Katelyn Stiles is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, dancer, and PhD student in Native American Studies at UC Davis with a Designated Emphasis in Performance Studies. Katelyn has worked professionally as a filmmaker for the past decade in Berlin and the Bay Area, specializing in dance film/performance documentation. She has documented and archived hundreds of live performances and her original dance cinema works have been screened in film festivals worldwide. She received her Bachelors in Art Practice with a minor in Dance/Performance Studies from UC Berkeley in 2011, where she focused in dance film and figurative drawing. Katelyn has danced professionally in different contexts including the Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo and Joe Goode Performance Group. Her work is multidisciplinary and crosses into critical dance and improvisation studies, Science and Technology Studies and Visual Sovereignty. Most recently Katelyn created Gunahéen: a multi-media portrait series with Tlingit & Haida women living in California to tell their stories of resiliency and movement during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her future projects include film collabrations with the Herring Protectors and the Sheet'ka Kwaan/Naa Kahidi dancers in Sitka, Alaska. 

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Katelyn was born and raised in Los Osos, California on Northern Chumash lands and is mixed Tlingít (Alaska Native) and Norwegian/French/English settler ancestry. She is of the Raven moiety, Kiks.ádi Clan of Sheet'ka Kwaan, a Herring Lady and a tribal member of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. She is a community member of the San Francisco Tlingit & Haida Community Council and a dance member of the Saanax Kwaan (Southern Winds) Tlingit & Haida Dance Group based in the Bay Area.  

photo by Ludger Storcks

C.V.

EDUCATION

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PhD (In progress) Native American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Performance Studies

University of California, Davis 

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BA in Art Practice with a Minor in Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies 

2011 University of California, Berkeley

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Associates Degree in the Arts 

2009 Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, California

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AWARDS AND HONORS

2020 Mellon Public Scholar, Tlingit Dance on Camera: Cultural Resiliency Through Video Documentation​

2020 Ford Foundation Honorable Mention

2020 Sealaska Academic Scholarship

2018 Environmental & Disability Film in Bronze at Global Independent Film Awards for Rhizophora (film in collaboration with young Vietnamese survivors of Chemical Agent Orange)

2017 Research Academy at ZHdK: Performance, Lies and Videotape: Beyond Documentation

2017 Audience Award for Portland Dance Film Festival, for Rhizophora  

2015 Honorable Mention at Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, for Rhizophora

2016 EcoVillage Design Certification, Gaia Education Switzerland, 

2013 Migration Project Member, Digital Media and Dance, Tanzfabrik Berlin 

2011 Eisner Prize in Film, highest achievement in the creative arts, U.C. Berkeley 

2011 Sara Huntsman Sturgess Memorial Prize, Artistic Achievement in Dance, U.C. Berkeley 

2010 Member of Golden Key International Honour Society 

2006 Morro Bay Art Association Scholarship 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND TRAINING

2011 – Present, Freelance Filmmaker, specialization in dance documentation 

Selected Commissions: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Theater o.N. Berlin, Tanzfabrik Berlin, House of 

Poetry Berlin, Hebbel Am Ufer Berlin, Ponderosa Movement & Discovery, NOW! Action Theater Festival Berlin, Tanztage Berlin, The Instrument, Sensing In Berlin, Nomadic College  

2011 – Present, Dance Videographer and Video Editor for Rapt Productions

Professional production/post-production, specializing in dance documentation

2013 – 2014, Videographer for Contemporary Dance for German Theater Institute

Funded by Berlin Senate to create Contemporary Dance Video Archive

2014 – Present, Axis Syllabus Training, Berlin

2015 Living Arts Base, Artist in Residence, Catalonia

2013 Ponderosa Movement and Discovery, Artist in Residence, Germany

2012 P.O.R.C.H. Professional Training Program, Ponderosa, Germany

2012 La Alternativa Winter Training Program. San Francisco CA

2012 Joe Goode Performance Group Winter Intensive. San Francisco, CA

2011-2012 La Alternativa “Gut Motives” Training with Kathleen Hermesdorf. San Francisco, CA

2011 Joe Goode Performance Group Company Training. San Francisco, CA

2008 San Francisco Conservatory of Dance Winter Training Program. San Francisco, CA

2004 State Street Ballet Summer Dance Intensive. Santa Barbara, CA

2004-2009, Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo, Professional training and Company Performer.

