David Neumann/advanced beginner group believes in making multi-disciplinary dances from scratch bringing to gesture, word and proximity a delighted embrace of our contradictory lives. Neumann utilizes experimental dance-making approaches with a humorous outlook and an inclusive layering of disciplines to create complex, thought-provoking dance works that push the form. Neumann's explorations challenge his assumptions on 'how to make a dance' giving each work a distinctive geography with which the viewers can examine their own assumptions. These approaches are born of the belief that there is always something more to think and feel, always another mind to encourage in surprising ways, always a valuable effort in trying to bend the habitual gestures around new shapes. Despite his proclivity toward complicated ideas and structures in dance, Neumann is saying something very simple through this blessedly varied and adaptable art form "As a species, this is what we're doing right now, and this is what I think about."


As artistic director of the advanced beginner group, David Neumann's work has been presented in New York at PS 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Central Park SummerStage (where he collaborated with John Giorno), Celebrate Brooklyn, Symphony Space (where he collaborated with Laurie Andreson), La Mama ETC, and Mabou Mines. He has been a featured dancer in the works of Susan Marshall, Jane Comfort, Sally Silvers, Irene Hultman, Cathy Weiss, Big Dance Theater, and the late club legend Willie Ninja. He was a member of Doug Varone and Dancers, and an eight-year member original member and collaborator with the Doug Elkins Dance Company, with whom he toured nationally and internationally. He continues to perform and choreograph for theater, opera and film working with such directors as: Hal Hartley, Laurie Anderson, Robert Woodruff, Lee  Breuer, Peter Sellars, JoAnn Akalaitis, Chris Bayes, Mark Wing-Cavey, Daniel Sullivan, Les Waters and Molly Smith. Recent projects include 'Cabaret' at Arena Stages, 'I Am Legend' with Will Smith, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at the Delacorte Theater and performing with Mikhail Baryshnikov in 'Beckett Shorts' at New York Theater Workshop. He is currently a professor of Theater at Sarah Lawrence College and a guest lecturer at both Barnard College and Yale University's Graduate Acting Program.