Grounded in a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Dammers works across disciplines including visual art, dance, theatre, music, public practice, and archives. She has curated exhibitions, commissioned performances, and crafted interdisciplinary international arts festivals in leadership positions at The Kitchen, FringeArts, Jacob’s Pillow, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in addition to freelance projects at Christ Church Neighborhood House and Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. 

Dammers has curated exhibitions and performances presented in gallery spaces, theatres, site-specific locales, and digital realms. As Assistant Curator at The Kitchen, Dammers co-curated exhibitions and performances with artists including The Racial Imaginary Institute, Charles Atlas, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Joan Jonas and Jason Moran, Steve Paxton, The Raincoats, Paulina Olowska and Katy Pyle, Jeremy Toussaint Baptiste, and Jonathan Richman, among many others. Also working as Archive Manager for The Kitchen, she cataloged and prepared their collection for acquisition by The Getty Institute, and integrated archival material into contemporary programming. As Artistic Producer at FringeArts, Dammers co-curated the annual international festival with artists including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Tina Satter/Half Straddle, Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers, and Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. She also organized year-round programs including the Get Pegged Cabaret, the Hand to Hand circus festival, and a local commissioning series for Philadelphia artists. Dammers has also been a guest curator at Christ Church Neighborhood House and Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art.

Over the last three years Dammers has worked at Jacob’s Pillow, the USA’s largest and oldest dance festival, in a variety of senior producorial capacities. Working as Interim Producing Director for the 2021 festival season, Dammers worked closely with leadership to produce an all-outdoor, COVID-compliant programme that featured dance on the outdoor stage, site-specific venues across the 200-acre campus, and local parks across Berkshire County. In 2022 she returned to produce the gala performance honoring Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui with the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and America(na) to Me, a programme of 7 artists showcasing the diversity of contemporary dance practices across America. Following the tragic loss of the Doris Duke Theatre in November 2020, Dammers has also served as the Project Manager for the capital initiative to build a reimagined theatre.

Most recently, Dammers worked as the Producing Director for River To River, an annual festival organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She worked closely with artists including Samita Sinha, jaamil olawale kosoko, NIC Kay, Miguel Gutierrez, mayfield brooks, and many others on New York City’s completely free summer arts festival celebrating artistic and creative diversity across disciplines, and presenting live art and installation in public spaces and in partnership with leading institutions in Lower Manhattan.

Dammers also has a robust career as a creative administrator, manager, and producer for independent dance artists. She worked as the General Manager for choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener for nearly a decade, and was an instrumental partner in developing their internationally renowned career. She has also supported the work of artists Jennifer Monson, Donna Uchizono, Tere O’Connor, and Rebecca Lazier with grant-writing, marketing, company management, and financial organization. A champion for independent manager/producers, she has been part of advocacy groups at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Creative & Independent Producer Alliance. Her writing reflecting on her own creative administrative practice and that of her peers is included in the forthcoming book Creative Administration Research, published by The University of Akron Press in relationship with National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron.

Committed to writing as an active companion to her practice, Dammers has published reviews, essays, and, most recently, co-edited and contributed material to the book landing. A 2017 writing fellow at the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, her articles about live art have been published in journals including The Brooklyn Rail, Movement Research Performance Journal, and In Dance, amongst others. She has been commissioned to write accompanying essays for dance performances at On The Boards, American Dance Festival, and ODC/Dance. Working with other members of the Inland Academy, she co-edited and contributed several chapters to their collective publication landing, a book that reflects on their shared learnings and future collaborations. Forthcoming projects include an essay in a monograph on artist Janet Echelman published by Princeton Architectural Press and an article in motor dance journal on performance practices in rural England.

Dammers completed two masters programs in Europe–the MFA Curating course at Goldsmiths, University of London and Inland Academy in Spain. At Goldsmiths she focused on the intersection of ecology and performance art, with graduate projects Fluid Bodies framing mudlarking as a collaborative performance practice with the River Thames and Performing Rural England exploring how somatic practices engage with rural landscape and national identity. Within Inland Academy she examined the relationship between rurality and contemporary art through site visits and collaborations with Museo Madre Napoli, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, and documenta15. She also holds a BA degree in Art History and Dance from Princeton University, where her academic and artistic achievements were honored with the Grace May Tilton Prize in Fine Arts, the Irma S. Seitz Prize in the Field of Modern Art, and the Francis Le Moyne Page Dance Award.

Dammers is now the Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Performing Arts at REDCAT—CalArts’ downtown center for contemporary visual and performing arts in Los Angeles. More details about this appointment are on the REDCAT website.

CONTACT:

dammers.k {at} gmail {dot} com
@katydid_katydoes