The Funsch Dance Experience is under the artistic direction of Christy Funsch, an East Coast native currently based in San Francisco. The mission of the company is to celebrate the vulnerable yet indefatigable spirit through choreographic experiments with gaze, distinctive movement invention, and unpredictable phrasing.
Funsch has presented her work in Amsterdam, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Toronto, and throughout California.
Christy is currently a collaborative partner of Stephen Pelton and Nol Simonse. She has also worked with Susan Rethorst, Sue Roginski, Katie Faulkner, Julie Mayo, Leslie Seiters, Mary Armentrout, Maxine Moerman Dancetheatre, Dandelion Dancetheater, and countless others. She is a certified Pilates instructor and certified Laban Movement Analyst through New York’s Laban Institute for Integrated Movement Studies.
Funsch received her BA in Dance and English from Hamilton College, New York, in 1989 where she was the recipient of the Theater and Dance Award, and the first student in Hamilton College history to be awarded a Senior Fellowship in Dance. The resulting full-length work Waves (based on Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves) premiered at Hamilton’s Minor Theater in April 1989. Christy later earned an MFA in Performance and Choreography from Arizona State University in 1994 where she received the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. While in Arizona, she co-founded, choreographed, and performed for the ESTRUS WORKS performance group in Phoenix, Arizona, producing four full-length concerts between 1992-94.
Funsch has received funding from Theatre Bay Area, Dancers’ Group, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the New Stages for Dance Award, and Chime Across Borders, a mentorship program of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company with Mentor Tere O’Connor. She has received four nominations from the Isadora Duncan Dance Award Committee for Performance, and has been awarded residencies at ODC Theater, the Djerassi Ranch, CounterPULSE Theater, and the U Cross Foundation.