Bridgman|Packer Dance in Ghost Factory at 92NY Mainstage Series 2026-27! November 20 & 21, 2026. Tickets and info CLICK HERE
What lingers in a space after we leave, and what happens when those traces begin to move? In Ghost Factory, their latest work, live performance and video collide in a world of shifting perspectives and haunted spaces. Inspired by the abandoned factories and residents of Johnson City, New York, the piece conjures a landscape where human stories cling to architecture, and images flicker with the presence of those who came before. Dancers move through and against projected environments that fracture, multiply, and dissolve, creating a mesmerizing interplay of illusion and physicality.
Created with longtime collaborators including filmmaker Peter Bobrow, lighting designer Frank DenDanto III, costume designer Anna-Alisa Belous, and composer/sound designer Ansel Bobrow, Ghost Factory unfolds as a fully immersive experience. Extending into and through 92NY’s building is Places with Hidden Stories, an accompanying audio visual installation that brings hidden histories from Johnson City and a Lower East Side tenement into vivid focus.
Part of 92NY’s Home season, Bridgman | Packer Dance take on 92NY’s newly renovated home, transforming it into a living, shifting environment that holds memory, illusion, and human presence all at once.
Bridgman and Packer are currently choreographing and developing a new work entitle WHAT IF.
How do personal and collective histories shape our present and what if, through technology, we found ourselves face-to-face with our past — caught in a moment of reflection of our life’s journey?
Live performance melds with video technology in WHAT IF, a work where present and past collide while asking questions we all wrestle with: What is truth? What is memory? What if your life had unfolded differently? Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have spent four decades pushing the boundaries of live dance-theater and weaving video technology into performance in ways that blur the line between body and image, past and present. Their new work brings them face-to-face with their younger selves, projected through decades of archival footage that appear in the walls of an empty house as an absurdist memory palace and are transformed into an other-worldly virtual landscape of static, distortion, and reimagined memory. Bridgman and Packer co-exist, confront, merge, and move with earlier versions of themselves to interrogate what is real, transform context, and explore alternate outcomes.
WHAT IF is made possible with commissioning support by the Hillsborough College and residency at the University of Rochester, Program of Dance and Movement.
The company is continuing to perform Ghost Factory, their work inspired by the vast former factories Upstate NY. Cities on tour include Scottsdale, AZ, Red Wing, MN, Tampa, FL, Binghamton, NY, Holland, MI, and Rochester NY with upcoming performances in Chattanooga, TN, Claremont, CA, and Corvalis, OR. Their accompanying lobby audio/visual installation Places With Hidden Stories has featured oral histories from former shoe factory workers in Johnson City, NY and Red Wing, MN, cigar factory workers in Tampa, FL, iron workers, glass recycling plant workers, and combustion engineering workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and stories from the Joseph Avenue neighborhood of Rochester, NY. Together, the stage work and the installation reveal how architecture can hold a town’s human stories hidden within its walls.
Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have been commissioned to create a new work for the dancers of New York Theatre Ballet. Entitled Toulouse's Dreams, the work is inspired by the life and art of Toulouse-Lautrec. With an original musical score by electric violist Martha Mooke and costumes by Anna Aliza Belous, the work will premiere in February 2022 at The Egg in Albany and be presented on NYTB’s NYC season in March 2022.
Excited to return to live performance after 16 months of the pandemic, Bridgman|Packer premiered Ghost Factory in June 2021 at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale, AZ followed by a performance of the work at the historic Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing, MN in September 2021.
Throughout the pandemic, Bridgman|Packer offered virtual Artist Talks and Workshops on Partnering with the Camera, Creating Dance Films with Cell Phones.
