Ben Levine, Producing Director
As a multi-disciplinary artist, Ben Levine (he/they) combines his dance and theater training with his knowledge of technology and a firm mindset that anything is possible to make awesome art. He brings over a decade of experience to his roles as a “maker,” director, choreographer, and installation artist. Named “Best Up-For-Anything Technical Director” by the Washington City Paper, Ben works as a theater technician and carpenter, as well as a lighting, scenic, and projection designer for dance and theater. Their go-big-or-go-home attitude, desire to work highly collaboratively, and disinterest in traditional proscenium performances has led him to establish Extreme Lengths Productions, a non-profit arts collaborative devoted to making technology-driven, movement-based performance. Born with Erbs palsy, Ben is passionate about the disability arts.
In 2016 Ben conceived and produced the Kitchen Sink Fest, a mega-collaborative one-minute dance extravaganza featuring DC’s 22 most daring dance makers. In 2017, they created and produced the Momentum Series, nine movement-based installation works which engaged audiences in a series of dream-like environments. Also in 2017, Ben travelled to South America and Africa with a 2017 Sister City award in Pretoria, South Africa to collaborate with Usuthu Arts Productions for a performance at the South African State Theater. In 2018, Ben created and produced Filament, a three-week exhibition featuring live music, installation art, and dance performance. The Filament installation went on to exhibit at DC’s light art festival Georgetown GLOW, shared with 140,000 patrons. In 2019, Ben created I made this dance and nobody cares but you, a series of works for a single viewer at a time. In 2021, he created People Watching, a physically distant performance viewed through long-range binoculars, in partnership with CulturalDC. Their project LENS, series of four movement-based installations each viewed through different technological means, premiered at the REACH at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the fall of 2021. Ben was selected to participate in AXIS Dance Company’s 2021 Choreo-Lab for disabled choreographers and in 2022, Ben collaborated with AXIS Dance Company, Heidi Latsky Dance, and Kinetic Light to premiere new works.
Recent awards have included the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowship (2018-2024), DCCAH project grant (2018-2022, 2024), and Anacostia Arts Center Performing Arts Incubator Artist in Residence (2019). In 2019, Ben was selected as a participant in the Dance USA Institute for Leadership Training. He holds degrees in Theater Arts and Mathematics from Drew University.