A “radical & perpetual innovator”, Stephanie has created interdisciplinary movement-based performances for three decades. Her process focuses on the power and totality of each performer, collaboratively discovering & developing material.
Called “a major American experimentalist”, she has an international reputation for adventurous work, performing and teaching in 30 of the United States and 15 countries. Her New York City-based touring company performed worldwide for 15 years.
Skura’s current work, including Sacrilege is Needed. Competency is Hell., The Corduroy Prayer, Two Huts, and Noir Noir Noir, integrates a radically visceral approach to language, continuing her life-long investigations of the boundaries & intersections of dance, theater, poetry and performance.
Now based in the Pacific Northwest, she works independently with several companies, artists and institutions. She was on Graduate Faculty at the University of Washington School of Drama Professional Actors Training Program, and Core Faculty of the Skinner Releasing Institute, working closely with SRT creator Joan Skinner. She’s taught at such places as the American Dance Festival, Florida Dance Festival, European Dance Development Center, Naropa Institute, Movement Research in New York, and in residencies at many colleges and universities around the country.
Her work has toured at major festivals in Zurich, Vienna, Lisbon, Budapest, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, France & Canada, and at such US venues as the Walker Art Center In Minneapolis, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and in New York City at Roulette, Dance Theater Workshop, the Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center, Central Park Summerstage, Danspace Project, and Performance Space 122.
She created and directs Open Source Forms, a practice and teacher training program focusing on deep commonalities of Skinner Releasing and creative process. From 2005-10, she was Associate Artistic Director of The Gravity Project, an integrative theater company weaving movement, design, music, and poetic text. She’s a regular guest artist at Juniata College’s theater department, and helped develop its innovative curriculum.
Skura has received 7 Choreography Fellowships and 5 Dance Company Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the first “Bessie Awards” for Choreography, and many other government, foundation and corporate grants, as well as commissions from several dance companies. She holds a BFA & MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
An innovative teacher & mentor, Skura’s worldwide influence on students, teachers, artists, choreographers, and audience members has been a major force in the field of dance and performance. With a deep respect for individual diversity, and a sturdy respect for the subconscious, her work is guided by integration of body/mind/heart, creativity & technique, form & content, art & healing, intellect & intuition.
Her non-fiction & poetry have appeared in several literary journals, and in Dance Magazine, the Village Voice, Contact Quarterly, and the book Reimaging America: Art & Social Change.