Elliot Gordon Mercer is an interdisciplinary artist, expressive arts therapist, and performance scholar. His research and creative practice investigate the intersections of dance and visual art, with an emphasis in postmodernism, feminist art, and queer theory. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama from Northwestern University and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University.

Mercer is a MacDowell Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellow, and Lucas Artists Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center. His creative work has also been supported by artist residencies at Yaddo, Millay, Pond Farm / California State Parks, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. In 2021 his film Sensorium premiered at Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

He is a graduate of the Tamalpa Institute, where he trained with Anna and Daria Halprin. He curated the exhibition Mapping Dance: The Scores of Anna Halprin (2016) at the San Francisco Museum of Performance Design, and in 2022 he directed the first restaging of Anna Halprin’s 1964 dance-theatre work Procession at Grinnell College.

Mercer is an authorized transmitter of Yvonne Rainer’s iconic postmodern dance work Trio A (1966).

His work appears in Dance Research Journal, TDR The Drama Review, and MILIEU Magazine. He is also a volume co-editor for the forthcoming Bloomsbury series Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance.

As a somatic dance educator, Mercer is a licensed Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis trainer. He has completed a Teaching Certification in Labanotation from the Ohio State University as well as a Certificate in Benesh Movement Notation from the Royal Academy of Dance.