I start with the body—its material, precarity, and knowledge.

My work challenges representation by pushing up against the edges of expression, perception and vulnerability.

I believe that each body holds memory in its tissue, it is where external perception meets internal projection.

In performances that accommodate endurance, rest, rage and softness, I frame transformation as an extended unraveling of the self. Through this process, I confront the unspoken limits of form and narrative to expand the boundaries of collectivity.

Bio

Hilary Clark is a dancer, teacher and choreographer, working in dance and theater since 1998. She received a New York Dance and Performance Award in 2008.  In 2023, Hilary choreographed “Night Keeper” written and directed by Aaron Landsman at The Chocolate Factory Theater in NYC.  She is currently a dramaturg for Juliana May’s Optimistic Voices. Current collaborations with Nicole Daunic include MA(T)TERing have had support from a Creative Residency at the Chocolate Factory Theater (2024) and Lower Manhattan Community Council at Governor’s Island ( Oct 2024). Clark currently teaches movement, healing and somatic practices in various settings. 

She received the Silver Star Alumni Award (2012) from University of the Arts for "her bold and fierce commitment to experimental and unknown territories within performance [that] shakes loose the grasp of a history and allows for the necessary emergence of curiosity and openness.” Clark was honored with a New York Dance and Performance Award (2008) for sustained achievement most notably with Tere O’Connor, luciana achugar, and Fiona Marcotty ”as a fearless and magnanimous performer, whose gorgeous, astute, take no prisoners interpretation of experimental work enlivens the evolution of the form itself.” She has also worked with Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Young Jean Lee Theater Company, Luke George, Jen Rosenblit, Jon Kinzel, Chemeki and Lerner, Larissa Velez Jackson, Keyon Gaskin and Gerard and Kelly. As a 2015 Artist in Residence at collective address (NYC), she explored the role and work of the dancer through dialogues and interviews as well as developing Duet for/with/including Jen (1 - 4). Other creative residencies include Chocolate Factory THeater (2024) Fresh Tracks and Studio Series (Dance Theater Workshop), and Dance and Process (The Kitchen). Her work has been shown at Roulette, Aunts, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Dixon Place, Mt. Tremper Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, and Painted Bride in Philadelphia. In 2013, she was invited by Stockholm University of the Arts, University of Dance and Circus (DOCH) in Stockholm, Sweden, to participate in the academic conference “Dancer as Agent.” Her work as a performer and choreographer is documented in Jenn Joy’s book The Choreographic (MIT, 2014). 

Clark has taught at Williams College, Northern Vermont State College, Connecticut College, Bennington College, Chunky Move (Australia), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Pacific NorthWest College of Art (Oregon), Seattle Festival for Dance Improvisation at Velocity Dance Center (Seattle, WA) and Movement Research (NYC). She is the owner of Citrine Pilates & Wellness and received an MFA from Bennington College.

Press

“Clark, always a fascinating performer, is hysteria embodied in Response time with help her out/take 357. ... Clark makes a convincing mini-portrait of a woman-on-the-verge. Her little girl voice quavers with desperation before she explodes into a sort of slam dance frenzy. She’s one to keep tabs on.”
- Lisa Rinehart, danceviewtimes

“Each performer develops complexity as the dance progresses—Clark’s freewheeling ferocity reminiscent of Janis Joplin...” - Linda Shapiro, Dance Magazine

...”Jeliza-Rose Is With Us, in it's strange, delicate shifts in mood and relationships..in the sense a dense, inward-looking female world… Ms. Clark, one of today’s most powerfully arresting dancers, has ideas of her own.
- Claudia LaRocco, The New York Times

“Response time with help her out/take 357 goes down like a trial run and therapy session combined, with dancing straight out of Billy Elliott's chorus/classmates” - Quinn Batson, Offoffoff.com

“Ms. Clark, a performer capable of fragility and toughness in a single swipe…” - Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

“Most anticipated on the evening’s bill, Hilary Clark did not disappoint.” - Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Dance Magazine

“The Kitchen's Dance and Process series turns three treasured performers into choreographers.” - Gia Kourlas, Time Out New York

Podcast: Studies Project 11/10/14: Dancer as Agent, Movement Research

Larissa Velez in conversation with Hilary Clark, Critical Correspondence

Video Structure for Movement Research Festival Fall 2016, Movement Research

“Ms. Clark, who now performs with Tere O’Connor Dance, found her dismissal, she said, to be ‘a result of the larger issue’ that ‘the unfortunate and superficial assumptions of who and what type of body should be dancing diminishes dance’s very potential and range of experience.’” - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

10 Minutes with Hilary Clark, Culturebot

“shaggy-haired Hilary Clark wields a punklike intensity (especially in ape-shit-krumping mode right in my face)” - David Cote, Time Out New York

“Saturated by voices that are wailing, moaning, mechanical, alien, always echoing, I am lost in a dense visceral grief. Until the end when Clark quietly sings: ‘I am a warrior and I’ll go to war for her. I will defend her. I will try . . .’ “ (Joy 2014, 192).
Joy, Jenn. 2014. The Choreographic. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.