Faculty Bios

Chris Aiken

photo by Erik Saulitis

Chris Aiken is a leading international teacher and performer of dance improvisation and contact improvisation. Over the past two and a half decades his work has evolved through ongoing investigations of performance, composition, movement technique and design. His work has been significantly influenced through the somatic practice of the Alexander Technique, ideokinesis, yoga and the work of Ida Rolf. Chris has performed and collaborated with many renowned dance artists including Steve Paxton, Kirstie Simson, Nancy Stark Smith, Peter Bingham, Andrew Harwood, Ray Chung and Angie Hauser. He has received numerous awards for his artistic work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as commissions from the Walker Art Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop and the National Performance Network. Chris is an Assistant Professor at Ursinus College where he co-founded and directs the dance program.

Jennifer Archibald

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Jennifer Archibald, founder and artistic director of the Arch Dance Company, graduated from the Alvin Ailey School and Maggie Flannigan acting conservatory specializing in the Meisner technique. She has performed at The Kennedy Center, Aaron Davis Hall, Lincoln Theatre, New World Theatre, Duke on 42nd Street, Abron Arts Centre, Judson Memorial Church, on MTV, as well as in Europe, Russia and Canada. She has staged various off-Broadway shows working with the casts from Bring in Da Noise and Da Funk and the musical Cats and has choreographed Carousel, The Music Man, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Pippin for professional theater companies. Jennifer has also choreographed for the NBA New York Knicks City Dancers and the Ailey School. She has taught master classes at Princeton University, University of South Florida, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of South Florida, and in France, Sweden, Russian, Slovania and Bermuda. She currently serves on the faculty at Steps on Broadway, Dance New Amsterdam, Bates Dance Festival and Florida Dance Festival.

Robert Battle

photo by Tom Caravaglia

Originally from Miami, FL, Robert Battle is a graduate of the New World School of the Arts and the Julliard School. Upon graduation, he joined the Parsons Dance Company (1994-2001). In 2001 Battle founded Battleworks Dance Company, and the company premiered in August 2002 at the World Dance Alliance’s Global Assembly in Düsseldorf, Germany. Selected as the American representatives to the festival, the company was chosen for its unique outlook on the future of modern dance. Battleworks has performed and conducted residencies extensively in their home base of New York City and across the country. As an independent choreographer, Battle continues to be in high demand. The Hubbard Street Repertory Ensemble, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, River North Dance Company, Introdans, and PARADIGM have all commissioned new works and restagings of Battleworks repertory. In 2005, Battle was honored at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with a medal proclaiming him one of the “Masters of African-American Choreography” and he has recently been honored with the coveted Princess Grace Statue Award for achievements in choreography.

Christal Brown

photo by Alan Kimara Dixon

Christal Brown (choreographer, educator, performer, writer, activist) is a native of Kinston, North Carolina and received her BFA in dance and minor in Business from the UNC at Greensboro. Brown has toured nationally with Chuck Davis' African-American Dance Ensemble, Andrea E. Woods/Souloworks, Gesel Mason Performance Projects, and has apprenticed with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She spent three years with Urban Bush Women as a principal performer, community specialist and apprentice program coordinator. Brown is the Founding Artistic Director of INSPIRIT (2002), a performance ensemble and educational conglomerate dedicated to bringing female choreographers together to collaborate and inspire audiences. INSPIRIT has performed at Aaron Davis Hall, Danspace at St. Marks Church, Joyce Soho, The Lincoln Theater of Washington, DC, and various other venues across the country. Through the growth of INSPIRIT, Brown has launched a nationwide youth initiative for teen girls called Project: BECOMING. Currently, Brown is a resident at Tribeca Performing Arts Center and a visiting lecturer at Middlebury College.

