Manon Manavit (she/her) is a creative producer, "nonprofit leader and cultural influencer transforming New York" (City & State NY) known for engineering innovative collaborations across multiple sectors. Responding satirically to shifts in the zeitgeist, her work often blends contemporary arts and sciences. Active in community-driven event curation, site-specific performances, installations, and films incorporating poetics of movement, visual art, and journalistic research, her body of interdisciplinary artistic work is recognized as being "at the intersection of culture, art, and social change."
Currently leading Goddard Riverside's Community Arts Program (@ArtsAtGoddard) based on NYC's Upper West Side, Manon is also an Artistic Associate with Farm Arts Collective, an Agri-Cultural Center for Performance & Ecology.
Upon obtaining her BFA at Université Concordia in Montréal, Manon served as creative assistant to Debra Brown, choreographer of Cirque Du Soleil's Quidam and Alegria, with whom she toured the U.S., Canada, and Mexico supporting acrobatic dance and circus productions including "Flying/Brace Yourself" at the 2013 World Dance Awards with Luminario Ballet.
Manon was a founding producer of the annual Deep Water Literary Festival, established in 2018 as a multi-day marathon of unique panels and immersive performances featuring celebrated writers, artists, and thinkers including Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Joyce Carol Oates, Rebecca Solnit and more.
She holds an MFA in Directing from the California Institute of the Arts where she was the recipient of an Interdisciplinary Award and Citizen Artist Scholar Award.
Highlights & Links:
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Manon collaborated closely with leading neuroscientist Fedor Panov, M.D., witnessing a brain surgery at Mt. Sinai West and translating the experience into a shadow play-documentary for Science Cabaret promoting Deep Brain Stimulation as a treatment for epilepsy (2024).
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Manon's short experimental dance film "Opening Ceremony" (Higher Ground Dance Festival commission, 2021) was an official selection at CreateArt's avant-garde Dance Film series in partnership with the historic Millenium Film Workshop (Aug 2024). Previous: Inwood Film Festival (Panelist: Dancing Beyond the Boundaries of Reality), Big Eddy Film Festival (Panelist: Filmmaking in the Covid-19 Era)
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Awarded a 2023 Deep Water Lab Residency to create "ALIVE OR EXISTING?," an original CHAT-GPT research performance about the possible futures of a world dominated by A.I. featuring the Greenhouse Ensemble and environmental scientist Willow Gatewood.
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In March 2024, Manon curated the career retrospective solo exhibition by 93-year old outsider artist Nancy Brandon titled "The Accidental Artist: Joy & Cohesion in Black Life" at the Upper West Side's Bernie Wohl Arts Center, garnering local as well as national press.
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As 2022 Ecological City Art & Climate Solutions Action Project coodinator, Manon facilitated community bioarts education and craft workshops with natural materials like kombucha leather and mushroom bricks, and curated a mass volunteer climate march with guest artist performances across 20+ Lower East Side landmark community gardens and waterfront.
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Manon's hand-painted "Rabbit Hole" tunnel installation using crop cover as canvas was featured in a NY Times photo-journalism spread as part of Farm Arts Collective's Dream on the Farm: "The Scientists," for which Manon also portrayed a monarch butterfly puppet guiding audiences through a working organic farm.
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Awarded a 2021 ENGN Creative Center Residency to refine and present "Cave Woman," a shadow play-documentary depicting a year in the life of a Neanderthal woman. First presented as part of Farm Art Collective's Dream on The Farm: "The Extinction Event".