Danielle Russo

Assistant Professor of the Practice

226 Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
drusso@cornell.edu

Education

MFA, Dance
Hollins University

BFA, Dance
New York University
Tisch School of the Arts

BA, Anthropology
New York University

Departments and programs

Performing and Media Arts

Affiliated Colleges

College of Arts and Sciences

Overview

Danielle Russo (she/her) is a choreographer and performer, artivist and community organizer, and scholarly educator working in aesthetics, philosophies, and thresholds of experimental dance and performance on the continuum of intermedia and socially engaged artwork.

As a choreographer, she has been presented nationally at the American Dance Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center for Performing Arts at Damrosch Park, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, and The Yard; and internationally in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, Panama, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Trinidad and Tobago. Residency and fellowship awards have included C.N.N. - Ballet de Lorraine (FR), Danscentrum Jette (BE), Independent Artists Initiative WUK (AT), Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (US), Kaatsbaan (US), LEIMAY (US), Mana Contemporary (US), Nadine Laboratory for the Contemporary Arts (BE), New York Community Trust (US), Performing Arts Forum (FR), and Springboard Danse Montréal (CA), among others. Additional highlights include Armory Arts Week, Julian Schnabel’s Casa del Popolo, Governors Island, HERE Arts Center, The High Line Nine, La MaMA (fabNYC), LMCC River to River with Amy and Jennifer Khoshbin, Moynihan Station, National Academy of Performance Arts (POS), Place des Arts, and Solange Knowles’s Saint Heron, to name a few.

Russo is a multi-year grant recipient of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs through the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAF, LAS), CAP, Carnegie, Dance/NYC, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYSCA and NYS DanceForce for the NYSCI, and One Brooklyn Fund, among others. Since joining Cornell University, she has had the privilege of receiving support from the Cornell Council for the Arts, Society for the Humanities, and the Arthur C. and Molly Phelps Bean Faculty Fellowship. Most recently, she was selected as a Faculty Fellow in Engaged Learning with Cornell’s Einhorn Center for Community Engagement for 2025/26.

Outside of her own devising, Russo was a dancer with The Metropolitan Opera for several seasons, where she was a part of its iconic classical and avant-garde repertories, alike, and had the privilege of originating roles in some of said world-class productions.

As an educator, Russo is uniquely a professor of dance practice and of critical dance and performance studies, alike. Previously, she served on faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase (Conservatory of Dance), University of Iowa, CUNY Queens College, and The Joffrey Ballet School BFA and Professional Divisions. In addition to her work in universities and collegiate programs, she has taught at numerous international institutions and festivals across Europe, and North and Central Americas.

Research Focus

Her creative research is driven by social and civic impact, founded on a deep belief in local art activism that responds to neighborhood-to-nationwide urgencies and emergencies. Since founding Danielle Russo Performance Project (DRPP) in 2010, she has been producing large-scale performances and experiential artwork in public spaces, for public audiences, and frequently, through public collaborations. This emphasis on the intersection of local arts and public access aims to bridge existing gaps between what is all too often the exclusionary curation of live arts and the larger, multi-cultural milieu that is New York―her home base. Her praxis exists in three symbiotic parts: open performances, creative workshops, and interactive programming.

The lifespans of said projects are ongoing with priority placed on its community engagement and activism practices, cultivating inclusive, authentic relationships and mutual aid with arts and non-arts partners and grassroots initiatives that align with its core values, including but limited to the American Civil Liberties Union, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Black Lives Matter Global Network, El Puente, The Freedom School of the Children’s Defense Fund with Red Hook Initiative, One Warm Coat, Planned Parenthood, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Educational and Legal Services/RAICES, and the U.S. Caribbean Strong Relief Fund.

The results range from installations and immersive worlds to site-specific and interventional happenings; at times minimalistic and acutely vulnerable in its raw exposure, and at other times, stewed in heightened environments using sensory activation, mixed realities, and interactive technologies. These 'stages' have ranged from Terminal 4 at JFK International Airport to the station corridors of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in New York City to the deep ends of abandoned Olympic-sized pools to 3 miles of geomapped storytelling, colliding the creation of mobile app technologies with place-specific performance and local youth advocacy for climate justice.

Collectively, her research-to-practice expertise ranges in:

Site-Specific to Place-Specific Choreography & Direction
Immersive Dance, Theater & World-Making
Participatory & Interactive Performance Methodologies
Interdisciplinary to Intermedia Dance/Performance
Installation Art & Performance
Dance/Performance as Social Practice
History of Art & Performance-Based Activism
Critical Ethnography & Body as Archive
Performance Theory & Aesthetics

As such, Russo invests in dance and performance as both cultural and critical analysis and social practice, and seeks to dismantle and repair the damage of a historically elitist and racist “canon” in her curricula. With an emphasis on community-building, her courses frequently incorporate an involved network of diverse artists whose experiences and embodied research fosters authentic relationships, mentorships, and perspectives, while also demonstrating the serious importance of embodied and oral histories.