As a director, teacher, facilitator and arts practitioner, Peter DiMuro has woven a career making dance and movement, bridging classical, post modern, social forms and jazz styles in dance and theatre works. Known for splicing text, image and movement, DiMuro’s work crosses genre, community and subject-matter boundaries. Peter joins Drexel University faculty in September 2012.
DiMuro is also known for developing effective and creative unions of seemingly disparate mixes of artists and non-artists and the community-at-large, involving subject matter of wide ranging social concern and their evolutions over time were explored in the repertory of his Boston based company, Peter DiMuro Performance Associates and then deepened through his fifteen-year collaboration in the processes of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. He first joined the MacArthur “Genius Award” winner Lerman as a performing member of the company, and continued their collaboration through his tenure as Producing Artistic Director. As Director of Dance/Metro DC, the regional service organization for dance from 2008-2011, he shepherded the organization through its separation as a branch of Dance/USA, and to a revitalized communications network for individual artists, their organizations and audiences for dance in the region.
As a performer, DiMuro has appeared in a broad range of modern masters’ works: Ted Shawn, Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor, Lucinda Childs, David Dorfman, Mark Taylor, Bebe Miller, as well as the works of Liz Lerman and his own works. He was a founding member of Gerri Houlihan’s Boston Dance Project, a veteran of Concert Dance Company of Boston, a guest soloist with Boston Ballet and The Washington Ballet. Noted for a theatrical performance presence (“Peter DiMuro gives us a James Dean inflected performance….” – The Boston Globe), his evening of solo works “Light Reading” features spoken word and minimal gesture in miniature movement portraits of DiMuro’s family. His AIDS-inspired work “Waltz” was cited as one of the top ten dance events of the year by The Boston Phoenix.
Recent choreographic works include national tours including the docu-dances of intergenerational gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendererd lives in “Near/Far/In/Out”, the alternative-family inspired “Funny Uncles” and a commission from VSA Arts for the Washington Shakespeare Festival: “The Farthest Earth From Thee” was created for a cast of all ages and all physical abilities, including adult survivors of polio and “wheeled” dancers.
Recent theater choreography includes dances for Joe Banno’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Derek Goldman’s “As You Like It”, both at the Folger Theatre, DC’s Theatre J’s “David in Shadow and Light” and several shows with Open Circle Theatre. His work has appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Dance Place and Church Street in DC, and commissioned by the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts, The Florida Dance Festival, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, The Bates Dance Festival, Auras Dance Theatre (Lithuania), Boston Dance Umbrella. His choreography appears in a nationally aired television commercial for the National Institute on Aging.
A teacher of technique, creative process, composition/improvisation, Peter has been artist in residence internationally, teaching diverse populations in Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Lithuania, Croatia, Italy, England. Ireland, Germany and the Americas. He taught several summers at the Cornerstone Theatre Institute, American Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival, and designed and facilitated the Massachusetts’ Cultural Council’s Elder Arts Initiative, a mutual mentoring program for artists and caregivers working with seniors.
DiMuro has spoken on creative process and community arts practice including keynotes for the National GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network) Conference, state arts councils in Oklahoma and New Hampshire and as a guest of the National Dance Academy/Mexico City and Firkin Crane Institute/Cork Ireland. He has adjudicated for several American College Dance Festival Association regional gatherings. He was named a White House Millennial Artist in 2000, a 1995 Mayor of Boston/ProArts Public Service in the Arts Award recipient, and has received grants from the National Performance Network, the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation and Massachusetts Cultural Council, CEC/ArtsLink and the National Endowment for the Arts. He received an MFA in Dance from Connecticut College under Martha Myers; a BFA in Theatre from Drake University, with continued study in New York, Boston and at the American Dance Festival.
Originally from Round Lake, IL (population, circa 1970: 250), he is the youngest of three children, the son of the Chief of Police (Dad) and a machinist /gal Friday (Mom). He has a niece named for the Crayola crayon, Sienna.