Bridgman|Packer's short dance film Embrace in the Time of COVID 19 was inspired by those for whom touch and embrace were absent during the pandemic. In light of this, it explores the concept of virtual embrace and its relationship with the physical. "Embracing", moving, and merging with each other's film images, Bridgman and Packer delve into the relationship of intimacy and distance while exploring the uncertain, ephemeral, impermanent nature of existence. With choreography, performance, and filmmaking by Bridgman and Packer and music by composer/violist Martha Mooke, it has received Best Choreography Award at the Best Global Shorts Film Festival, Judge's Special Mention at Redwood Shorts and Scripts, and Best Dance Film at the Experimental Dance & Music Film Festival.
In addition to touring and teaching in 2020, Bridgman and Packer are creating a new work, Ghost Factory, inspired by the history of the former factory town of Johnson City in upstate NY. Collaborators include filmmaker Peter Bobrow, Composer/Sound Designer Jeff Cook, and Lighting Designer Frank DenDanto III. Facilitating Partners include Lois Welk of American Dance Asylum and Naima Kradjian of the Goodwill Theatre (Johnson City).
In October of 2019, Bridgman|Packer Dance performed at the High Fest International Arts Festival in Yerevan, Armenia. Supported by American Dance Abroad and the US Embassy-Yerevan, they presented their works Under The Skin and Remembering What Never Happened and offered a workshop in movement and video.
In front of the banners of the the festival outside the theater, High Fest International Arts Festival, Yerevan, Armenia.
In 2019, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer were on the dance faculties of both New York University Tisch School of the Arts and Juilliard.
On October 9, 2017, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer received a 2017 New York Dance and Performance Award (The Bessies) for Outstanding Production. The Bessies Award Ceremony was held at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, NYC.
creating a space where virtual and actual movement merged,
For inhabiting Edward Hopper's imagery and
taking the audience on an inventive journey of private spaces
and ever shifting viewpoints,
a 2017 NY Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Production to
Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer, Bridgman|Packer Dance
for Voyeur at The Sheen Center"
Mid Atlantic Tours Roster for 2018-19
The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation selects one dance company each year for their Tours Roster. Presenters in the Mid Atlantic States can receive Foundation funds to support the presentation of Bridgman|Packer Dance from July 2018 through August 2019.
Interested presenters can contact Sandy Garcia at Pentacle Booking: sandyg@pentacle.org
Support for Mid Atlantic Tours is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support provided by the Delaware Division of Arts and Culture.
The Village Voice chose Bridgman|Packer Dance's New York City Season at The Sheen Center as one of "Best of 2016 NYC Culture":
Bridgman|Packer Dance at Sheen Center was chosen as one of "The Best Dance Performances of 2016" on Huffington Post:
The Village Voice chose Bridgman|Packer Dance at The Sheen Center as one of "The Summer's Most Spectacular Performances" in their 2016 summer dance preview:
Bridgman|Packer Dance premiered their newest work, Remembering What Never Happened, June 26-27, 2015 at The Yard on Martha's Vineyard. The intersection of memory and imagination is at the core of this work that explores the constantly shifting territories of time, form, perception, and identity. Bridgman and Packer interact with video projections of their images that morph and explode into digital re-interpretations of the human body, while scenes shot on location in the Mojave Desert transform into surreal landscapes.
Remembering What Never Happened is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund/Forth Fund Project co-commissioned by The Yard (Chilmark, MA) in partnership with Opera House Arts (Stonington, ME), and Silvermine Arts Center (New Canaan, CT) and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). The Forth Fund is supported by the Andrew W, Mellon Foundation. The creation of this work is also made possible in part by a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Grant.
Truck by Bridgman|Packer Dance has received a New England Foundation for the Arts Expeditions grant to tour the work to seven sites in New England in 2015-16. These include Opera House Arts (Stonington, CT); Silvermine Arts Center (New Canaan, CT); Berkshire Cultural Resource Center, MCLA (North Adams, MA); Capital Center for the Arts (Concord, NH); UMass Amherst presenting at Art in the Orchard, UMass Campus, and Brattleboro Arts Walk (Amherst, MA and Brattleboro, VT); Stockbridge Theatre at Pinkerton Academy (Derry, NH), and the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Beckett, MA). See Calendar page for details.