David Neumann’s work as a freelance choreographer, director and performerincludes a wide range of projects and disciplines. Since 1999, Neumann hasworked behind the scenes to craft plays, operas, films and multi-disciplinaryperformances. From avant-garde theater to blockbuster films, classic opera tonew musicals, David’s diverse experience has given him a unique ability to articulateideas through performers’ bodies. Whether playing one of Shakespeare’s kings ora virus-infected zombie with an appetite for Will Smith, the performers Neumannworks with gain from his multi-layered approach. David coaches individuals, hasmoved dozens of people through city streets, staged a hundred musical numbers,directed puppets, friends and drag queens, organized multiple Greek chorusesand continues to find new ways for the human body to communicate. He has workedwith stars from the ballet, film and avant-garde worlds, as well as those neverhaving stepped on a stage, learning valuable lessons from each. Neumann hasmany years of teaching experience working at Juilliard, NYU, Princeton and Yaleand is currently a tenured professor in the Theatre Department at Sarah Lawrence College. He has received threeLucille Lortel Award nominations and one Fichandler for his work on Cabaret atArena Stage. He is the Artistic Director of ‘Advanced Beginner Group’, amulti-disciplinary performance company, which has been awarded three BessieAwards. He is a 2019 Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awardnominee, as well as the recipient of the 2019 Chita Rivera Award forChoreography for his work on the Broadway musical, ‘Hadestown’. Recent and upcomingprojects include the musical ‘Swept Away’ at Berkeley Rep, and choreography andcoaching for ‘A Marriage Story’, starring Scarlett Johanssen and Adam Driver.Advanced Beginner Group has created three evening length pieces performed in New York at The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, the Chocolate Factory and Abrons ArtsCenter, and on tour at The Walker Arts Center, MASS MoCA, MCA at Chapel Hill,and Alverno College, to name a few. ABG has been awarded several grants andawards, including three NY Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards. AdvancedBeginner Group has embarked on another evolutionary shift, in aco-collaboration with theater artist, Marcella Murray on their new piece,‘Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed’ which premiered at Abrons ArtsCenter in January, 2020. David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group embarkson each piece through an organic process begun from scratch, bringing to word,action, and proximity a delighted embrace of our contradictory lives.Contradiction is best felt through humor and it is with a strategic use ofhumor that the work confronts our darker impulses and actions. ABG searches forantidotes to the absolutes that separate us, and so create these works as anirrational response to our perceived place in the universe. In each work,Neumann attempts to uncover a distinct and complex view of the humanexperience. He embraces contradiction and juxtaposition as a means toward anactive engagement with the audience where performer and observer alike aregiven the potential to find themselves in a more alert state, more open to thesubtleties of their day-to-day experience. To even approach this desiredcomplexity, the work is necessarily multi-disciplinary, as Neumann aims thevarious approaches and disciplines toward one another, and through theircollisions, bend the habitual gestures around new shapes. As adance/theater maker, Neumann focuses his efforts on the borders of theintellectual and the phenomenological, the representational and the abstract,and the personal and the cosmological with the intention to make blurry our desire to live inside distinct categories, binaries, and absolutes. David Neumann and Advanced Beginner Group desire an awakened state, full of surprise, wonder, and humor without ignoring our pain, ennui, and existential longings.