Debra Cash

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Debra Cash has written about dance, performing arts, design and cultural policy for print, broadcast and internet media. She recently initiated a new “cultural literacy” initiative, Dancing in the Present Tense in partnership with World Music/CRASHarts in Boston and other regional arts presenters in which she gives pre-concert talks, provides program notes, and moderates an event-centric blog about dancing from around the world. As a consultant to the New England Foundation for the Arts, she documented the landmark three-year National Endowment for the Arts program American Masterpieces: Dance. Dance critic for the Boston Globe for seventeen years and for National Public Radio’s WBUR Online Arts for five, she now contributes to the Boston Phoenix, Ballet Review, the Women’s Review of Books, Jewish-Theatre.com and many other outlets. She has been a Scholar in Residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and has lectured regularly at museums, universities and conferences, and worked on or appeared in dance-related television documentaries here and in Europe. She taught dance history and world dance at Emerson College and has served on panels for the LEF Foundation, the Yard, and has been a site visitor for the NEA. Debra earned a Master of Design Studies degree at Harvard and also maintains an active career as a user-centered design researcher.

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Mark Dendy

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Mark Dendy has been choreographing, dancing, acting, writing and directing for dance and theater around the world since 1983. He was the artistic director of Mark Dendy Dance and Theater from 1985-2000 performing at The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and many other national and international venues. He has choreographed for Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, national tours, Radio City Music Hall’s Rockette’s, and The Metropolitan Opera. Dendy has received a BESSIE, an OBIE, and an Alpert Award for his work and has repertory in over 30 companies worldwide. His latest project is MARK DENDY: PICK UP COMPANY which premiere’s this summer at the ADF and Bates.

Carol Dilley

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Carol Dilley has been teaching, choreographing and performing internationally for over 20 years on three continents. Her professional career began in New York where she progressed through Simonson technique to contemporary dance performance. She spent nearly a decade based in Barcelona, Spain, teaching, choreographing and performing in Europe with her own company of women and with various other companies and independent choreographers. Next stop, an MFA from University of Washington in Seattle and then Sydney, Australia where she still returns regularly to choreograph, perform and teach. Carol has always promoted grass roots dance performance opportunities and was a founding director of three ongoing dance series, La Porta in Barcelona, Dance Briefs in Sydney, and most recently, FAB in Lewiston Maine. Carol is an Associate Professor and Director of Dance at Bates College.

Clyde Evans Jr.

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Clyde Evans, Jr. began dancing hip-hop in 1983. He traveled internationally as lead dancer with Rennie Harris Puremovement to perform and instruct throughout Europe, Africa and Brazil. He has collaborated in performances and major concerts for artists such as TLC, Chubb Rock, Mark Wahlberg, and Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. He has also acted in feature films as well as danced in music videos. Clyde began his own company in 2001, Chosen Dance Company, for which he has created numerous works such as "From tha Hip" a Hip-Hop play, and worked with the like of the SunnyD Tour, Finishline, and the NFL Super Bowl.

Michael Foley

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Michael Foley has been involved in the professional dance world for 20 years. He has performed internationally in the companies of more than two-dozen choreographers, including Doug Elkins, Kevin Wynn, Seán Curran and Eun Me Ahn. He has taught master classes and residencies, and has received choreographic commissions throughout the U.S., France, Northern Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Cuba and Ireland. He has taught on the faculties of New World School of the Arts, Bates College, Florida Dance Festival, and Dance Space Center in NYC. He also teaches technique and has set choreography for the Cirque du Soleil organization. Michael has maintained choreographic residencies at the University of Texas, University of Florida, Cornish College of the Arts and Harvard University, among many others. His choreography is in the repertories of dance companies throughout the U.S., as well as in Cuba, Mexico and Italy. Michael has a 25-year affiliation with the Bates Dance Festival where he has been a student, emerging choreographer, faculty, and co-director of the Young Dancers Workshop from 1996 - 2007. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Washington and is currently an Associate Professor of Dance at the University of South Florida. He also directs a yearly study abroad program in Paris and Marseille. Michael is a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico for 2008 – 2009 working with Delfos Danza.

