PROFILE
I am a New York-based Asian-American dancer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist. I graduated summa cum laude from Marymount Manhattan College with a BFA in Dance with a concentration in Ballet, a BA in Business with a concentration in Media & Arts Management, as well as a minor in Biology.
Throughout my undergraduate career at Marymount Manhattan College, I was encouraged to explore experimental interdisciplinary approaches to the creative process. My first dance films were born out of my restless need to create, shared through Marymount’s screenPLAY. My first interdisciplinary film was created as my final project for my dance composition class, where I first began playing with movement, visual art (drawn animations) and sound design, entitled in the air, in the making. I furthered this practice with a semester-long exploration for Marymount’s student-choreographed showcase, Dancers at Work, with V/\NISH. I was given the opportunity to present V/\NISH again virtually through The CrossCurrent Festival, 7MPR, and This Body Shows Up, serving as my professional choreographic and artistic debut. In January of 2021, I was commissioned by the Kennedy Center to create an interdisciplinary art film for their Art Under a Minute series with the creation of What do you wish the world to be? In October of 2021, I was a recipient of a City Artist Corps Grant that funded my most recent creative process, a live interdisciplinary performance installation, entitled crumbs.
I have performed works by Sidra Bell, Jessica Lang, Jenn Freeman, Michael Waldrop, Yin Yue, Nancy Lushington, and Samuel Pott. I have danced professionally with Nimbus Dance Works, J CHEN PROJECT, and Periapsis Music and Dance. I have worked administratively with GALLIM Dance Company, Marymount Manhattan College, and McKoy Dance Project.
I am interested in the investigative processes that challenge societal ideals and power structures and strive to comment on these concepts with a multifaceted approach.
BIOGRAPHY
Maya Lam [she/they]
I strive to be constantly curious in my approach to my creative journey as well as to life in general, asking questions, seeking answers, often unsatisfied with my findings, looking further and rewriting the possibilities. My intent is to offer something to be taken or left by anyone who interacts with my art-making. I have found interest in experimentation and innovation. I value doing without knowing how to do and learning throughout the process. I intend to sustain and give value to my curiosity, let it take me places I have never been, yearning to satisfy my insatiable need to learn and do. I understand my work to be developing around movement, yet the movement never remains central to any project. I endeavor to approach dance openly and freely, allowing space for all spectrums of movement, and by extension, all forms of art. I encourage multiple perspectives and different thought processes to exist in one single exploration, and even inside a singular body or entity. I strive to hold creating for experience, feeling, and forming moments in time, in place of creating for beauty and aesthetics. It is my strong belief that we are constantly in flux; what is at the foreground today may fall to the background tomorrow and vice versa.