Subscribe to our mailing List
PROGRAM 2
Friday, February 9 @ 7 pm
▪ Ballaro Dance, NY
▪ Ramona Sekulovic, Berlin
▪ GRIDLOCK Dance, MD
▪ Ben Dolphin Productions, NY
▪ Kate Digby, KS
▪ Cho Seong-hee Aha Dance Theater, Korea
▪ Kate Corby & Dancers, WI
▪ Lindsey Bramham Howie, NC
▪ Megan Mazarick, PA
▪ Alison Cook Beatty Dance, NY
Ballaro Dance © Paul Frangipane
NYC-based Ballaro Dance builds community through the creation and presentation of modern dance while inviting its audience, often first-time dance viewers, to SEE, MOVE, & SHARE with the Company in an approachable, welcoming environment.
Adhering to this mission, Founding Artistic Director Marisa f. Ballaro prioritizes community-based and collaborative projects at the core of her vision. This spring, Marisa will lead a nation-wide project with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation funded by a $9,575 Impact Grant centering movement, storytelling, and healing. "Amid the Wild" is about the tether of connection. Time passes through moments of support and a mutual exchange of touch and being touched. The duet concludes in a short solo about transcendence, moving on, moving upward. For the choreographer, it’s about the loss of her aunt; for the viewer, "Amid the Wild" invites a reflection of someone who helped them get through the 'wild' and was always by their side.
Ramona Sekulovic is a US/German choreographer based in Berlin, Germany. Trained as a dancer and visual anthropologist, she currently strives to incorporate the experience and perception of her own body as well as its individual physical aesthetics into choreographic practice. She was recently funded by the National Performance Net, Draussenstadt - Call for Action, the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, and the Fonds Darstellende Künste in Berlin. In NY she was presented by Gibney, Dixon Place, Green Space, Movement Research at Judson Church, and the Dumbo Dance Festival among others, and by the Austin Dance Festival and the Chop Shop Contemporary Dance Festival nationally. She will be part of this year’s SoloDuo Festival with her solo Untitled No 5 based on Philip Glass’ Piano Etude No 8. The solo resembles a journey in which the dancing body is freed from limitations and established movement vocabulary and expressive freedom claimed.
Ramona Sekulovic © Steven Pisano
five two Dance Company © John A Fleming
Madeline Maxine Gorman is talkative and loud. That’s partly due to being hard of hearing, but primarily because she embraces queer, disabled, and neurodivergent identity.
Featured in Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch, Max’s choreography is “intellectually probing, politically minded, and personally revelatory” (Dance Magazine). Described as a “raw talent” and “a treasure that can push her and the dance community in the right direction” (Charm City Dance), she examines the relationships between mass media, mental health, and movement as the Artistic Director of GRIDLOCK Dance in Washington, Most recently, Max was an inaugural Atlas Arts Lab Fellow and her work Veritas, which "boldly explores technology's downsides" (Washington City Paper), was in the Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival. She's presenting her work Honeysuckle, a duet that explores the intimate, irreversible way one being can impact another through original live music and a few drops of water, all contained within an 8x10 rug.
Ben Dolphin; Director/Cinematographer/Choreographer/Dancer formerly with the companies of Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, Gus Solomon’s Jr., also danced with Trisha Brown, Kei Takei, Rudy Perez, Battery Dance Company, Pat Catterson, Catherine Gallant. A native new yorker, he currently directs, shoots choreographs television commercials and small films world wide. Renown for filming high speed liquids. He filmed the first Budweiser “Crown.” His work has won 2 Emmys, an Addy a silver Ad Award and Tokyo Film Festival Award. Danced With Buglisi Dance Theater at Lincoln Center in “The Table Of Silence”. 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023. In 2018 danced in “White Wave Dance Festival.” Created work and performed in the Nyc Dance Rising Dance Festival in 2020, 2021, 2022. Represented in the Lincoln Center Dance Film Archives, permanent collection and featured in the Growth Of Dance In America Biannual. His film Arising was chosen as part of the Lincoln Center Dance On Camera Festival and toured globally. His second dance film premiered at the New Museum Of Contemporary Art, Nyc. His trilogy of dance films were featured At Harkness Dance Center, NYC.
Ben Dolphin Productions © Kathi McGowan
Kate Digby by Kansas State University Division of Marketing and Communications©
Kate Digby is a choreographer, director and performer who led Digby Dance for 10 years and has choreographed over 50 original works that have been performed across the U.S., in Canada and India. She is currently an associate professor and Associate Director of the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Kansas State University where she teaches somatics, choreography, improvisation, and pedagogy. Digby is delighted to be working with Avery Johnson and Ann Stegman for this performance as they each launch their professional dance careers. The work they will be sharing, “Warp & Woof”, is a light-hearted duet about love and ego, friendship and competition, and a celebration of virtuosic in the mundane. www.katedigby.art
Cho Seong-hee Aha Dance Theater © Iri
The contemporary dance company Cho Sung-hee AHA Dance Theater has been actively engaged in activities since 1999, raising the status of contemporary dance in South Korea Province. The dance company continuously strives for new work, including creative activities, the training of personnel in the performance field, audience development, and collaborations with other art genres. They communicate with the public through performances that are easily relatable to the audience.
