Friday, December 6, 2024

Lida Winfield

Lidaa Winfield, photo by Alan Kimara Dixon

Lida Winfield is an innovative and accomplished dancer, choreographer, spoken word artist and educator. She creates original solo, duet and group work, merging storytelling, dance and visual art. She considers her artistic practice inextricably linked to her role as an educator and is dedicated to using the performing arts to move herself and others forward intellectually, developmentally, socially and spiritually.

Lida has taught and performed in a variety of places, including Roger Williams University, Habla: The Center for Language and Culture in Mexico, National Dance Association Conference, Skidmore College and the Bates Dance Festival.

In 2011, she toured original duet work with Ellen Smith Ahern and intermedia dance company Double Vision across Europe. Lida studied at The School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and in 2011 earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, VT, with a focus on the transformative power of the expressive arts. In 2016, she was honored with the Rebecca Blunk Fund Award though New England Foundation for the Arts, and in 2017, she received a National Performance Network Creation and Development grant for her new work IMAGINARY with commissioning partners The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Middlebury Performing Arts Series, and The Yard.

Lida encourages her students and audience to see themselves, their bodies, and their environment from new angles. She cultivates opportunities and experiences that transform and deeply impact day to day lives. What transpires within the teaching and performing environment is integrated and transferred out into the world, allowing it to live beyond the confines of the classroom or stage. Lida is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Dance Program at Middlebury College.

In Search of Air – photo by Gene Parulis In this dance and theater performance based on her experience growing up with a learning disability, dancer, choreographer and spoken word artist Lida Winfield shares the gifts and heartache that accompanied her struggle to learn to read – which did not occur until her early twenties.
IMAGINARY – photo by Colin C. Boyd A quirky, innovative, socially poignant work that explores perception in relationship to the imagination through dance/theater, storytelling, lighting design and original audio scores. Work created by Lida Winfield in collaboration with Maree ReeMalia, Joseph Hall, Laurel Jenkins and Ellen Smith Ahern.
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1 COMMENT

  1. […] Lida Winfield lives and works in Middlebury, Vermont where she is a visiting professor at Middlebury College. Her work is a mix of dance, theater, storytelling, spoken word, and visual art. For the last ten years she’s had a show called In Search of Air about learning to read. Winfield describes herself as “a very learning disabled person” and didn’t learn to read until she was a grown up. […]

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