Philippa Myler

musical theater/choreography

Born in Shoreline, WA, Philippa Myler is a dance and musical theater artist trained in ballet, modern, and jazz from the age of four. Credits include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (ensemble), Urinetown (choreography), Cabaret (Helga), and The Rocky Horror Show (Phantom/ensemble) at Bainbridge Performing Arts and Bye Bye Birdie (choreography/ensemble/Gloria Rasputin) and South Pacific (ensemble, assistant choreography) at Ovation! Performing Arts.

Myler has had the privilege of dancing in Michele Miller's Catapult Dance, Alana O Rogers Dance, and in works by Kim Holloway. Myler was a core company member of Karin Stevens Dance and Associate Director with Ktisk Contemporary Dance for three years, creating and producing works as well as performing with the company. Myler has danced for Anna O’Conner and Nathan Blackwell in Velocity’s Bridge Project, Sarah Kathryn-Olds’s Serendipity Dance Brigade, Xaviera Vandermay’s 3rd Shift Dance, Coleman Pester (Tectonic Marrow Society), Connie Villines (re:flexion) and Erin Boyt’s Version Excursion. Myler has also had the privilege of dancing for choreographers Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi of Vancouver’s Kokoro Dance, Kim Robards in Denver, CO, and Seattle’s Pat Graney. In 2013, she spent an inspirational two months in as Artist in Residence with Fiji’s VOU Dance, performing, teaching, and choreographing on the company. After graduating with a BA in dance and a BFA in English from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, Myler co-founded the collective Triadic Dance Works, which has performed original pieces in Canada, the US, and Germany. In addition to independently showing short works at festivals in the Vancouver area, Myler has been twice commissioned to choreograph a full evening of work for Port Moody’s Wearable Art Awards Show.

Myler avidly pursues knowledge of many different ways of moving, including African dance, the traditional dance forms of the Pacific Islands, capoeira, and aerial silks. She studied contact improvisation intensively with Peter Bingham on a scholarship at EDAM and has trained with German dance companies COCOONDANCE and Tanztheater Bielefeld. Myler has attended numerous workshops and intensives in the United States and Europe, including Frey Faust’s Axis Syllabus (Berlin, DE), Gross Dance Company (Amsterdam, NL), LEVYdance (San Francisco), Pilobolus (NYC), Spectrum Dance Theatre (Seattle), and Ajkun Ballet Theatre (NYC). Myler loves to share her lifelong passion for dance with the next generation by teaching creative movement, contemporary modern, jazz, hip hop, and ballet to students of all ages and was a staff writer for SeattleDances for five years.

Seattle, WA

Photos: KJ Dye, Olli Tumelius, Kent Kallberg, Michelle Smith Lewis. Video: Joe Lambert