Morgan Amirah Burns, originally from Atlanta, Ga, is a 23-year old multi-disciplinary artist. Morgan is a 2020 graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dance. In her own creative practices, filmmaking and dance unite to provoke emotional curiosity about how we, humans, move through the world often in conversation with elements of the natural world. Morgan’s creative pursuits have been recognized by GALLIM with a Moving Women Residency and by the Consulate General of Canada in NYC with the support and creation of her collaborative film spring promise FUTURES (2021). She was named the Inaugural Recipient of the Merce Cunningham Trust Barbara Ensley Award (2022). As a performer, works such as Retrofit: A New Age (2022) by Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Reiner have pushed Morgan further down paths of performance art, improvisational performance and site-specific research. Her most recent site-specific performance was in collaboration with Multidisciplinary Artist Kilo Kish with their work Still Dreaming as a part of Time Square Arts Council x Woman in Windows. 2023 began with a LiftOff residency with the New Dance Alliance where she planted the seeds for her work in progress Black Girls Who Don’t Like Watermelon Unite, set to premiere this summer as a part of New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival.
In Black Girls Who Don’t Like Watermelon Unite, Morgan Amirah Burns explores the nature of seeing people as trees. An exploration in acceptance, she shape-shifts, responding to her 2019 work A Tree Named Kevin, utilizing text, movement, and video art to merge her faith and feeling as she situates herself in a forest. Burns is a 2022–23 LiftOff Resident Artist.
“My creative history with New Dance Alliance goes a way long. Since my friend, Chivas Sandage brought me to New Dance Alliance to rehearse in early 90’s, the place has become a part of my creative life. The long time existence of the studio and Performance Mix Festival are vital to the artists who seek and explore deep into their process. Whenever I step into the studio, it’s a new space with a lot of memories. I lie down on the floor, listen to my body, and I dance. It is valuable. The time in the space nurtures my practice and artistic vision. Karen’s vision of Lift-Off residency, feedback sessions, providing peer to peer connections are more significant than ever. It has been helping us to get through 2020 and we are going into 2021.”
– Nami Yamamoto
New Dance Alliance
182 Duane Street
New York, NY 10013
All venues are wheelchair accessible.
