Bio
KT Niehoff is an artist whose focus is the complex relationship between bodies and space. She creates multi-sensory, multi-dimensional, immersive performance environments, with highly crafted audience participation. These experiences both integrate and transcend choreography, music, design, film and technology, narrative and audience/artist proximity.
As a child, KT trained as a classical choral singer, absorbing the transformative spatial powers of collective voices. Her BFA at NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing fostered her ability to integrate multiple artistic disciplines to create new forms and practices. Her training as a dancer activated her proprioceptive understanding and gave her a professional vocabulary for this lived experience.
In 1992, KT was invited by choreographic pioneer Pat Graney to perform Graney’s masterpiece, Faith, bringing KT to Seattle, where the city’s Punk Riot Grrl politics and energy was the perfect incubator for her actionist nature.
KT was a founding member of D-9, an all-female cooperative that commissioned, produced and performed new dance work. She envisioned and co-founded with Michele Miller Velocity Dance Center, a vital arts resource and incubator for thousands of movement artists. During her 10-year tenure at Velocity, KT instituted four instrumental programs to facilitate the growth of the Seattle dance community – Strictly Seattle Summer Dance Intensive, The Guest Artist Series, SCUBA National Touring Dance Alliance and The Bridge Project.
During her career she has built over 30 works that have toured performance venues, festivals and colleges throughout the US and in Japan, Canada, Germany and Ecuador.
As an educator, KT has built three pedagogical systems that she has taught and refined for 20 years. Reinvent Your Eye – Tools for Abstract Composition, Physical Practice, a daily training class for professional dancers and her film workshop, Frame by Frame. She has taught at numerous festivals and universities including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Oberlin College, Cornish College of the Arts, Texas Christian University, Mt. Holyoke, The University of Washington, The Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts and the SNDO, Amsterdam.
Notable fellowships, awards, articles and grants include:
James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award Nominee (’17), New Filmmakers NYC Official Selection (’15), Miami Short Film Festival Official Selection, (14’), MAP Fund recipient (’12-’13), Cover Feature City Arts Magazine (’13), Cover Feature Dance Teacher Magazine (’12), Artist in Residence ACT Theatre, Seattle (’10 & ’12), San Francisco International Dance Film Festival Official Selection (’10), The National Performance Network (’06-’12), Dance Magazine’s “International Women in Dance” featured artist (’08), MANCC Fellow (’06), The Stranger Genius Award for Velocity Dance Center (’05), The National Endowment for the Arts (’05, ’06), The National Dance Project Creation Award(’05), The National Dance Project Production Award (’03), Arts International (’03), Artist Trust Fellow (’01), Meet the Composer (’99) and multiple awards from King County’s 4culture, Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture and The Bossak/Heilbron Foundation (’99-’18).
KT is the proprietor of 10 degrees, her art+event space opened in 2011, which she designed and built. 10 degrees is a commerce driven venture that supports the philanthropic artistic mission of the space through private event rentals.
In April, 2017 KT completed her immersive performance titled Before We Flew Like Birds, We Flew Like Clouds, using Virtual Reality video, dance, live music, and an interactive audience installation of floating star-like objects hovering at neutral buoyancy. The show was based on four individuals with extraordinary relationships to their bodies – Soyeon Yi (astronaut), Maurice Hall (in-line speed skater), Shevanthi Daniel (near death experience survivor) and Michael Grady (para-rower). In September, 2017, the performance was reimagined as a Virtual Reality installation for the IMAGINE Film Festival at Earthdance in Plainfield, MA.
