Dead Muse
Meet the Artists
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Performer, Lead Artist
Adam Kerbel is a 2nd-generation American Jew and Chicano artist working at the intersection of dance-theater, new choreography, and community organizing as tools for reflection and connection. His works have been presented at New York Live Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, The Music Center, Bates Dance Festival, Skirball LA, Philadelphia Dance Projects, and Breaking Walls Festival in Cairo, Egypt. He cofounded Almanac, produced Cannonball, established Performa Choreographic Incubator as a multi-city lab for brave new dance and live art, and is a member of Cohort א through The Shalom Center. Learn more at adamkerbel.com.
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Director, Production Designer
Ben Grinberg believes centering the needs of independent artists helps communities thrive. He co-founded Almanac in 2013 and worked as the company’s owner and financial manager, exceeding $500k in revenue. Grinberg co-founded Cannonball serving as its Head of Partnerships, is on faculty for the Pig Iron/Rowan University MFA Program in Devised Performance, and was the founding Head of Performance and Artistic Craft at Circadium, the nation’s first certificate-granting program for contemporary circus. Ben has produced over 20 full-length shows and countless events, which have won him Barrymore, Rocky, Suraya, and No Proscenium awards. He was recently recognized with the 2025 CIPA/APAP Award for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Producing.
Dead Muse is a darkly comic and interactive dance-theater solo that blurs the lines between Chicano and Jewish American histories in Los Angeles. Its wry humor and minimalist design flips 80 years of precedent about how we talk about the Holocaust and detainment in the modern era.
You follow a struggling actor’s plight through today’s Hollywood haunted by bombed auditions, sexting while driving, and the performer’s dead grandparents. Collectively, the audience witnesses the dancer as he physically inhabits the bodies of his Mexican and Jewish ancestors — told through a microphone, a bare stage, and first-hand testimony.
Dead Muse premiered at Cannonball 2024 and has received support from Philadelphia Theater Co., The Wende Museum of the Cold War, and Daredevil Arts Festival.
“Tender… consistently charming… an effort to cross the unbridgeable.” — Plays Unpleasant
“Diving into the sensations of life… not afraid to be witnessed, to be seen, and to be with us.” — thINKingDANCE
