Hannah Louise Barnard:
Collaborative Dance Artist

Performance Career:

Hannah Louise Barnard is an NYC-based dancer, choreographer, musician, educator, administrator, activist and spiritual seeker. Her original choreographic works have been presented in NYC through NYPL for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (Upper West Side), Dixon Place, Theater for the New City (Lower East Side), The Tank NYC, Saint Peter's Church (Midtown), Greenwich House, Tenri Cultural Institute (West Village), National Opera Center (Chelsea), the Lean In NYC Urban Women's Retreat (Flatiron District), Artslope, ShapeShifter Lab, Barbes and Spectrum NYC (Brooklyn), as well as venues in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Florida, England and South Australia. Hannah has worked with multiple Contemporary Classical and Jazz composers; In 2014, her choreography was commissioned for The Rhizome Project by Jazz pianist/composer Fabian Almazan. From 2016-2018, Hannah served as founder and director of Sanctuary, a collective of dancer/choreographers, musician/composers, and visual artists who collaboratively produced and performed original multimedia works. Sanctuary premiered their first work through the inaugural Artslope festival, which Hannah served as Chair of the Dance Committee under the directorship of Gilly Youner (Co-president of the Park Slope Civic Council).  From 2013-2019, Hannah served as co-director and resident choreographer for Dance in Jazz at Saint Peter's Church (Midtown) with Ike Sturm (former Director of Jazz Ministries). She has worked on several projects with the multidisciplinary collective Artists By Any Other Name (Artistic Director Harmonnia Junus), with whom she participated in a choreographic residency in Virginia with Kista Tucker (Artistic Director, Kista Tucker Insights) and toured South Australia as a performer and arts educator in 2017. Hannah has appeared as a dance theater artist with Aimee Plauche & Performers (Artistic Director Aimee Plauche), The Chocolate Dances Company (Artistic Director Megan Sipe), Giada Ferrone Dance (Artistic Director Giada Ferrone), and Chamber16 (Artistic Director Sharon Gunderson). She has collaborated with light sculptor Suzy Sureck (https://suzysureck.com/light_sculpt.html), clothing designer Mary Symczak, puppet artist Karen Zasloff, photographers Tony Gonzalez (https://tonygonzalezartist.com/) and Asya Azar (https://www.asyaworld.com/), film artists Daniel Zimbler, Dominick Nero, Melissa Wu and Klassic Carella, and composers Ike Sturm, Fabian Almazan, Chanda Rule, Chris Dingman, Eric Stewart, Mare Berger and Sonia Sjaznberg. Hannah has appeared as an improvisational performance artist with Fritz Donnelly’s troupe at multiple gallery spaces of ChaShaMa, as The Divine Comedienne through Megan Sipe’s Chocolate Salons, and as Luxuria Gravitas through Billy Schultz’s improv comedy series, “Dancify That!” Recent projects include collaborating on an indigenous adaptation of Euripides’ “Trojan Women” with AMERINDA (http://amerinda.org/main/), working on a multicultural dance production honoring Ghandi with Tony Award-winning choreographer George Faison through Lotus Music & Dance (Artistic Director Kamala Cesar), directing and performing “Estuary,” a dance theater work selected for PrideFest at The Tank NYC, and co-creating “The Moon Is Always Full,” a music & dance documentary film set in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in collaboration with Bessie Award-winning dancer Emily Pope. In addition to her dance career, Hannah writes and records original music for voice and piano, which can be found by searching “Hannah Louise Barnard” on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/). She is currently in the processes of writing new music with bassist Michelle Bazile, cooking up an art installation featuring shadow puppetry with fabric sculptor/performance artist H. Gene Thompson of Innerworkings Theater (https://hgenethompson.com/), and authoring a personal memoir entitled “Swimming Upstream.” Hannah may also be found playing The Purple Pirate Princess or a Dancing Rainbow Unicorn at the odd children’s birthday party.

Education & Training:

