Movers & Shapers: JoAnna Mendl Shaw

Veteran choreographer and dance educator, JoAnna Mendl Shaw has been devising performance works for stage, rural and urban landscapes since the 1980’s. Her body of interspecies work initiates visceral engagement with the natural and cultural environment. Redefining the possibilities for dance-making, Shaw’s research into the human-equine dialogue began in 1998. Her company, The Equus Projects, tours throughout the States and Europe creating site-specific works through immersive collaboration with local equine and arts communities. An internationally recognized dance educator, Shaw has taught on faculty at NYU, The Juilliard School, Alvin Ailey, Princeton, Mount Holyoke and Montclair State. Shaw is the recipient of NEA Choreographic Fellowships and multiple NEA grants for Interdisciplinary Performance. She has brought her somatic practice of Physical Listening into elementary schools and academic think tanks, into the Strategic Studies group at the Naval War College and NYU Medical school. She is a certified Laban Movement Analyst. She is the author of the 2021 book, Physical Listening, A Dancer’s Interspecies Journey.