Podcast

MORE ON ARIEL RIVKA DANCE

MORE ON THE MOVING ARCHITECTS

Adam Barruch began his career as a young actor, performing professionally on Broadway and in film and television, working with prominent figures such as Tony Bennett, Jerry Herman and Susan Stroman. He later received dance training at LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and Performing Arts. After three years, he graduated early and was accepted into the dance department at The Juilliard School. As a dancer he has performed the works of Jiri Kylian, Ohad Naharin, Susan Marshall, Jose Limon, Daniele Dèsnoyers, and was a dancer with Sylvain Émard Danse in Montreal. He has also worked with The Margie Gillis Dance Foundation, performing and researching Conflict Transformation as part of The Legacy Project. Based in Brooklyn, Adam currently creates and performs work under the epithet of his own company, Anatomiae Occultii.

As a choreographer, Adam’s work has been presented at venues such as The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, City Center, NYU/ Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, The Juilliard School, The Baryshnikov Arts Center, Ailey-Citigroup Theater, The 92Y: Buttenweiser Hall, Jacob’s Pillow: Inside/Out, LaMaMa,The Cedar Lake Theater, Gina Gibney Dance Center, The Harris Theater, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Cowles Center, The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, Bates Dance Festival and Theatre Usine C in Montreal. He has also taught technique and repertory at Princeton University, The Boston Conservatory, The Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Program, Marymount Manhattan College, The Martha Graham School, The Hartt School, The Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, New York University, Hofstra University, West Virginia University and La Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán (EPDM).

Adam Barruch was selected as a participant in the 2011 Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation New Directions Choreography Lab made possible by generous support from the Ford Foundation. Adam Barruch’s short-film collaboration with filmmaker Nel Shelby, Folie a Deux, was screened at the Dance On Camera Festival in Lincoln Center in 2012. In June 2013, Adam performed a full-length evening solo work, My Name is Adam, at Joe’s Pub commissioned by DanceNOW NYC, and was a recipient of a Late Stage Production Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. In addition, he has also created works for companies such as Ailey II, Keigwin + Company, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, River North Dance Chicago, BalletX, Whim W’Him Seattle Contemporary Dance, Graham II, GroundWorks Dance Theater and Minnesota Dance Theatre, as well as for dance icons Margie Gillis and Miki Orihara. Adam has also choreographed two music videos for Tokyo based musical act mishmash* and created movement for Variety Worldwide, whose projects combine non-traditional theater with nightlife and dining.

Adam was the recipient of a 2014 Lotos Foundation Prize in the Arts and Sciences, which recognizes institutions and individuals for distinguished accomplishments and exceptional talent in the arts and sciences. In September 2015, Adam Barruch was the choreographer-in-residence at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California as part of the 2015 DANCEworks Residency. Adam Barruch was an artist-in-residence at the 92Y Harkness Dance Center in 2016-2017. He is currently working on a new physical theater production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Donnell Oakley is an independent choreographer, performer and teacher based in Brooklyn, New York. A North Carolina native, she trained at Arts Together in Raleigh under Lemma and Glenda Mackie among other incredible teachers from a very young age through high school. Donnell studied modern technique, ballet, composition, improvisation and performance, among other movement classes. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography in 2001 and attended the American Dance Festival in the summers of 1999 and 2001 and has been dancing professionally in New York ever since. Donnell co-founded everything smaller in 2002, a Brooklyn-based dance company driven by collaboration. She spent 6 extraordinary years making dances with the inimitable Jessica Jolly and David Schmidt. everything smaller performed in venues and events such as the Studio 42’s Starving Artist Ball, Movement Research’s Improvisation is Hard, The Flea Theater’s Dance Conversations, Dance Now, the Bodyblend series at Dixon Place, the Solar Powered Arts Festival, Dancespace Center’s Wave of Humanity and their Elizabeth Pape Memorial Concert for which everything smaller received the Elizabeth Pape Scholarship in 2005, the Williamsburg Free Festival, the International D.U.M.B.O Dance Festival, WAX Works, Triskelion Arts Benefit Concerts, New Jersey’s S.W.E.A.T., Teresa Wimmer’s Twilight Project, the Brooklyn Dance Sampler, Middlebury College, University of Michigan, Swarthmore University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

In 2008, Donnell finished 6 extraordinary years with everything smaller. She has continued making dances and has had her work produced through Movement Research, the 92nd Street Y, the West End Theatre, Triskelion Arts, the Joyce SoHo, Dance Now NYC and Boston, Dance New Amsterdam, Gibney Dance Center, Dixon Place, The Yard, Gowanus Art + Production, Jacob’s Pillow, the American Dance Festival, the Ringling International Arts Festival and was the recipient of the Bessie Schönberg Choreographic Mentorship Residency at The Yard in 2013. Donnell has received additional artistic support through residencies at the Silo The Lumberyard and SUNY Brockport. She has been fortunate enough to work and collaborate with the extraordinary likes of Xan Burley, Courtney Drasner, Josh Palmer, Jordan Risdon, Alex Springer, Deborah Lohse and Cori Marquis. Donnell has also had the pleasure of working with designers and composers such as Paul Moffit, Scott Nelson, Mandy Ringger, Randi Rivera, Oana Botez, Justin Levine and Matt Stine.