Hannah received classical ballet training from the Neglia Conservatory (Buffalo, NY), Princeton Ballet School (Princeton, NJ), Pittsburgh Ballet Theater School, and Bodiography Center for Movement (Pittsburgh, PA). She performed as an apprentice with the Bodiography Contemporary Ballet Company (Artistic Director Maria Caruso) in 2009. Hannah went on to study Ballet, Modern Dance, and Dance Composition at The Florida State University School of Dance, where she received training and creative mentorship from Professors Gerri Houlihan (Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company), Dan Wagoner (Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham), Lynda Davis (Bella Lewitsky), Anthony Morgan (Martha Graham), Tim Glenn (Alwin Nikolais), Jawole Zollar (Urban Bush Women), Sheila Humphreys (Royal Ballet), Anjali Austin (Dance Theater of Harlem), Rick McCullough (Nederlands Dans Theater), Zach Morris and Tom Pearson (Third Rail Projects). While studying at the FSU School of Dance, Hannah was selected by Tim Glenn to perform as a soloist in the premiere of his work "Life, Shapes and the Future of History Condensed" for Days of Dance (Fall 2009) and the Intermedia Festival (Spring 2010). She was also selected as a cast member of "Naked City" by Jawole Zollar (Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women) for Evenings of Dance (Spring 2011) and as a company member of DRT (Dance Repertory Theater), directed by Lynda Davis. Hannah's original choreographic work "Where Did That Leg Come From?" was selected by a panel of FSU faculty members to be premiered through Days of Dance (Fall 2010). She received the 2011 FSU Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Award (URCAA) to conduct a choreographic research project entitled "There is No Rose" in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Girls Choir (Artistic Director Kathryn Barnard) on their 2011 England Tour. Her research is published in the Spring 2012 edition of The Owl (FSU Undergraduate Research Journal), an accomplishment for which she appeared as a featured student in the Florida State University News (https://news.fsu.edu/student-stars/2012/05/01/hannah-barnard-2/). Hannah completed an administrative internship with Battery Dance Company in Lower Manhattan (Artistic Director Jonathan Hollander) in Fall 2011 through the FSU in NYC Program and graduated Magna Cum Laude with her BFA in Dance from FSU in 2012. In 2014, she expanded her dance studies to include Bharatanatyam, an ancient form of Indian classical dance, which she practiced under the tutelage of Kamala Cesar through Lotus Music & Dance until 2021. Hannah’s other dance-related dabblings have included Waacking with Archie Burnett, Contact Improv with Tiffany Mills, Body Scripting with Tamar Rogoff, Capoeira with Capoeira Luanda, Power Vinyasa Yoga at Yoga to the People, Modern Dance at the Paul Taylor Dance Center, and Ballet at ZviDance, Mark Morris Dance Center, and NYCommunity Ballet. In addition to her movement training, Hannah studied classical piano for nine years and received three years of choral training from the Pittsburgh Girls Choir, with whom she toured internationally. She completed a songwriting course in 2021 by UK-based singer/songwriter Dani Tersini through Women Songwriters of the World and briefly studied Philippine kulintang music with percussionist Zaneta Sykes. Hannah regularly practices kickboxing at CKO Kickboxing Bay Ridge and open water swimming at Brighton Beach.

Spiritual Work & Activism:

An avid spiritual seeker, Hannah has devoted herself to a mystic path on which she cultivates her inner life through holistic healing and growth. Her spiritual journey has been deeply informed by the processes of deconstructing fundamentalist religion, reconstructing an earth-based spirituality rooted in Deep Feminine principles, understanding her long-term chronic pain condition through a holistic lens, enthusiastically embracing her queer identity, and exploring her passion for creative practice as sacred ritual. Hannah is a former client of PSI (Psychotherapy & Spirituality Institute) and a current member of The Coven, an online community facilitated by Jamie Lee Finch that provides support for individuals who have experienced Religious Trauma Syndrome after leaving fundamentalist traditions. Hannah has practiced Alexander Technique (a mind-body process) with Jennifer Kellow in Jersey City, Inner Space Technique (energetic healing & clearing therapy) with Athena Malloy in Brooklyn, and various forms of meditation through the Australia-based Clairvision School. She is a former member of Not So Churchy (Rev. Mieke Vandersall), a queer worshiping community for whom she led creative movement workshops and with whom she participated in songwriting and visual arts workshops. Hannah continuously participates in a variety of nature-centric spiritual practices, including full moon rituals, seasonal celebrations, and solo ceremonies. She is currently a fifth-year student in the True Nature program of Jumana Sophia’s Her Mystery School, an online school devoted to the Deep Feminine tradition. Within HMS, Hannah has completed the Medicine Woman and Queen’s Command mentorship programs with Jamila Suzanne. She participated in Deonesea La Fey’s “Priestess ~ A Stage Production” in 2021, after a week of studying Temple Dance with Deonesea in Ashland, Oregon; Hannah further deepened her study of Temple Dance with Deonesea at the Priestess Convocation in Crete the following year. A blossoming spiritual teacher and healer herself, Hannah uses her primary medium (movement), along with other creative disciplines, to guide participants into a deeper relationship with themselves, their bodies, and their own innate spiritual knowing. Firmly believing that no work of healing is complete without its fruits being offered toward the whole of humanity, Hannah has also volunteered with her local grassroots activism group, the Brooklyn ReSisters (led by Saul Austerlitz), a subset of the nationwide organization Indivisible, Battery Dance Company (Artistic Director Jonathan Hollander), a not-for-profit arts organization that uses dance as a tool for building social cohesion and resolving conflict throughout the world, and Lotus Music & Dance (Artistic Director Kamala Cesar), a performance space, sanctuary, and center of education for traditional and indigenous performing arts forms.

