“Full of aesthetic storytelling and off-beat characters, Piacenza’s work feels like a process of transformation: for the space, for the dancers, for the viewers.”
Kaitlin McCarthy, Seattle Dances
Photo: Michelle Smith-Lewis
Peggy Piacenza has been creating work and building community in Seattle for over 30 years. She is committed to generating new work and collaborating with others to create lasting relationships that impact the artist community. Peggy’s work embodies a wide spectrum of experience drawing from explorations in improvisation, video art, performance, meditation and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her latest project, The Forever Project, utilizing video installation and live performance, premiered in January 2024 at On the Boards.
In addition to her own work, she is currently working with NYC/Toronto-based performance collective Same As Sister (S.A.S.). She has collaborated and performed with Seattle-based dance-theater companies 33 Fainting Spells and Pat Graney Company, choreographers Dayna Hanson, Stephanie Skura, Lionel Popkin, Deborah Hay and others.
She is a co-founder of Base, a non-profit organization dedicated to elevating risk and invention in dance, performance and multidisciplinary art.
Peggy is the recipient of a 2024 Artist Trust Fellowship. In 2011, she was the inaugural recipient of the Helen Gurley Brown Magic Grant, supporting a project that brought Cambodian and American artists together in Cambodia for cross-cultural dialogue and dancing within classical and contemporary dance forms. A documentary film about this project was screened at Velocity Dance Center’s Speakeasy Series.
She is a 2010 graduate of Smith College’s Ada Comstock Scholars Program, where she majored in Religion and Gender Studies.