Born in NYC
Based in Michigan
Traveling the world
For over a decade, VIM VIGOR has served as an international nexus for performing arts research, creation, and exchange. Founded by Shannon Gillen, the platform creates, educates, and performs worldwide through live performance, immersive installation, film, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Grounded in the belief that we learn by doing and we are through action, VIM VIGOR investigates human behavior, identity, and social connection through movement, dance theater methodologies, and conceptual choreographic practice. Bridging artistic research with bold performance, the company creates cinematic, physically rigorous works that dissolve the boundaries between dance, theater, sound, and environment.
Now a resident company at the University of Michigan, VIM VIGOR continues to connect international artists, professional dancers, students, and communities through innovative performance, education, and collaborative creation.
VIM collaborators
Shannon Gillen
Artistic Director. Gillen's award-winning directorial style is known for its psychological depth and stunning physicality.
Shannon Gillen is an international movement creative exploring human behavior, identity, dance theater methodologies, and communication through conceptual frameworks, choreographic direction, and interdisciplinary collaborative research projects.
Her practice merges movement, theater, sound and environment into live performance experiences, immersive installations and screen-based works, foregrounding humanity's need for social connection and physical expression in both live performance and daily life.
Gillen has coalesced her approach to tethering her creative work with her ongoing pedagogical research by inviting professionals and pre-professionals alike into spaces where they can explore their totality: embodiment, listening, strategy and bridge building, relational expression, limit testing, personal architectural activation, emotional resonance, open communication, and limitless imagination.
Katherine Kiessling
Rehearsal Director, Choreographic Assistant, Performer, Lead Teacher. Katherine Kiessling is a dancer and recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she earned dual degrees in Dance and Computer Science. She officially joined VIM VIGOR in 2025 and has since performed internationally in the company’s productions THE LONG FALL, MOTHERLOAD, DRACULA, and COUNTDOWN. She has also assisted the company throughout its physical practice and choreographic processes at the University of Michigan Department of Dance, the b12 Summer Festival, the Institute of the Arts Barcelona, Iceland University of the Arts, and Michigan Movement Performance Projects. Recently, she traveled to Croatia to serve as choreographic assistant and rehearsal director for Shannon Gillen’s new work for Zagreb Dance Company, premiering in September 2026. In May 2026, she assisted VIM VIGOR in choreographing for Michigan Movement Performance Projects and for Mavericks, b12’s new three-month contemporary dance training program in Berlin. In June 2026, Kiessling will also serve as a teacher, rehearsal director, and choreographic assistant for VIM VIGOR’s LUZ program in Sitges, Spain, an immersive international apprentice experience for rising artists, before returning to Berlin in July 2026 as an assistant for Shannon Gillen’s workshops at the annual b12 Summer Festival.
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Jovick Pavajeau-Orostegui
Performer, Collaborator, Teacher.
Jovick Pavajeau-Orostegui was born in Miami, Florida, and began his formal dance training in Bogotá, Colombia, at the age of 15 under the direction of Jaime Otálora. Later, he attended George Mason University where he received the Kidd/Stearns Dance Talent Scholarship and graduated with a BFA in Dance in 2020. He has attended workshops with RUBBERBAND, VIM VIGOR, David Dorfman Dance and Springboard Danse Montreal under the direction of Alexandra Wells – where he performed work by Lior Lazarof and Johannes Wieland. After graduating in 2020, Jovick moved to New York City where he was an apprentice with David Dorfman Dance. In his time in NYC, he also performed with VIM VIGOR and collaborated with other New York based artists such as Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Robert Rubama, and Cameron McKinney of Kizuna Dance. Jovick relocated to Montreal in 2021 to join RUBBERBAND.
Our Artistic Mandate
We are driven by a two-fold mission: to inspire dialogue through the cinematic power of interdisciplinary dance theater and to build platforms for training and research that support the creative eco-system of contemporary artists.
