Above: (L to R) Dancers Suzette Sagisi, Tegan Schwab-Alavai and Belinda He in Hope Mohr’s “Horizon Stanzas.” Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Above: Hope Mohr, courtesy of the artist.

Hope Mohr (she/her), artist and arts leader, has been making multidisciplinary performance for over 30 years.

Hope works across performance, visual art, and language to explore embodiment, feminism, gender, and queerness. She makes performance that “conveys emotional and socio-political contents that ride just underneath the surface of a rigorous vocabulary.” (Dance View Times).

Hope trained at S.F. Ballet School and on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown Studios in New York City. She performed in the companies of dance pioneers Lucinda Childs, Trisha Brown, and Margaret Jenkins and freelanced with Liz Gerring, Douglas Dunn, Trajal Herrell, Della Davidson, and Pat Catterson.  

Theaters, museums, and galleries across the U.S. that have presented and commissioned Hope’s work include: Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), SFMOMA, ICA San Francisco, Movement Research at Judson Church (NYC), Highways Performance Space (LA), Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), 18th Street Arts Center (LA), di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art (Sonoma), 836M Gallery, Mills Art Museum, Gallery Wendi Norris, and the San Jose Museum of Art, ODC Theater, Counterpulse, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco International Arts Festival, West Wave Festival, Montalvo Arts Center, and S.F. VA Hospital’s Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation.

ARTS LEADERSHIP

In 2007, Hope founded Hope Mohr Dance. In 2010, she founded HMD's presenting program, The Bridge Project, which she directed for ten years, curating cutting-edge programs bringing artists together across difference. In 2020, she co-stewarded the organization’s transition to a model of distributed leadership and a new name: Bridge Live Arts. She is a leading advocate and consultant for shared leadership in the arts. In 2023, Hope transitioned out of Co-Directorship at BLA; she now works as an independent artist and advocate.

ADVOCACY
A licensed California attorney, Mohr now works at the intersection of art and social change as a Fellow with the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC). She co-leads the Artist Legal Cafe, a collaboration with SELC and Vital Arts. Her law practice, Movement Law, builds power with artists and mission-driven organizations.

WRITING

Mohr’s book about activist cultural work, Shifting Cultural Power: Case Studies and Questions in Performance, was published in 2020 by the National Center for Choreography. She is a contributor to Artists on Creative Administration (2024), edited by Tonya Lockyer and also published by the National Center for Choreography. She co-authored Notes for Equitable Funding (2022) as a part of Creating New Futures.

AWARDS & HONORS

  • Winner, Isadora Duncan Dance Award, Outstanding Choreography (2020)

  • Named to the YBCA 100, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' annual nationwide list of artists posing important questions about contemporary culture (2015)

  • Nominated for Herb Alpert Award (2019)

  • Open rehearsals at SFMOMA as part of painter Liam Everett's SECA Award exhibit (2017)

  • Dance Magazine editor-in-chief Wendy Perron named Mohr as one of the “women leaders” in the dance field (2014)

  • YBCA Fellow (2016)

  • Nominated, with Diane Madden, for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for the Reconstruction of Trisha Brown's Locus (2016)

  • Mohr and poet Brenda Hillman were nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for their collaboration on Far From Perfect (2010)

  • Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (“CHIME”), a program of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, with mentor Molissa Fenley (2009) and again in 2014 with mentor Dana Reitz

  • Assisted Lucinda Childs on Dr. Atomic for S.F. Opera (2005)

ARTIST RESIDENCIES
Dogpatch Collective (2023)
Montalvo Arts Center (2020-2023)
Zaccho Dance Theater (2023)
836M Gallery (2022)
National Center for Choreography (2019)
Petronio Residency Center (2018)
Stanford Arts Institute (2016)
Bethany Arts Center (2019)
ODC Theater (2012-15)
Montalvo Arts Center (2010)
Interdisciplinary Center for Art, Nature and Dance (2005)

TEACHING

Hope teaches contemporary dance technique, creative movement, movement for actors, and cross-disciplinary practice. She has taught dance and movement at California College of the Arts, PARTS (Brussels), The Place (London), Trisha Brown Dance Studio, ODC, Stanford University, Lines Ballet BFA Program, American Conservatory Theater MFA program, Peabody Conservatory, UCLA, and Shawl-Anderson.