Rachel Ganteaume-Richards

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Rachel Ganteaume, born in Trinidad, first studied the Royal Academy of Dancing Syllabus, at The Caribbean School of Dancing in Port of Spain. Her accomplishments there led to her being honored with a scholarship to The American Ballet Center, now the Joffrey School in New York City, where she also studied with David Howard and Maggie Black, and performed feature roles in the Joffrey II Company before joining the Joffrey Ballet in 1975. In the Joffrey Ballet, she performed principal roles in Oscar Ariaz’s Romeo and Juliet, Gerald Arpino’s Scared Grove on Mount Tamalpais, Sir Frederick Ashton’s Jazz Calendar, Jose Limon’s The Moor’s Pavane, and others by Michel Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Kurt Jooss, Agnes de Mille, Alvin Ailey, Gerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp. Her television performances include Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, presented at the Kennedy Center at the request of the White House, marking the historic meeting of President Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiao Ping, then Vice Premier of the People’s Republic of China. In 1982 she moved to Maine joining the faculty of the Ram Island Dance Center and later the Portland Ballet where in 1996, she performed “Tituba” in Sam Kurkjian’s The Witches of Salem. Rachel now teaches at Androscoggin Dance, The Dance Center in Auburn and Bates College.

Angie Hauser

photo by William Federking

Angie Hauser is a dancemaker, performer and teacher. Her work reflects the influences of contact improvisation, ballet, butoh and contemporary dance techniques. Angie has been a member of the Bebe Miller Company since 2000, contributing to the creation of award-winning dance works performed throughout the country. In 2006 she won a BESSIE Award for her collaboration with Bebe Miller. She has also danced with the companies of Elizabeth Streb, Liz Lerman and Poppo Shiriashi and performed with many gifted artists including Kirstie Simpson, Andrew Harwood, Kathleen Hermesdorf, K.J. Holmes and Darrell Jones. Her creative work also includes her ongoing collaboration with Chris Aiken resulting in performances and workshops in the U.S. and in Europe, including their project, Dwell, co-commissioned by the National Performance Network. She has taught improvisation and dance throughout the U.S. and in Switzerland, Germany, Canada and Scotland. She has also taught on the dance faculty of Columbia College Chicago, Cornell University, Denison University and Bates Dance Festival. Angie received her MFA in dance from the Ohio State University and holds a BA in Art History from University of South Carolina.

Kathleen Hermesdorf

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Kathleen Hermesdorf is a San Francisco-based dance artist known for a sensate, feral and mercurial style of motion, creation and performance in the collaboratively based work of her mentors - Margaret Jenkins (1993-99/1999 IZZIE Award), Sara Shelton Mann/Contraband (1994-present) and Bebe Miller (2002-present/2006 Bessie Award). She directs MOTIONLAB with musician Albert Mathias (www.motion-lab.net), creating work of that deeply integrates dance and music. They produce events for the stage, club and studio and are currently at work on three international collaborations. The duo offers training throughout the world and has been on the faculty of ODC School since 1996 (www.odcschool.org). Hermesdorf is a collaborator at heart, co-directing Hermesdorf & Wells Dance Company with Scott Wells (1994 GOLDIE Award), and working with Stephanie Maher in San Francisco and Germany since 1997. She holds a BFA and MFA in Dance Performance & Pedagogy. Hermesdorf is the recipient of a 2005/06 CHIME Grant with Brenda Way via the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, a 2006/07 San Francisco Arts Commission grant and ongoing support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

Tania Isaac

photo by Bill Herbert

Tania Isaac was born in St. Lucia. She graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received her MFA from Temple University. She is the artistic director of Tania Isaac Dance, a laboratory for creating highly physical and poetic contemporary movement narratives that drive social and artistic discourse. She has received grants from the Independence Foundation, Dance Advance, National Performance Network, Leeway Foundation, and Harlem Stage Fund for New Work. Ms Isaac is a former Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and a former member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, Urban Bush Women and Li Chiao-Ping Dance. She currently performs with David Dorfman Dance. In 2006, she was choreographic fellow at MANCC, creating a template for a new working process ‘open notebook’. Isaac has been faculty at Bates Dance Festival, Resident Artist at Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, and a US/JAPAN Exchange Artist through Philadelphia Dance Projects, Dance Theater Workshop and the Japan Foundation. She has also taught and performed across the U.S.

