Olivia Gotsch (she/her) is a student of the human legacy of dance as spiritual practice and biological necessity. Born and raised in Chicago, she began her training at Hyde Park School of Dance, spent summers at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, and studied anthropology and dance at Vassar College. Olivia has worked with choreographers Desmond Richardson, Jennifer Archibald, Amy Hall Garner, Mike Tyus, Yoshito Sakuraba, Stephanie Martinez, Yusha Sorzano, Adam Weinert, and Kirven Douthit-Boyd. She is currently based in Richmond, VA, where she is a company member with Conflux Dance Theater and has guested with Starr Foster Dance.
Olivia is interested in people as dancers and dancers as people. She has created work for Conflux Dance Theater for Richmond Dance Festival, Dogwood Dance Project, Gridlock Dance’s Motion Mixer series, Vassar College’s MODfest, and Trinity Episcopal School. Grounded in the technical vocabularies of classical modern and ballet, her choreography employs embodied anthropological study to inform her themes, movement, and creative process. She approaches the human body as a microcosm of our larger landscape as well as a site for metamorphosis.