Liss Fain’s cross-disciplinary work began in Boston in the 1980s through collaborations with video and sound artists at MIT’s Media Lab and Mobius Theater. After relocating to the Bay Area in 1990, she continued working with video and film artists at Apple Multimedia Lab, Rapt Productions, Kikim Media, and others. Her proscenium work was performed and taught internationally at festivals across Europe and at universities and presenting organizations throughout the United States. The company’s San Francisco home seasons have been presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), ODC Theater, and Z Space.
In 2010, Fain shifted her focus from proscenium stages to immersive installation work with a commission from Amerika Haus (Düsseldorf) for Beck & Eggeling Gallery. The gallery’s three noncontiguous spaces invited audiences to choose their own path, creating individualized performance experiences. Since then, she has premiered fourteen installation works, each built around a unique environment that encompasses the space, performers, and audience.
Her installation works bring together dancers, actors, an installation/lighting/projection designer, and a composer. There is no fixed “front” for the performers or the audience; viewers move freely, choosing and changing perspectives as active participants. The work incorporates literary text—spoken live or as voiceover—and unifies movement, spatial structure, words, sound, and visual design. Many of these installations have functioned as gallery exhibitions by day, open to the public, and as performance spaces at night.
Since 2011, Liss Fain Dance has taught workshops at 826 Valencia for young people from diverse communities. Students expand their creativity and communication skills by generating both movement and writing, exploring abstract and concrete ideas through embodied and written expression.
Liss Fain Dance has performed at and been presented by numerous organizations, including YBCA; Z Space; ODC Theater; Powerhouse Arena (Brooklyn); 3-Legged Dog (NYC); Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; Internationale Tanzmesse NRW; Amerika Haus (Germany); Open Look Festival (Russia); Silesian Dance Festival; Zawirowania Festival, the U.S. Embassy, and Contemporary Dance Forum (Poland); Belaya Vezha International Theater Festival, Minsk Philharmonic Society, and Grodno Drama Theater (Belarus); California State Summer School for the Arts; Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts; International Computer Music Conference; David Brower Center; the A.W.A.R.D. Show; Mill Valley Library; West Wave; Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts; Downtown Dance Festival (NYC); MIT’s Media Lab; Harvard University; Dance Umbrella Boston; the University of Massachusetts; Colby College; and Clark University.
Fain is a two-time Isadora Duncan Dance (Izzy) Award nominee and has served as an artist-in-residence at Berkeley Ballet Theater.