Ashley James

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Ashley James began practicing Pilates and yoga in 2000. She studied Power Pilates in Cincinnati and Chicago and It's Yoga in Cincinnati. Following the path of movement she moved to Columbus, Ohio to complete a yearlong intensive Ashtanga Certification. In Ohio she also studied Pilates with Margaret Lane from The Pilates Center in Boulder, Thai Yoga Massage and completed her Reiki Level two deepening. In New York she continued her Pilates training with Kathy Grant and Blossom Crawford. She also completed an intensive training at the Kane School with Kelly Kane. She has also had the honor of studying with Tim Miller, Rodney Yee, Thomas Myers, Mark Whitwell, Dana Flynn and Jasmine Tarkeshi. Drawing from experience in fields as varied as Feldenkrais, Yamuna Body Rolling, and bodywork, Ashley’s teaching emphasizes awareness as a vehicle for exploration and enjoyment.

Jennifer Kayle

photo by Stephen Aubuchon

Jennifer Kayle is Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, and presents her work nationally and internationally as a choreographer and improviser. In 2008, Jennifer premiered her first season in both New York City (Joyce SoHo) and Chicago (Links Hall). Other recent events include commissions for The Dance Colective in Chicago, New Articulations in Tuscon, performances in Helsinki, Finland, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Dominican Republic. Improvisation is at the root of Jennifer’s artistic practice. She traces her dance heritage to Judith Dunn/Bill Dixon who developed a unique improvisology for dancers and musicians at Bennington College. With a BA from Middlebury College and MFA from Smith College, she has taught, choreographed and improvised extensively in venues including Jacob's Pillow’s Inside/Out, New York Improvisation Festival/Judson Church, Merce Cunningham Studio, Big Range Dance Festival (TX)and Minnesota Fringe Festival among others.

Kim Konikow

photo - no credit

Kim Konikow has a varied and comprehensive background in the arts. Through artservices & company, she has consulted on projects that facilitate artistic growth and build community with a focus on organizational development. Her work experience includes serving as Executive Director for The Mesa, an arts & humanities residency center in Southern Utah; Executive Director of the statewide dance service organization Minnesota Dance Alliance; and Director of Special Events for the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. A well-respected teacher, Kim offers holistic curriculums focused on the practical aspects of the arts in order to better prepare students for professional life. Ms. Konikow has also served extensively as a site visitor and panelist for several regional, state and national organizations. She holds a dual MFA in Arts Administration and Theatre Direction from Brooklyn College/City University of New York.

Rachel List

photo by Julie Lemberger

Rachel List has performed across the U.S., and in Canada, MexicoRachel List has performed across the U.S., and in Canada, Mexico and Europe as a member of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, The Vanaver Caravan, Partridge/Benford/Dance/Music and The New York Baroque Dance Company, with whom she is still performing. She directed and choreographed for her own company from 1985-1995 and was the founder and director of Manchester Dance, a summer workshop in Vermont, from 1987-1997. Ms. List holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee and has taught professional ballet classes in New York City since 1978 (currently at Peridance). She is on the faculty of Hofstra University and Queens College (CUNY) and has also taught at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Barnard College, the Paul Taylor Summer Institute, the Balettakademien (Stockholm, Sweden) and Danse Projektet (Copenhagen, Denmark). Ms. List has presented master classes and lecture/demonstrations in Baroque dance at Juilliard, Columbia University, Bard Graduate Center and F.I.T. and has served as a period movement consultant and/or choreographer for the Pearl Theatre and the Bronx Opera Company. She is very pleased to be returning for her tenth summer at the Bates Dance Festival.

Victoria Marks

photo by Beatriz Schiller

Victoria Marks creates dances for the stage, for film, in community settings, and for professional dancers. Her work addresses the body itself, as it serves as a touchstone for larger discourses on wellness, desire, rhetoric and power. Victoria is a Professor of Choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA where she has been teaching since 1995. Before taking her post at UCLA she lived in London, where for three and a half years she worked on her own choreographic projects and served as head of choreography at London Contemporary Dance School, a conservatory for the training of professional dance artists in Europe. Marks received a 2007 EMPAC award for the creation of a new dance for the camera, was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and has received recent grants from the Irvine Foundation, the NEA (2005) and the Cultural Affairs Council. In 1997 she was honored with the Alpert Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography. Over the course of her career she has been the recipient of multiple grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, among others. She has received a Fulbright Fellowship in Choreography, and numerous awards for her dance films.

