Silas Riener

Silas Riener graduated from Princeton University in 2006 with a degree in Comparative Literature and certificates in Creative Writing and Dance, with a focus on linguistics. As a dancer he has worked with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, and Rebecca Lazier; and is currently dancing in projects for Tere O’Connor, Wally Cardona, and Kota Yamazaki.  He was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from November 2007 until its closure at the end of 2011, and received a 2012 New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for his solo performance in Cunningham’s Split Sides.  While performing with MCDC, Riener completed his MFA in Dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (2008).  Since 2010 he has collaborated with choreographer Rashaun Mitchell on site-specific dances and immersive theatrical experiences.  Riener was the movement designer for the architecture and design firm Harrison Atelier in 2012/2013 and choreographed the site-specific performance/installations Pharmacophore: Architectural Placebo at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, andVEAL at the Invisible Dog Art Center.  His work has also been curated at Architecture OMI, CATCH, as part of LMCC’s River to River Festival, at Danspace Project, and at the BFI Gallery in Miami. His work with Rashaun Mitchell appeared in Carla Fernández exhibition The Barefoot Designer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2014.  Riener has taught workshops on performance and technique at Concord Academy SummerStages in Boston, throughout Turkey at several universities, in the Dance Program of Princeton University and Barnard College, and at the Merce Cunningham Trust. In 2013 along with with Rashaun Mitchell he was named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”, and was invited to participate as an inaugural member of LMCC’s Extended Life Dance Development Program.  He was a 2014 New York City Center Choreographic Fellow and a Mellon Artist-in-Residence at The Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College, and a 2015 Artist-in-Residence at Gina Gibney Dance Center Dance-in-Process, and at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie-Mellon University.