BIO | take2

Daria Kaufman is an experimental performer/choreographer working at the intersection of movement, language, and media, to make the familiar strange. From phone-based audio performance to domestic object scores, to immersive media installation, her work is rooted in the body – its mutability and capacity for (un)making meaning. Spare, evocative, and hard-hitting, she often probes the construction of female identity, using elliptical structures to interweave gesture, original and found text, lo-fi video and sound. Eschewing message-making and linearity in favor of the non-sense that erupts from fragmentary narrative, her work tackles themes of sexuality, representation, semiotics and pain.

Daria earned her MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Mills College and performed for choreographers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Alma Esperanza Cunningham, Jose Navarrete Mazatl, Aura Fischbeck, and Erin Malley. From 2014-2019, she lived and worked in Lisbon, Portugal, where she studied with and gained influence from choreographers Joao Fiadeiro, Jonathan Burrows, Aitana Cordero, and the Nova Danca Portuguesa movement. Since 2013, she has been a member of StratoFyzika - a new media performance collective based in Berlin - and performed original works with them in Berlin, Mannheim, Portugal, and San Francisco.

Daria's work has been presented throughout the US and Europe, including: RAAK Transport Artspace (Netherlands), FAKI Festival (Zagreb); Armazem 22, in scope of Festival Dias de Dança (Porto); Biblioteca de Marvila (Lisbon); Zaratan (Lisbon); Pomona and Scripps Colleges (Los Angeles); ODC Theater (San Francisco); Cutting Ball Theater (SF); Mills College (Oakland); and on KQED Spark TV (SF Bay Area). Her work has been supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation, GDA (Portugal), the European Cultural Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Los Angeles Performance Practice (2022 R+D recipient; current ACCELERATOR member). In 2015, she was nominated for the Isadora Duncan Dance Award (the “Izzie”) for Individual Performance. She is currently based in LA.