Bebe Miller

photo by Julieta Cervantes

Bebe Miller established Bebe Miller Company in 1985. After two plus decades of national and international touring, it is structured as a 'virtual' company, with dancers, collaborating artists and designers living across the U.S., and gathering for intensive creative process residencies for each work. Bebe has received commissions from Boston Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and Philadanco, among other groups across the country and abroad. She has collaborated with artists in film and digital media work and has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, four Bessie awards for choreography, and artist fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. She is a Full Professor in Dance at The Ohio State University, currently serves on the boards of Dance USA, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, and Bearnstow, a retreat center in Maine. She is a member of the International Artists Advisory Board of the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Shonach Mirk-Robles

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Shonach received her classical training in some of the world’s best schools, including the School of American Ballet, The Royal Ballet School of London and Maurice Béjart’s MUDRA. She was a member of Bejart’s famed Ballet of the Twentieth Century from 1974 to 1986 and also performed with Switzerland’s Zurich Operhaus, Germany’s Hamburg Ballet and Italy’s Ballet de Torino. She has also studied dance therapy and grown through her own choreographic experience. Through her collaboration with acclaimed choreographers she has developed a deep understanding of what today’s dancers need in the way of a classical base for contemporary performance. Shonach has her Masters in Dance Education and is licensed to teach Spiraldynamik which she incorporates into her ballet workshops. Recently she has been teaching internationally in Japan, Spain and Germany.

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Karl Rogers

photo by Arthur Fink

Karl Rogers, originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in Brooklyn, NY where he makes dances, performs and teaches. He has been a member of David Dorfman Dance since 2005 and has danced in projects for Nugent + Matteson, Colleen Thomas, Terry Creach, Melinda Ring, Tami Stronach, Hoi Polloi, and many others. Last year, he was the Postgraduate Fellow in Dance at Dickinson College. He has also been a guest teacher at colleges, universities and festivals around the world. Karl completed an MFA in Choreography from the Ohio State University, where in addition to teaching technique, composition, improvisation and dance/theatre history, he was the first artist to receive the University’s top award, a Presidential Fellowship. Karl is also a certified yoga instructor.

Kwame Ross

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Kwame A. Ross is a performer, choreographer, musician, and community activist based in New York City. For the past thirty years Ross has been engaged in the preservation and continuum of African culture through the arts and community service. He has served as Cultural Ambassador to Egypt, and Associate Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women. Ross has done extensive field research of African and African diasporic traditions in Benin, Mozambique, Egypt, Cuba, Trinidad and Brazil. He is the recipient of numerous grants from the Puffin Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. Currently Ross is the Artistic Director of Prophecy Dance Works that will be premiering a new work titled, Movement of the People inspired by the Nigerian Activist Artist, Femi Kuti Ransome.

Laura Selle-Virtucio

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Laura Selle Virtucio began her movement training as an athlete in Sioux Falls, SD. In 1995, she moved to Minneapolis to pursue dance and now holds her B.F.A. from the University of Minnesota. Among her greatest accomplishments, she counts her long partnership as a company member and choreographers’ assistant with Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater and Shapiro & Smith Dance. With these companies, Laura has danced as a featured performer on stages nationwide, including the Joyce Theater (NY), Annenberg Center (PA), The Guthrie (MN), the Southern Theater (MN) and has set numerous repertory works across the country. Laura is also a member of Carl Flink’s Black Label Movement and has performed as a dancer in productions with the Minnesota Opera. As a teacher and performer of jazz dance, Laura was influenced by her work with jazz choreographers Cathy Young, Danny Buraczeski and Zoe Sealy. She has served as affiliate faculty in the dance programs at the University of Minnesota and Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Laura is a recipient of the 2007 McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, a 2007 Sage Award for Best Performer and was named Best Dancer 2001 by City Pages of Minneapolis. In her spare time, she enjoys social dance and performs with the Minneapolis Salsa Movement.