SELECTED TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2020 Associate Instructor for Dance on Camera, Theatre & Dance Department, UC Davis, California

2019/20 Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Native American Studies and History of Cinema, UC Davis, California

2018 Movement Drawing Workshop Facilitator: Sensing In Festival, Berlin

2018 Advanced Contemporary Dance Teaching Assistant to Kira Kirsch, Impulstanz Festival, Vienna.

2017 Movement Drawing Workshop Facilitator: Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, Halle, Germany.

2016 Life Drawing/Movement Drawing, Art Atelier, Berlin

2015 Drawing and Contact Improvisation, Living Arts Base, Catalonia

2015 Video and Movement Lab, Contact Meets Contemporary Festival, Göttingen, Germany

SELECTED PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE

2011 Joe Goode Performance Group, “The Rambler” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.

2011 Berkeley Dance Project-Stream, Solo Performance, UC Berkeley, CA.

2010 Flying and Falling, Directed by Joe Goode, UC Berkeley Playhouse, CA.

2008, 2009 Slightest Movements, Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo, SLO Little Theater, CA. 

2008 Spanish, Choreography: Mark Swanhart, SLO Little Theater, CA. 

2007, 2009 Dreams, Choreography: Alex Ketley, PAC San Luis Obispo, CA.

2006, 2007 Side Walk Stories, PAC San Luis Obispo, Choreography: Drew Silvaggio

2007 China Tour, Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo, Shanghai, Wuxi, Nanjing, and Beijing, China.

2005 Alice In Wonderland, Choreography: Drew Silvaggio, PAC San Luis Obispo, CA.

2005-2010 Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo Seasonal Repertoire. San luis Obispo, CA.

SELECTED RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

2020 “Tlingit Dance on Camera: Cultural Resiliency Through Video Documentation.” accepted for Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting (NAISA) Toronto, Canada, May 7-9 (canceled due to Covid19 Pandemic).

2020 “Salmon Relations: Mapping Tlingit Cosmologies through Embodied Stories of Returning.”Performance Lecture with film, drawing and dance at The Body As Archive Conference held by AIIC at UCSB, February 19th.

2019 “Marking Memory: Ancestral Salmon, a White Christmas and Balletic Traces.” University of California, Davis. Performance Studies Mini Conference. Davis, California. November 22.

2017 “Consent and Power Dynamics in Documentation.” Research Academy at Zurich University of the Arts. “Beyond Documentation: Performance, Lies, and Videotape.” July date?

2017 “The Earth Will Come.” Dance Cinema Panel with filmmakers. RIFF R.E.D. International Film Festival. Eina, Norway. August date?

2016 “Living Arts Base: Developing Community Through Dance.” EcoVillage Design, Gaia Education. Schloss Glarissegg, Switzerland. February 1.

SELECTED FILM SCREENINGS

The Earth Will Come. Director, Editor, Cinematographer

2018 Dance Camera West. REDCAT, Los Angeles. 

2018 Cinedans Amsterdam. The Eye, Amsterdam.

2017 RIFF R.E.D. International Film Festival. Eina, Norway. 

2017 San Francisco Dance Film Festival. Roxie Theater, San Francisco. 

2017 Movimiento en Movimiento. Mexico City, Mexico. 

Rhizhophora. Co-Creator & Editor 

2018 Espressioni Film Festival. Italy and Berlin.

2018 The Body + Camera Festival. Chicago.

2018 Dance on Camera Festival. New York City.

2017 Cinema Touching Disability Film Festival. Austin, Texas.

2017 International dancefilmfestival Brussels.

2016 Ethnographic Film Series. Portland.

2016 Loikka Dance Film Festival.  Helsinki, Finland.

2016 New Orleans Film Festival.

2015 Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival. [City], Colorado.

2015 San Francisco Dance Film Festival, San Francisco 

2015 Docuwest International Film Festival, Colorado

2015 Underground Film Festival, Minneapolis

2015 Awareness Film Festival, Los Angeles 

2018 Learning. Teaching. Dancing, Documentary Film, Ufer Studios Berlin 

2014 Tanztage Berlin, Dance Film, selected & screened Berliner Fenster, Berlin

2012 Framing Self, multimedia solo exhibition, Ponderosa Performance Series, Stolzenhagen

2011 Moving Self and Other, Dance Film, screened Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley

2011 Trace, Dance Film, screened Worth Ryder Art Gallery, Berkeley

2009, 2010 Body Paint 1 & 2, Dance Film, screened Kroeber Hall UC Berkeley