An evening of new dance. Most works are choreographed by Ardenwood students, alongside two faculty pieces and one by a guest artist.
Guest artist work, choreographed by Lucia Moreno. Set to “Hex Patterns” by Mireille Dovane.
Faculty work, choreographed by Priya Nair. Set to “Low Water Mark” by Joris Tennant.
Student work, choreographed by Talia Brandt. Set to “Seismic” by Caelum Vry.
Faculty work, choreographed by Dr. Eleanor Vance. Set to “Starling” by Ines Marlowe.
Student work, choreographed by Jonah Esper. Set to “Refraction Suite” by Tobias Wend.
Student work, choreographed by Renee Calloway. Set to “First Light” by Selka Moray.
Student work, choreographed by Mateo Quill. Set to “Riptide Nocturne” by Davian Castelo.
Every piece on this program began in the studio with a question rather than a finished idea. Some of those questions came from me and from our guest artist, Lucia Moreno. Many more came from the student choreographers whose work fills this evening, and from the dancers who shaped each phrase in their own bodies. Much of what you will see tonight is theirs.
Dance asks a great deal of the people who make it: hours that go uncounted, revisions no one sees, and the willingness to begin again when an idea refuses to hold. What moves me about this company is not its technique alone but its patience with one another, the way a room full of artists learns to listen before it speaks.
I hope you will watch for that listening. It is the quiet architecture beneath every piece, and it is, in the end, the real subject of the program. Thank you for being here, and for giving this work an audience.
Eleanor Vance, Artistic Director
What draws Quinn Avila to contemporary practice is what draws them to writing: the search for a form that fits the feeling. They arrived at Ardenwood University from…
Landscape has always shaped how Noah Beaumont moves. A sophomore from Bend, Oregon, majoring in dance with a minor in environmental studies at Ardenwood University, he train…
Erie, Pennsylvania gave Marcus Bell his first home; Junebug Productions gave him his movement foundation, with years in their youth ensemble absorbing second-line, jazz…
Rural Montana shaped the sonic landscape of Fault Lines. Talia Brandt spent last summer there with a borrowed recorder, gathering the creaks, wind, and distant machinery…
For Vessel, Odette Brimm built a coat that had to come apart in under twelve seconds eight shows in a row. A junior at Ardenwood University pursuing a BFA in design and…
What excites Imani Brooks most is the edge where street vernacular and concert dance overlap, a question she has been living since her years at Dance 411 Studios in Chattano…
Community practice is the ground beneath Renee Calloway’s choreography. Her work relies on improvisation scores and durational structures that invite the audience in, and…
By the time Wren Castellano stage managed The Glass Hours, they had learned that a well-called cue can make an audience feel something they cannot name. That conviction has…
Crescent City Dance Academy took Vivienne Castle in at seven, where she moved through ballet and tap before shifting fully to contemporary in high school. A junior from…
Training at Rio Grande Dance Project through high school and a summer at Hubbard Street’s intensive in Chicago taught Felix Diaz that the most compelling movement lives…
How decisions get made inside a moving body is the question Cyrus Dovewright brought to Ardenwood University, where he studies dance alongside cognitive science. The…
Years of asking inconvenient questions about movement led Jonah Esper to start making dances in high school, and he has not stopped. Now a sophomore from Richmond, Virginia…
Completing a degree in kinesiology with a dance concentration, Roman Espinoza is finishing his senior year at Ardenwood University the way he started it: in the studio. He…
A production electrician handed Marisol Fenn a gel swatch book and told her that color was the fastest way to change a room’s feeling. That moment pulled her away from…
Precision in the upper body is what people notice first about Nadia Haddad, a quality built over eight years at Dimensions Dance Studio in Killeen, Texas and deepened…
A decade at Green Mountain Dance Arts gave Theadora Hale a classical ballet foundation she has been complicating ever since. Audiences have noted the specificity she brings…
Her solo Tidal, performed at last spring’s faculty concert and built from texts she gathered during coastal fieldwork, is the clearest window into what Cleo Hartley makes…
What light does to a body in motion is the question Caspian Holt keeps returning to. A Lexington, Kentucky native and sophomore at Ardenwood University, he came to theater…
Before arriving at Ardenwood University, Henry Kim trained at Northwest Dance Project’s youth conservatory in Portland, building the architectural sensibility that defines…
Years of training at Zenith Dance and a summer at the American Dance Festival gave Ava Lindqvist a movement vocabulary she is still unpacking. Now a sophomore at Ardenwood…
Grounded and percussive, Kofi Mensah dances with a gift for making ensemble work feel alive from the inside out. A first-year from Springfield, Missouri, he intends to…
Lucia Moreno is a choreographer and performer based in Guadalajara, Mexico, whose movement language fuses the geometry of Mexican folk forms with contemporary release…
Priya Nair is a choreographer whose work investigates grief, resistance, and collective belonging, drawing in equal measure from classical Indian movement vocabularies and…
In Fault Lines, Leon Okafor made a strong early impression, and that cinematic quality, broad and committed but always grounded in genuine intention, has been a signature…
Salem, Oregon shaped Sienna Park early: she grew up training at North Star School of Dance, where the emphasis on contemporary and improvisation still informs how she…
Studying dance and art history as a junior at Ardenwood University, Lena Petrov arrived from Tacoma, Washington already shaped by rigorous classical training at Vermont…
Competitive breaking was Mateo Quill’s first discipline, and concert dance came after years in that world. Now a senior from Tulsa, Oklahoma at Ardenwood University, he majo…
Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Theo Ramsay spent his summers as a board operator at a community theater, asking questions of every master electrician willing to talk…
Nine years old and already hooked, Omar Rinaldi started at Cascade Movement Arts in Roanoke, Virginia, building a foundation in contemporary and hip-hop fusion before…
Fresno, California shaped Jordan Rivera’s early life, and the American Dance Festival summer program reshaped how they think about effort and ease, introducing somatic…
A summer at the Jacob’s Pillow intensive in high school opened Maeve Sutton’s choreographic imagination; she credits it with steering her toward composition as a focus…
Pacific Rim Dance Collective gave Yuki Tanaka a foundation in contemporary and butoh-influenced practice, and that sensibility, patient, weighted, attentive to the smallest…
Eleanor Vance is a choreographer from Chicago. Her work explores memory, ritual, and the quiet spaces between people. She has developed new work with Steppenwolf’s Garage se…
Choreography, not just performance, is what Caleb Wallace came to Ardenwood University to pursue. The junior from Akron, Ohio majors in dance with an emphasis on…
Grounded, rhythmically precise, and most alive in ensemble work with a communal pulse: that is how Dax Whitfield dances, and it traces to her training in West African and…