Nancy Stark Smith

photo by Raisa Kyllikki Karjalainen

Nancy Stark Smith first trained as an athlete and gymnast, leading her to study and perform modern and postmodern dance in the early 1970s. She was greatly influenced by the Judson Dance Theater breakthroughs of the 1960s. Nancy danced in the first performances of contact improvisation in 1972 and has since been central to its development as dancer, teacher, performer, writer/publisher and organizer. She has traveled extensively throughout the world teaching and performing contact and other improvised dance work with Steve Paxton and many other favorite dance partners and performance makers, including Julyen Hamilton, Andrew Harwood, Peter Bingham, Karen Nelson, and musician Mike Vargas. In 1975 she co-founded Contact Quarterly, an international dance journal, that she continues to edit, produce and publish. Her writings appear in the book, Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, and her first book, Caught Falling, came out in 2008. She lives in western Massachusetts.

Martha Tornay

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Martha Tornay is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and a recipient of the Fine Arts Award in dance technique and choreography. Martha has over three decades of intensive classical ballet and modern technique studies with dance masters such as Mme. Gabriela Darvash, Gretchen Ward Warren, Robert Brassel and Merce Cunningham. After performing for over 18 years with regional and international ballet and modern dance companies she founded East Village Dance Project (EVDP). EVDP, a program of GOH Productions, is a pre-professional dance development program for students ages 4-16 in NYC. EVDP graduates have been accepted into professional dance academies such as Elliot Feld/Ballet Tech, School of American Ballet and the Alvin Ailey School. EVDP students have performed with Kids Café Festival, Vanaver Caravan Dance Festival, Keigwin + Company and at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors 2007. In addition to directing EVDP, Martha teaches dance technique workshops at New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing, Bates Dance Festival and for Louisville Ballet School.

Kate Weare

photo by Steven Schreiber

JoAnna Mendl Shaw is a choreographer and teacher Kate Weare (Artistic Director of Kate Weare Company) has been nominated for The 2008 Alpert Award in the Arts for Choreography, and was recently honored with a Choreographic Fellowship from The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a Joyce Soho Residency, a Guest Artist Residency from Dance New Amsterdam’s A.I.R. Program, and a Creative Development Residency at Jacob’s Pillow, which co-commissioned her latest work, Bridge of Sighs. Kate Weare Company (KWCo) has also received commissions from Dance Theater Workshop, The Sonoma Arts Council, WestWave Dance Festival, Axis Dance Company, CityDance Ensemble and Danspace Project. In 2007, KWCo won the top prize of $10,000 from NYC’s The A.W.A.R.D. Show (a series in which the audience votes on the best modern dance from among 16 competing companies.) Weare earned her BFA from CalArts in 1994, showing her work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Belgrade before moving to New York in 2000. She founded Kate Weare Company in 2005 with the mission to create dances that explore a contemporary view of intimacy through the power and clarity of the moving body. For more info: www.kateweare.com

Cathy Young

photo by Erik Saulitis

Cathy Young received her BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in Sociology and Women’s Studies, and her MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois. She is nationally recognized as a master teacher of jazz dance, and has conducted residencies at over 40 colleges around the country, as well as teaching at major U.S. festivals including Bates Dance Festival, Florida Dance Festival and the international Open Look Festival, in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a performer, Cathy has danced with a number of companies including Zenon Dance Company and Danny Buraczeski’s JAZZDANCE! touring extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, and performing in prestigious venues such as the Joyce Theater and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. For the past fifteen years she has been focused on creating her own work, a dynamic mix of styles and dance forms that intermingles jazz, modern, contact improvisation and social dance. She creates choreography for her own company, Cathy Young Dance, and has also been commissioned by professional companies and presenters including The Walker Art Center, Minnesota Dance Theatre, Pennsylvania Dance Theatre, Zenon Dance Company, The Minnesota Opera and internationally by Kannon Dance Company of St. Petersburg, Russia. Her choreography has been recognized with awards and grants from the McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Target Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board, among others. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.

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