In addition to her own work, Donnell currently loves collaborating and dancing with Steeledance, Chavasse Dance & Performance, Liz Staruch, Fritha Pengelly in Pengelly Projects, Cori Marquis and The Nines [IX], her collective LMnO3:  Deborah Lohse, Cori Marquis, Donnell Oakley, and Doug Elkins Choreography Etc.

She has been invited to teach and/or set work at West Chester University, the University of Michigan, Middlebury University, Arizona State University, Prescott College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, SUNY Brockport, Enloe High School and Arts Together in NC, The Yard, The Beijing Dance Festival, and as a continuing part of Gibney Dance Center, teaching a contemporary technique class every Wednesday and Friday at noon.

Donnell feels a strong connection to her roots and believes deeply in Arts Together’s philosophy:  “We believe that students who develop personal artistic vision as well as technique become creators rather than imitators.”

MORE ON DONNELL OAKLEY

Founder of MoBBallet, Theresa Ruth Howard is an expert and advocate on the issue of diversity in Ballet. She has sat on panels for Dance/USA, Dance/NYC, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance at Duke University, and collaborated with International Association of Blacks in Dance in the planning and facilitation of the first Ballet Audition for female ballet dancers of color. A former member of the Dance Theater of Harlem, and Armitage Gone! Dance, Howard has worked extensively with choreographer Donald Byrd, and was a guest artist with Complexions Contemporary Ballet. As a contributor to Pointe, Expressions (Italy), Tanz (Germany) and dance media publications, Howard has emerged as a clear and defining voice on topics such as body image and race. She holds more than 17 years of experience as a dance educator including Ballet Faculty at the Ailey School.

MORE ON THERESA RUTH HOWARD

Xan Burley works in New York City as a performer, teacher, arts administrator, and choreographer in collaboration with her partner Alex Springer and has been a member of Doug Varone and Dancers since 2012.

The work of dance artists Xan Burley and Alex Springer, as creative and life partners, is inherently and essentially collaborative. Since 2008, their cohesive efforts have taken shape as dance theatre for the stage and camera, interdisciplinary work, site-specific performance, durational exhibition, and community engagement. They strive to make work that inhabits spaces holistically, creating physical landscapes that harmonize with each individual project. With multidisciplinary collaborators, they collectively design comprehensive aural, visual, and contextual environments in which performance is experienced intimately.

Their work, under the moniker the Median Movement, has been presented in NYC by Movement Research at the Judson Church, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series, the 92Y, the TANK, Triskelion Arts, MATA Interval at the Museum of the Moving Image, and Gowanus Art & Production, among others. In May of 2016, they developed for North, an evening-length interdisciplinary project, as recipients of Center for Performance Research’s inaugural Tech and Production residency. With support from CPR’s Mertz Gilmore Late Stage Production grant, the project premiered there in December 2016. Their yearlong 2013-14 artist residency at University Settlement culminated in sold-out performances of JACK Rally featuring 26 performers, some of whom participated in their accompanying community engagement project. They were invited as resident artists to Cultivate New Hampshire in the summer of 2014 where they held workshops and developed and shared work in collaboration with sound/visual artist Will Owen. In 2011, they received BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s Fall Space Grant, premiering a new piece after three months in residence. Burley and Springer will perform their duet You being Me being You and the Eye as part of New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival in June 2017. In addition, this August they will be Research Fellows at Jacob’s Pillow, presenting a new site-specific work at Inside/Out, and will spend a month in residence at the Marble House in Vermont this September.

Burley and Springer were honored to receive the 2015 Emerging Artist Award in Dance from their alma mater, the University of Michigan. They were DANCENOW’s 2011 Joe’s Pub Festival Encore Challenge winners and received DFA’s 24-Hour Challenge Silver Award (2009) for their screendance daylighting.  An Ostrich Proudly was featured on Hulu in TenduTV’s Essential Dance Film and their choreography appears in the feature-length film Frances Ha (2013).

They have created work as guest artists at the University of Michigan, Skidmore College, Bates College, Colby College, Goucher College, James Madison University, Ball State University, Ohio University, Oakland University, the Harkness Repertory Ensemble, Harrison High School, Cora Youth Company, and The Collective. In April 2017, they will stage their work on Minnesota’s Zenon Dance Company.

Burley and Springer have offered master classes in technique, partnering, composition and improvisation at Hunter College, Muhlenberg College, DeSales University, the University of Maryland, Grand Valley State University, Albion College, and Ballet Western Reserve, among others. They teach regular classes in NYC at Mark Morris Dance Center and Gibney Dance Center and currently as guest faculty at Purchase College. As members of Doug Varone and Dancers, both have taught and performed extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including Korea, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and Hungary. In addition, they have performed for artists/companies such as Nancy Bannon, Alexandra Beller, Daniel Charon, Shannon Gillen, Heidi Henderson, Shannon Hummel, Tami Stronach, Donnell Oakley, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.

Burley graduated from the University of Michigan with degrees in Dance and English.

MORE ON XAN BURLEY