Daniel Gwirtzman

Daniel Gwirtzman—producer, educator, filmmaker and performer—celebrates thirty years as a NYC choreographer and company director. Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, a nonprofit teaching and performing organization is known for its optimistic ethos and the repertory for its invention, humor, musicality, stylistic diversity, charismatic performances, and accessibility. Collaborations that blend genres, take risks, engage communitiy, and celebrate humanity are areas of focus. “Mr. Gwirtzman does know that in dance less can be more…he can evoke strong feelings with a few gestures” writes The New York Times. The New Yorker describes him as “a choreographer of high spirits and skill," and The Village Voice calls him “an abundantly inventive artist with a subtle defiance of gender roles.”

Performance highlights include Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, Battery Dance Festival, Fire Island Dance Festival, Bryant Park, La MaMa, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Lincoln Center. He has been awarded commissions, residencies and fellowships from institutions including the Joyce Theater Foundation, The Yard, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Raumars (Finland), Sacatar Foundation (Brazil), Sfakiotes Residency (Greece) Maison Dora Maar (France), Centro Negra (Spain), Gdański Festiwal Tanca (Poland), The Studios of Key West, CUNY Kinsgborough Community College, and Ucross (Wyoming), American Dance Festival (Durham, NC).

DGDC’s fifteenth anniversary was celebrated with the evening-length premiere of The Oracle at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAM Fisher. Arts/ATL described its “mathematical elegance” and “joyful physicality...a vision that vibrated on a frequency of harmony and brilliance.” Recent productions include the dance-theater duet e-Motion (2023), which La MaMa presented during their 20th Anniversary Season of La MaMa Moves Dancer Festival (2025), delving into the concerns of AI, which Culturebot reviewed as “profoundly chilling,” noting Daniel’s performance as “masterful.”

Flashpoint, an ensemble dance developed at the American Dance Festival (2024) explores the contours of relationships, the push and pull of harmony and strife within our lives, and the lines separating intimacy from violence. In 2024 he was in residence at the Dora Maar Cultural Center in Provence, France where he produced the dance film Framing Ménerbes, which premiered in France and New York City (June 2025), and continues to screen in theaters. Framing Ménerbes frames a stunning village in Provence and captures its natural beauty of far-reaching vistas, mountains, vineyards, and the light for which it is known. A dozen participants from the region joined as performers in this feature-length film Daniel shot and edited which celebrates the beauty of dance.

Thanks to leadership support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Dance With Us, a free online educational resource produced by the organization is designed to demystify choreography and increase comfort viewing and speaking about dance. https://dancewithus.org