halley willcox

Halley Willcox has an MFA in Dance from Arizona State University and received her BFA in Dance from Texas Christian University.  Halley works as an  faculty associate at Arizona State University and Grand Canyon University, as well as teaching workshops regionally and internationally. Halley teaches with Liz Lerman and is working with her on the development of the Atlas of Creative Tools; a multidisciplinary creative framework.

Halley is the director of Methods of Madness Dance Theater, an outlet for her creative work which ranges from Dance Theater, experimental minimalism and placemaking rooted in community building. She is inspired by curiosity, legacy, preservation, memory, nature and binoculars. Halley is motivated by her question: How do we communicate our imagination? She uses her independent creative projects to articulate this question, make the world a better place and have a little fun.

She is currently Presenting a new work “GLITTER & DOOM.” This work has had excepts show at the Mood Room PHX, ArtLink Inc Gala, [nueWORK] and Tempe Arts in the Park. This work will be touring to the Westside Theater in Missoula, MT, Scottsdale Performing Arts Center in April, NYC this summer for a show with Chris Bell dances and the West Stage at the Herberger Theater Center.

Her recent work “a rose for you” had excerpts shown in Phoenix at [nueBOX], Kahvi’s Gallery in Phoenix and [nueWORK]. This show toured to the Do Right Hall in Marfa, Texas as a guest collaborator and performance with Mo Eldridge. It was performed in Brooklyn, New York sharing a show with Chris Bell Dances and had 3 sold out performances at the KAX in Phoenix.

Halley is the founder and director of the AZ Dance FIlm Fest. A drive-in dance film festival that start in 2020 and had sold out shows for 5 years sharing films by 70+ artists over the years.Halley is a permanent artist in residence (2019- Present), Director of Marketing and grant writer for [nueBOX], a non-profit arts organization that provides performance residency programing for artists based in Phoenix. 

Halley developed “falling towards the sky” during her dance artist residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada.  Excepts of “falling towards the sky” have been performed at the Artlink juried exhibit at the Found:re Gallery in Phoenix and during Halley’s residency through Aeris Körper based in Onterio, Canada. She has participated in several residencies such as an Artist-In-Residence at Daley Park in Tempe, Arizona (Aug 2019- May 2020), Keshet Makers Space in Albuquerque, NM and Sojourn Theater Residency at ASU Gammage, where She was a guest choerographer for their perforce “Don’t Go.” 

She has performed in works choreographed by Nina Martin, Alexandra Beller, Susan Douglas Roberts, Christian Von Howard, Keith Thompson, David Dorfman, Elijah Gibson, Erica Gionfriddo, Lisa Race, Mary Fitzgerald and Paty Solórzano. While living in New York City she danced with Kinesis Project Dance Theater and Eyes of a Blue Dog Dance Theater, in various venues including the Judson Church, and Jacob's Pillow. During Halley’s time in Kansas City she performed and choreographed for City In Motion Dance Theater for three seasons and taught at Kansas City Ballet’s year-long program, as well as multiple summer intensives. In addition, she produced multiple evening length works for the Kansas City Fringe Festival and won “Best of Fringe” in 2015 for her show [un]divided with professor and choreographer Suzanne Ryan. Her dances have also been presented at Performática (MX- PU), Groundwells Series (NYC), [nueBOX] PairFEST (PHX, AZ), Las Vegas Dance In The Desert Festival( Las Vegas, NV), MOCO 2019 (ASU, AZ), 60X60 (St.Louis, MO), the Bell House Exchange Choreography Festival (Tulsa, OK), Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO), Lawrence Arts Center (Lawrence, KS) Modern Night at the Folly (Kansas City, MO), Sling Dance Project (Austin, TX) and Estada Intertour Dansa, a 24-city tour in Catalunya, Spain.

 Halley is a PMA certified pilates instructor with 600 hours of training and 6 years of teaching experience—a practice that  informs her somatic approach to teaching movement.

During summer 2020 Halley published and presented a long paper as the second author for the International Conference on Movement and Computing. In 2022 she co-authored “Collectively playable wearable music: Practice-situated approaches to participatory relational inquiry” which was published in the Cambridge University Press, wearable technology. She has co-presented research at Impulstanz IDOCDE symposium in Vienna, Austria and the National Dance Education Organization. She co-taught a workshop on mindful improvisation at the Digital Research in the Humanities and Art conference in Malta. Halley has presented a research paper on pedagogical tools at NDEO and performed at MOCO with Datura. She is the former movement director for Datura, a local Interdisciplinary improvisational ensemble that performs and teaches in and around the Phoenix area.

Contact Halley to request CV