11/21/2025
Meet Michaela Neild, one of our Inaugural FilmFest Adjudicators! We cannot wait to announce the lineup of incredible dance films for the event coming up on December 6th. Tickets are available now!
MICHAELA "M" NEILD (she/they), is an interdisciplinary artist, dance educator, movement coach, and nonprofit professional based in Buffalo, NY. As an independent artist, M is engaged with improvisation and multidisciplinary investigation, community-building, seeking liberation through storytelling, and the sharing of space. They earned their MFA in Dance and Nonprofit Studies from The Ohio State University and their BFA in Dance Performance & Choreography from SUNY University at Buffalo.
While M is primarily a dancer, she enjoys infusing her choreography with other visual, video, and installation art mediums. Their choreographic process is experiential, collaborative, and emergent—combining traditional compositional techniques with devising theatre techniques, improvisational games, and chance operation structures. More often than not, M enters the creative process by facilitating discussions and cultivating experiences that pull a central theme for the creative work out of the people she engages with—viewing the challenges, perspectives, combined talents, cultures, and possibilities that emerge as inspiration.
When M isn't performing or choreographing, they can be found working behind the scenes as a freelance grant writer and program manager for arts nonprofits and independent artists. In these roles, M aims to build infrastructures that open doors for who gets to participate in dance, who gets to watch dance, and how dance happens. M is also the proud founder of Creative Care With Michaela, a sliding-scale healthy aging service dedicated to helping elders age actively, creatively, and independently through movement and therapeutic arts coaching.