“In a city where chilling winds blow and people live under the relentless pressure of endless competition, one can easily spot the weariness and fatigue etched upon their faces. Amid the urban landscape of our modern world, I extend an invitation to them: 'Would you care to dance with me?' Through this artistic endeavor, I aspire to share the joy of rising from the depths of lethargy, rediscovering our energy, and once again taking the stage of life. This, at its core, is the message of my work. While we all encounter trying times in our lives, I invite you to envision a scenario where we overcome those moments, rise, and dance again, while conveying a message of hope.”
Kate Corby & Dancers © Alex Malik
“Compelling” and “full of gestured conflict and impish daring” (Chicago Tribune), Kate Corby and Dancers’ (KC & D) collaborative work has been seen in the Midwest, New York, California, Seattle, Atlanta, and internationally in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, and Hungary. Corby, featured in Dance Magazine as one of six choreographers “on the cusp of making waves in the larger dance world,” has been a professor of dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2008. In addition to regular seasons in Chicago and Madison, past company projects include: the Chicago Cultural Center’s SpinOff Festival, the World Dance Alliance-Americas Festival in Vancouver, BC and Puebla, Mexico, a live performance with cellist Zoë Keating, commissioned by the Wisconsin Union Theater, and the Live Art, Live Rio! Festival in Rio de Janeiro, among others. Corby’s screen dances have been shown in Flatlands Dance Film Festival, Midwest RAD Festival, Jacksonville Dance Film Festival, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, and Screen, dance Scotland, among others. KC&D will present Terrarium in the festival, which uses the movement of a solo dancer to explore isolation, confinement, and the limbic system, or ‘lizard brain,’ and features an original score by composer Nat Evans.
Eduardo Hernandez is a Los Angeles based dancer and choreographer. His work is heavily influenced by absurdism and iconoclasm themes that constantly bring delusions or challenges as an acknowledgement for self being. As a result, his movement practice centralizes in improvisation or set choreography based on error-chance choices in order to bring authenticity or purposeless experiences.
His work DAESEIN from the German philosophical word “Dasein,” translates to presence or existence, yet it is a piece about the absurdism of living while it manifests a hopeful outcome. In addition, DAESEIN is an exploration work based on the Humphrey principles and the somatic principles of release.
Constance Nicolas Vellozzi © Athena Azzevedo
Lindsey Bramham Howie is the Director of Dance and Assistant Professor of Dance at High Point University. She holds an MFA in Choreography from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BFA in Dance Performance with a concentration in Jazz Dance from East Carolina University. She currently sits on the Board of the North Carolina Dance Education Organization. Her work has been featured in many dance festivals and she has been a teacher for universities, community events, and workshops throughout the region. Originally from Mechanicsville, VA, Lindsey resides in Rural Hall, NC with her husband and three beautiful children. Better Left Unsaid is about craving and wanting someone’s attention, only to be pushed, thrown aside, or stepped over. Throughout the work, the dancers express moments of love, but there is neglect, manipulation, and struggle, each trying to exert power over the other which is never fully resolved.
Lindsey Bramham Howie & Dancers ©
Megan Mazarick © Melissa Blackall
Megan Mazarick is a Philadelphia choreographer, performer, teacher, and mom. She often works with imaginative physical scores to collage movement, theater, and text. Her work has been presented internationally (Singapore, Bulgaria, Egypt, Poland, Australia, Hungary, and Mexico) and throughout the USA. As a performer, she has worked with David Gordon, Susan Rethorst, Keith Thompson, Marianela Boan, Merian Soto, Anonymous Bodies, Black Box Dance Theater, and members of Lower Left. Megan has taught technique, improvisation, and composition classes at studios, festivals, and universities around the globe. She is an Assistant Professor at Georgian Court University.
"old swan" is a dance that satirizes and deconstructs the lecture format with live looping vocals. Movement plays between literal interpretations and an investigation of rhythm and sounds fragments. Similar to a glitching TED talk, the performer directly talks to the audience then gets lost in a physical world of speech making.
ALISON COOK BEATTY DANCE is a NYC-based non-profit modern dance company founded in 2012 by Artistic Director and choreographer ALISON COOK-BEATTY. Having recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and with growing multi-organizational grant support and commissioned works, the company continues to tour and perform its dynamic repertoire to critical acclaim throughout the United States. They are honored to perform “Tintinnabuli”, choreographed in 2012 which premiered at The Joyce Theater, commissioned by Ballet Next.
“Tintinnabuli” was inspired by a compositional style created by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt which means in Latin tintinnabulum, a bell. These bells made Alison think of Hemmingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls" and this famous quote from John Donne from 1624. “No man is an island entire of itself; any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Alison Cook Beatty Dance © Lucas Chilczuk