Teaching:

As an arts educator, Hannah is dedicated to sharing her creative practices with a multitude of different communities. She has collaborated on children's concerts and educational lecture-demonstrations with the Artists By Any Other Name performance collective, which have been shared with students in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and South Australia. A Brooklyn resident, Hannah has taught Chorus, Piano, Storytelling and Music Theory for Band at the PS 154 Elementary After-School Program, as well as Ballet and Vocal classes at AbunDance Academy of the Arts. She served as Talent Show MC for PS 154 from 2013-2019 with DJ Selector Sean. In 2019, she also served as Co-Stage Manager with Maxwell Waterman (Program Director, Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance) for AbunDance Academy’s production “Us, AbunDantly! From Africa to the Americas” (Artistic Director Karisma Jay). Hannah hails from Pittsburgh, PA, to which she has returned multiple times to teach Modern Dance at Bodiography Center for Movement’s Summer Intensive, Contemporary & World Dance at Pittsburgh Girls Choir’s Summer Camp, and Pilates at Club 1 Fitness, In 2022, she completed a choreographic residency with the students of LaRoche University’s Performing Arts Department (McCandless, PA), for whom she taught Dance Composition & Modern Dance Technique and set an original choreographic work for their Spring Gala. Hannah currently maintains a private piano studio at her home in Bay Ridge and recently launched a new class combining elements of meditation, yoga, kinesiology, psychosomatic practice, and modern dance called Movement Meditation for Adult Beginners. Hannah is a certified Mat Level I PHI Pilates instructor and holds a teaching certification from the Bodiography Fitness and Strength Training System. She has received Certificates of Achievement from NYS Senator Kevin S. Parker and NYC Mayor Eric L. Adams for her work as a dance instructor at AbunDance Academy of the Arts. An anonymous review of Hannah’s piano instruction on the Park Slope Parents website states:

”My younger son has been taking piano lessons from Hannah Barnard for 4 years (he is now 11). Before Hannah, he had a not-so-good experience with another teacher and it took some convincing, but he quickly got very into piano after lessons with Hannah. Now he always looks forward to it. She is an energetic, loving, and very experienced teacher... She is very good with kids and is super approachable.” (Full review can be found at https://www.parkslopeparents.com/reviews/hannah-barnard.)

Hannah daily endeavors to provide all of her students with a delicate balance between structural discipline and creative freedom, imparting her own philosophy of life and art through both word and example: "The rules were not made to be broken. They were made to be bent into more interesting shapes."

Artist Statement:

I create collaborative multimedia works that intentionally blur the lines between art-making and sacred ritual. Given the nonlinear nature of my storytelling style, my work is best served by a seamless flow between a variety of mixed media. By weaving together choreography, live music, film, poetry, visual art, story and song, I concoct sensory experiences with nostalgic undertones that play with contrasts between depth and humor, innocence and irreverence, rawness and refinement. 

I am profoundly influenced by the traditions of my upbringing in the Anglican Church; Invoking my religious past through creating contemporary ritual is driven in equal parts by devotion and rebellion. My study of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance form through which female devotees revealed stories of Hinduism through an elaborate language of hand gestures, is another powerful influence upon my work.  My vision is to reclaim ritual's essential role in modern society, holding its true healing power with responsibility and awareness, while gently prying it loose from the strictly compartmentalized place it often assumes in contemporary culture. 

As a queer artist of spiritual depth, I intend to bridge the gap between the openly queer and the deeply spiritual; Much of my current work aims to create healing ritual that centers the LGBTQIA+ experience. Ritual, to me, is essentially a process of working with materials in the outer world to intentionally shift one’s inner world, which can catalyze a process of individual and communal healing and growth. My work makes use of my innately ritualistic sensibilities to break through barriers between ancient spiritual traditions and contemporary, sex-positive, liberated queerness, in an effort to reclaim the queer body's natural right to engage in a deeply physical process of thorough spiritual healing and divinely inspired self-love.

Contact Info:

Email: hannahlouise8122@gmail.com
Instagram: @hannahlouisebarnard

Photos courtesy of Aubrie Rodriguez, Diane Cahill, James Beaudreau, Tony Gonzalez, Suzy Sureck and L.C. Aerial.

Photos courtesy of Aubrie Rodriguez, Suzy Sureck and James Beaudreau.