About
Margaret Wiss is a choreographer, educator, performer, and scholar. She was born and raised outside of Boston, MA. Growing up with two artists as parents, her creative practice embraces many disciplines. She trained at Lexington School of Ballet under Linda Dibona Brassel (Boston Ballet), Roseann Ridings (Boston Ballet) and Nadine Moody (Agnes DeMille). Wiss augmented her training at various summer programs including Central Pennsivya Youth Ballet and Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy, training under former members of Bill T. Jones & Arnie Zane's Dance Company (Heidi Latsky, Andrea Woodes) and working with Adele Myers and Edisa Weeks while performing at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.
A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, magna cum laude, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance Kinesiology with high honors from the dance department. She was awarded the Dance Department Award for Important Choreographic and Performance Contributions. As a member of the Five College Dance Department, she performed at The Kennedy Center and worked with Pilobolus Dance Theater as well as choreographers Jennifer Hart and Kinsun Chan.
As a choreographer, Wiss is interested in the interaction between dance and science. She has worked as a physical therapy aide for various companies. Dance medicine and science are integral to her pedagogy. She is a member of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. In 2018, she founded Xsection Film Festival, a Boston-based event sparking interdisciplinary collaboration between dance, science, and film. Wiss' screendances have been selected for various film festivals across the United States.
As a choreographer and under the name Wiss.co, she has presented work across the United States. She has choreographed for PDX Contemporary Ballet, North Atlantic Dance Theatre, The Harvard Ballet Company, and the DanceBARN Festival. She was an Artist in Residence on Islesford Maine this past summer where with composer, Colin Minigan, who she has been working with for three years started developing an evening-length work to premiere in May 2020.
She has taught for Mount Holyoke College and choreographed for the Five College Dance Department as well as at Tisch School for the Arts Dance Department. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Dance with a concentration in choreography at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts under the direction of Seán Curran.