Catherine A. Peila

Executive/Artistic Director
Email: cpeila@dnadance.org
Phone ext: 201

Catherine Peila is the Executive/Artistic Director of Dance New Amsterdam (DNA), Lower Manhattan’s dance space that supports studio-to-stage dancer development and performance experience. DNA is proud to present and promote artistic excellence in dance performance, education and the creation process. DNA’s 25,000 sq.ft. home is a pioneer infrastructure for the performing arts, housing both a professional theater and education center and nurturing dance in all its forms and guiding dancers through the various stages of their career.

Ms. Peila has nearly three decades of professional experience as a producer, presenter, promoter, curator and administrator for the performing and visual arts from Rock’n’Roll (The Jacksons to David Byrne to Frank Sinatra) to Broadway (The Who’s Tommy & Will Roger’s Follies) to Off-Off Broadway dance and theater, both nationally and abroad. As a performance artist/multi-media artist she has performed and exhibited in the U.S. and abroad. She worked at Lehman Brothers in the International Investment Banking department as research assistant and associate (four years) and moved to Columbus, OH to study for her masters where she also held the position of Director of Development and Marketing for Opera Columbus. She has trained and performed since childhood in music, theater and dance and received her BA/BS in Performance Art/Production and Medical Anthropology from Western Washington University/Fairhaven College holding the University position of Producer/Special Events Director including one year abroad in ethnographic fieldwork and performance training (shamanic practice); interning and working with performance artist Jerri Allyn, Brazilian artist, Venice Biennale participant Josely Carvalho and dance/theater artist John Kelly as well as Medical Anthropologist Leslie Conton/Michael Harner, GOH Productions/Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks, the Jacek Luminski/Silesian Dance Theater and others. As a Barnett Fellow and Schlessinger scholarship holder, she worked towards her Masters of Cultural Policy and Arts Administration from the Ohio State University/Phi Beta Kappa, specializing in International Cultural exchange and co-authoring papers with cultural policy pundit Margaret Wyszomirski. She has worked in international producing for over 25 years. In 1994, after working as Manager of Dance Theater Workshop’s NPN/Suitcase Fund, she moved to Poland and developed national award winning social and educational cultural programs and co-founded and produced the Silesian Dance Theatre’s (SDT) Annual International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival in Bytom and Krakow, Poland, now in its sixteenth year.