorn, and Sarah Meyers, harpist Rachel Schermer, and composer Bob Lukomski, with whom she created If my complaints could passions move, a modern dance duet set to live and electronic vocal arrangements of music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell. Since 2005, she has been creating short films, including Action Potential: in Action, and MOVEMENT:disordered. In 2007, her short film PxDx (Physical Diagnosis) was named Best Short Film: Experimental at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. In 2009 she began a collaboration with performance art team Torino:Margolis and programmer/sound designer Lee Azzarello, creating Action Potential, which premiered as a work in progress at Devotion Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and at the Piksel Festival for Electronic Art in Bergen, Norway. She is a certified Pilates instructor, formerly an instructor for Power Pilates as well as former owner/director of Happy Now Flat Belly, Williamsburg Brooklyn. Her work as a Pilates Instructor, as well as her dance and biology training, gave her the foundation for further study of the human body and its capacity for movement. She has been a guest lecturer in the Theater and Dance Department at Oberlin College, and is currently interested in the role of Pilates’ Method in lumbar stabilization for prevention of back pain. She is a first year resident in the department of Internal Medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, and will begin her training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (Northwestern University) in 2010.