Movement Museum

MARLA PHELAN is a New York City choreographer working within film, fashion, and stage to create movement at the intersection of technical rigor and intuitive humanness. Phelan’s work celebrates the profound strength of human connection and examines the turbulence of change by portraying defiant characters at the threshold of transformation. 

She is a 2022-2023 Simons Foundation & Gibney Open Interval Resident Artist, a 2023 LMCC grant recipient for her upcoming multichannel film installation, Obscure Passage, a 2022 Sacred Heart University Emerging Choreographic Fellow, a 2021 Studio to Stage Resident Artist with Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company, and a 2020 AKC Fund Inc. grantee. Phelan founded the creative initiative, Movement Museum, through Gibney’s 2020-2022 Moving Toward Justice Fellowship, providing mentorship and career expansion to dance artists. 

Her work has premiered at Films at Lincoln Center, Future Dance Festival, SXSW, Dance Camera West, FringeARTS, WestFest, Dixon Place, Gibney Center, Edgerton Center, Jack Crystal Theater, PepsiCo Theater, KnJ Theater and publications Nowness, V Magazine, Refinery29, The NYTimes, and NYMagazine. Phelan directed and choreographed the award-winning short film The Fell of Dark and has directed movement for Fischerspooner, Michael C Hall, RCHRDSN Studio, Comedy Central, NBC, CBS, and brand campaigns for Maison Margiela, Mazda, GAP, Reebok, LOLA, and Stuart Weitzman. Currently, she is the Associate Choreographer/ Director to Broadway’s National Tour of Fiddler on the Roof. 

Phelan has danced for Gibney Company, Hofesh Shechter Company, Akram Khan, Azure Barton, Company XIV, Broadway’s Fiddler on the Roof, and Punchdrunk's Sleep No More and The Drowned Man. Phelan trained at The Juilliard School (BFA 2009), is on faculty at Mark Morris Dance Center, and has led workshops at NYU Tisch, Bard College, and Washington University.