photo by Maria Baranova

My work is committed to dense sensory immersion as an agent for transformation. By creating absorbent spaces for audiences to have more directly felt experiences, I seek to reclaim beauty, object, and the body from the conditioning of commerce and coercion. In my performances, I frame the domestic rituals of dressing and the arranging of furniture, objects, flowers, and fashion as actions of meditation, excavation, and reflection. My performances take time. They ask the viewers to enter as they might a walk in the woods or a visit to a museum. My hope is to provide a space where pleasure asserts its power to align us with nature and where desire connects us to human variation and empathy. As an artist, I’ve worked in “feminized” spaces in which women, queer people, and sissies have historically thrived. I have worked as a dancer, choreographer, costumer, stylist, flower and garden designer. Within these arenas, I approach ornamentation as an expression of underlying form and visceral identity through which I seek to reveal the complexities that lie between art and design and between nature and artifice.

Walter Dundervill is a New York City based dance artist. He creates performance environments fusing his choreography, costume, visual art, and sound design. His work has been presented in the U.S. and abroad including Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts, MoMA PS1, The New Museum, Danspace Project, Participant Inc., Pioneer Works, JACK Arts, the Spoleto Festival, and in various spaces in Europe and Australia. Dundervill has received Bessie Awards as a dancer and designer and is a recipient of the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award. He has been an artist in residence at Movement Research, the New Museum, Dance Theater Workshop, and New York Live Arts. As a performer and designer, he has worked with esteemed artists including RoseAnne Spradlin, DD Dorvillier, Bruce Nauman, Simone Forti, Tere O’Connor, Ong Keng Sen, Liza Lim, Luciana Achugar, Keely Garfield, Lovett/Codagnone, Diana Puntar, Luther Price, Beth Gill, and Sarah Michelson. Dundervill has taught as an adjunct professor/guest artist at Bard College, NYU, Pratt Institute, RISD, Movement Research and Le Dancing CDCN Dijon,France. From 2002 - 2020, he was co-owner with Rob Besserer of a boutique garden design company in NYC. He continues to work with garden clients and floral designers in NYC.