Faculty Bio - Aviva Geismar
Aviva Geismar (she/her/hers)
Title: Associate Professor
Email: ageismar@qcc.cuny.edu
Office: RFK 216L
Aviva Geismar teaches Choreography, Improvisation, Dance Workshop, Foundations of Dance Movement, Repertory and all levels of Ballet and Modern Dance.
Geismar is the Artistic Director of Drastic Action, a contemporary dance company. Drastic Action uses dance to create connections across lines of difference. Through education programs and performances, the company offers individuals opportunities for serious reflection, self-expression and empowerment. Geismar’s artistic practice, through which she seeks to unearth systemic inequity, developed out of her history as the child of a Holocaust survivor.
Geismar’s dances have been performed at many national and international venues such as “Inside/Out” at Jacob’s Pillow, “Fresh Tracks” at Dance Theater Workshop, Dance New Amsterdam, The Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, Symphony Space, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Danceworks (Milwaukee), Studio 303 (Montreal) and Dance Place (DC). She has been included in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” series which recognizes notable dance artists throughout the nation. Tom Strini of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote "Geismar's dead-on understanding of social realities is like a poke in the ribs.... In life and in Geismar's dances tragedy and comedy can be hard to sort out."
Between 2006 and 2010 Drastic Action performed in numerous prominent German venues and taught Geismar’s successful creative dance curriculum in German public schools through “Dances for the Blue House” and “Dancing to Connect,” projects she developed in partnership with Battery Dance Company. Geismar has been commissioned by Rutgers University, University of Maryland, James Madison University, Dance New Amsterdam, Trammel and Thompson, Dancing in the Streets and Gotham Group. She has been a resident artist at HERE Arts Center and at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Geismar was a guest faculty member at Ursinus College and an adjunct at Marymount Manhattan College.
In 2016, Drastic Action premiered “Dis/Location (Fort Tryon),” a site-specific dance exploring the immigrant experience in Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights, NYC. The project was supported by the Bay and Paul Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Jody and John Arnhold, the New York City Parks Department and the Fort Tryon Park Trust. Geismar is currently working on “Dis Place” a muti-phase, interdisciplinary project exploring our national legacy of cultural and geographic displacement in the form of urban renewal.
Geismar is also a licensed massage therapist and a certified GYROKINESIS and GYROTONIC instructor and has done extensive teaching for bodywork professionals. She holds a BFA from NYU and an MFA from the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin.