ADF’s connection with China began in the 1980s when Chinese choreographers, educators, and administrators, including Yang Meiqi, attended ADF. Yang Meiqi asked ADF Director Emeritus Charles L. Reinhart if ADF would help establish the first modern dance program in China, resulting in the Guangdong Modern Dance Experimental Program at Guangdong Dance Academy and later the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. The goal was not to copy what was being done elsewhere but for American choreographers and teachers to give Chinese dancers the tools to develop modern dance from their own culture. Yang Meiqi and Charles L. Reinhart are among those interviewed, sharing how their original goals and hopes were realized and how the seeds they planted led directly or indirectly to success stories, such as the careers of several artists, particularly Shen Wei and Jin Xing, who are also interviewed.

The project further documents the experiences and impressions of the artists who taught in China and the students who participated in classes. The recently deceased Sarah Stackhouse recalls teaching foundations of modern dance and pieces of Limón repertory in 1987. Ruby Shang, who taught at Guangdong in 1988, gives her perspective while her students Jin Xing and Wang Mei talk about their first experiences with modern dance. Interviews with Wang Yabin, Hou Ying, Eiko Otake, and Wen Hui shed light on how ADF’s international initiatives, like the International Linkages Program (ILP) and the International Choreographers Residency (ICR) program, have fostered collaboration and cultural cross-pollination between the US and China.

Beyond preserving the participants’ experiences, the project aims to document what was happening in dance in China while ADF was offering international exchange programs and fostering new ideas and modern dance. Interviews with Ralph Samuelson, who served for over three decades in various functions at the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) and its predecessor, the John D. Rockefeller (JDR) 3rd Fund, and Michelle Vosper, Director of the ACC in Hong Kong from 1986 to 2012, reveal the institutional support that was necessary to make the vision of Yang Meiqi and Charles Reinhart become a reality.

Interviews were conducted in Chinese and English by Emily Wilcox, a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, scholar of Chinese dance studies, and associate professor at William & Mary, who served as Project Director. Captions were created by Yao Xu, a doctoral candidate in dance studies at Temple University, who served as Production Assistant. Dean Jeffrey, ADF Director of Archives, oversaw technical aspects. The project as a whole was developed, designed, and produced by Jodee Nimerichter, ADF Executive Director, with special thanks to Cecily Cook, Yang Meiqi, Charles L. Reinhart, and Ralph Samuelson.

This project was made possible by the support of the ADF Reinhart Fund and the Asian Cultural Council.

PRESS CONTACT
National Press Representative: Lisa Labrado
lisa@ll-pr.biz
Mobile: 917-399-5120

North Carolina Press Representative: Katrin Deil
katrin@americandancefestival.org
Office: 919-684-6402/Mobile: 919-886-6389

About ADF:
Throughout its 91-year history, the American Dance Festival has been the home of an art form, attracting artists, audiences, and thousands of students worldwide. By preserving our modern dance heritage, promoting the creation of new works and collaborations, educating generations of dancers through intensive training programs, supporting artists at all stages of their careers, presenting live and screen dance to the public, and developing humanities and international exchange programs, ADF has served as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation.

Since 1984, through the International Choreographers Commissioning Program and the International Choreographers Residency Program, ADF has brought 522 choreographers from 95 countries on 6 continents to ADF to share, exchange, and experience the work and ideas of people from cultures around the world. ADF’s International Linkages Program has included mini-ADFs in Korea, Russia, India, Japan, China, and Korea and teaching residencies in 30 countries. ADF has helped develop modern dance in China, Russia, and Mongolia and introduced French, English, Russian, and Chinese modern dance and Japanese Butoh to US audiences.

ADF was founded at the Bennington School of Dance and moved to Connecticut College in 1948. For the past 47 years, ADF has taken pride in calling Duke University and Durham home. Since 2012, ADF has managed its first year-round facilities, the Samuel H. Scripps Studios, offering movement classes for students of all ages and abilities, as well as choreographic residencies and outreach programs throughout the community.

The post The American Dance Festival Launches Planting Seeds: ADF and Modern Dance in China, a Bilingual Oral History Project appeared first on American Dance Festival.

Annie Dwyer has always been fascinated by the potential for communication through the body in motion. She has taught dance for over 45 years and trained generations of dancers ages 4-18 in public and private schools throughout North Carolina. During her 32-year tenure at Carolina Friends School, she shaped and facilitated a dance curriculum progressing from preschool through upper school – inspiring students to have a deeper understanding of the form and many to pursue dance professionally in their own careers. To Annie, teaching dance is an art form in and of itself. She taught her students that dance mattered, that they mattered, and that what they created could make a difference. Her career has been guided by countless mentors, including Caryn McHose, Andrea Olsen, Sue Stinson, and Bill Evans. She continues to be deeply involved in the dance community as a collaborator with projects such as Moving Through and The Parkinson’s Performance Project with Culture Mill. Annie has previously received the Beverly and Laramie Hitchings Award for Service to the Art of Dance from the Durham Arts Council, and the Ethel Martus Lawther Alumni Award in Dance from UNC Greensboro.

Gene Medler started dancing at 28 and quickly fell in love with tap dance, its combination of movement, rhythm, and sounds. In 1983, he founded the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble to offer his students more performance opportunities, which allowed him to expand his work as a choreographer and educator. For over forty years, his teaching philosophy has been “to teach them everything I know, open all the doors that I can, and get out of their way.” Medler has taught at schools and festivals worldwide and locally at Elon and Duke University, Meredith College, and The Ballet School of Chapel Hill. He directs The North Carolina Rhythm Tap Festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and continues to mentor young dancers. Among the many honors Medler has received are “Tar Heel of the Week” from The News and Observer, an Indy Arts Award from The Independent, the North Carolina Dance Alliance Annual Award, and the JUBA Award
from the Chicago Human Rhythm Project.

This year’s season dedication will take place at the top of the Made in NC program on Sunday, July 7, at 7:30 pm at Reynolds Industries Theater.

The post ADF dedicates its 2024 Season to Annie Dwyer and Gene Medler appeared first on American Dance Festival.

“This season features a lineup of companies and artists revealing the broad range of modern dance at its best. We’ll present works of pure, artistic beauty as well as thought-provoking works addressing climate change, gender, and identity. We’ll offer immersive experiences, multimedia productions, works featuring unconventional stagecraft, and even a couple of joyous dance parties where the community and the artists are invited to dance the night away. There is no question that there will be something for everyone this summer,” says Jodee Nimerichter, ADF’s Executive Director.

Program highlights include the presentation of the 2024 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement to acclaimed choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar on Wednesday, July 17. The award will be presented to Zollar after the performance of her newest ADF co-commissioned work SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar by Urban Bush Women, the company she founded and led as artistic director for several decades. The globally celebrated Taiwanese company Hung Dance is making its US and ADF debut with Birdy, weaving Western mythology and Eastern traditions together through contemporary dance. ShaLeigh Dance Works returns with the world premiere of enVISION: The Next Chapter, an immersive, interdisciplinary performance that relies not on sight or sound but on the felt sense of sonic experiences and visual perceptions. Netta Yerushalmy’s MOVEMENT synthesizes over one hundred citations from an expansive range of dances across genres and cultures and will be presented by dancers from Korea, Senegal, Israel, Taiwan, and the US. Canada’s Radical System Art makes its ADF debut with MOI-Momentum of Isolation, which tackles topics of social isolation and the influence of technology on modern society. Live interactive video and sound surround the performers to shape a digital world, while stagecraft and puppeteering highlight how social isolation can disrupt our connection to reality.

Festival regulars returning this summer are Paul Taylor Dance Company, showing three classic works from its world-renowned repertory, and Pilobolus with classic favorites and new creations. ADF welcomes back Doug Varone and Dancers, performing Varone’s new two-part work, To My Arms/Restore, for one night only, and Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, presenting Upside Down, Open Door, and The Equality of Night and Day (TEND) and featuring community members.

ADF School alum Kayla Farrish is making her ADF debut with Put Away the Fire, dear, a live dance-theater work mapping the journey of six BIPOC and marginalized characters traversing scenes and worlds through dance theater, storytelling, set design, and a score of reclaimed exploited Black American music. Fellow ADF School alumni Baye & Asa are returning with 4/2/3, an ADF co-commission focusing on climate change’s generational impacts. It is a work divided into three sections for three generations of performers, examining the cooperation necessary to acknowledge this existential crisis. In Bob, a mid-career taxonomy of sorts, Milka Djordjevich confronts demands to optimize her female body and the market’s expectation to enhance her performance over time.

The annual Footprints program bridges ADF’s performance series and its Summer Dance Intensive. The result is a brilliant evening of ADF-commissioned world premieres performed by ADF students. This year’s choreographers are ADF School alum and former faculty member David Dorfman, Dianne McIntyre, an artistic pioneer with a choreographic career of more than five decades, and Kate Weare, known for her startling combination of formal choreographic value and visceral, emotional interpretation.

The Made in NC program features four world premieres of ADF commissions by North Carolina artists. This year’s artists are Dom-Sebastian Alexis, a Greensboro native, a Hip-Hop and Contemporary Juxtaposition Artist trained in various degrees of Street Dance, Social Grooves, and contemporary dance techniques. Durham-based Iyun Ashani Harrison collaborates with and presents the work of artists of color and women to expand racial and cultural diversity in ballet to attract new audiences. Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen, based in Western North Carolina, are passionate cross-genre collaborators who cultivate the craft of storytelling through movement while incorporating work by local writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Durham’s Stacy Wolfson and Curtis Eller have devised a unique compositional approach combining movement, music, and lyrics to create a peculiar and compelling hybrid of dance and song.

ADF’s audiences are invited to share the dance floor at The Fruit with incredible artists after the curtain falls. Ballet Hispánico kicks off ADF’s 2024 season with works engaging themes of gender, race, and identity within Latin culture and heritage, and ADF’s Latin Dance Party with Ballet Hispánico will be a joyous season-opening celebration for all on Friday, June 14. Les Ballet Afrik’s New York Is Burning highlights self-expression and radical acceptance in the face of adversity while contextualizing the importance of ballroom culture for Queer communities. Following the performance on June 28, the company invites everyone to the dance floor to celebrate the music and dance styles of Black and Latino Queer communities at ADF’s Dance Party.

Ahead of ADF’s summer performance season, Londs Reuter will present GOOD EFFORT, a co-presentation with the North Carolina Museum of Art. In the fall, ADF will partner with the Nasher Museum of Art to present Yoggs Family Newsletter, created and performed by Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs. Black Label Movement rounds up the season with Battleground, a thought-provoking, physical, and innovative work presented in an outdoor dirt pit.

2024 festival performances will be presented at venues throughout the triangle. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday, April 23rd, with prices ranging from $18 to $70 and can be purchased through ADF’s website or the Duke University Box Office. More detailed information about performances, venues, tickets, and performing companies, including photos, videos, and press reviews, are available at americandancefestival.org.

Promotional photographs and press reviews of performing companies are available upon request.

2024 Performance Schedule

Londs Reuter
April 19 & 20 at 7 pm
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Co-Presented by the North Carolina Museum of Art
World Premiere | ADF Debut
GOOD EFFORT by dancer and choreographer Londs Reuter is an evening-length performance of attunement, calibration, repetition, trying, and trying again. Choreographed in collaboration with local professional dancers on-site at the North Carolina Museum of Art, GOOD EFFORT asks its performers to be in relationship to effort and sense into what they need to stay together, to lift their leg, or to make it up a hill. For Reuter, effort—whether high, low, or somewhere in between—is a compositional tool and design technique, empowering each performer to exercise their authorship, agency, and invention. What does it take to meet the moment? When does it feel good to give more? When does it feel right to keep 10% for yourself? GOOD EFFORT asserts that no one else might know the effort required for you to do something—but you always do.

Ballet Hispánico
June 13 at 7 pm and June 16 at 3 pm
June 15 at 1 pm Children’s Matinee
Page Auditorium
Ballet Hispánico, the largest Latinx/Latine/Hispanic cultural organization in the United States, returns to ADF this summer with their recent reconstruction of House of Mad’Moiselle, unveiling the electrifying transformation of gender expressions in Latin America. In this piece, the visionary choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa deconstructs norms, and the pulsating rhythms take the audience on a provocative dance journey. Buscando a Juan is a layered and immersive work inspired by the life of the Afro-Hispanic painter Juan de Pareja, who was enslaved by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez for over two decades before becoming an artist in his own right. Choreographed by Eduardo Vilaro, artistic director and CEO of Ballet Hispánico, the work explores sancocho, or a mixed soup of cultures and diasporas, considering the assumptions experienced when witnessing people of color in white spaces in relation to the exoticized body. 18+1 celebrates Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s 19 years as a choreographer and the vulnerability, care, and hope that comes with each artistic endeavor. In a subtle humor and electric choreography display, the movement merges with the playful rhythms found in Pérez Prado’s mambo music.

Hung Dance
June 14 & 15 at 7 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
US & ADF Debuts
In 2017, choreographer Lai Hung-Chung founded Hung Dance, with the name Hung symbolizing the spirit of soaring freedom. Born from an unapologetic desire for flight, Birdy weaves Western mythology and Eastern traditions through stunning contemporary dance, challenging restriction through graceful movements and striking symbolism. A poetic response to whether “every free flight is born from a restriction,” the work explores life and nations’ unsteady skies. This poetic journey of individual and collective soaring confronts contemporary issues while transforming feathers into wings.

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE
June 18 & 19 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE returns to ADF with Upside Down, a strongly African work about loss and growth out of loss, an excerpt from the evening-length work Destiny. Open Door provides a journey into Afro-Cuban social and traditional dance forms embodying the music of Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble. The dancers lead on a path full of celebration, culture, and joy through dances of the Orisha and salsa, fueled and propelled by musical compositions. The Equality of Night and Day (TEND) is a sizzling emotional work that tackles his recurrent themes of social injustice and racism. Brown seeks to break open truth, not from anger but with a gentle focus—a sensitivity and steadfastness that draws on history. The program will also feature community members performing All I Do, an excerpt from On Earth Together.

Baye & Asa
June 20–22 at 7:30 pm
von der Heyden Studio Theater
ADF Commission | ADF Debut
ADF alumni Amadi Washington and Sam Pratt are returning to ADF with 4/2/3, which focuses on the generational impacts of climate change using the “Riddle of the Sphinx” as a symbolic structure. The piece is divided into three sections for three generations of performers, examining the intergenerational cooperation necessary to acknowledge this existential crisis. Just as the riddle asks us to look at the cycle of one life, 4/2/3 gives us the structure to speak about the life cycle of an entire species. Reflecting on humanity’s industrial history, we build new worlds on less oppressive, less extractive, and more sustainable foundations. 

Doug Varone and Dancers
June 23 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
To My Arms/Restore is a new two-part work embodying Doug Varone’s decades-long choreographic fascination with the profoundly emotional and the immensely physical. Set to a suite of arias by G. F. Handel, To My Arms builds a landscape of love and loss, evoking a strange otherworld of intimacy. In stark contrast, Restore feels as if it has been ripped out of today’s front pages, bringing a message of community, defiance, and resilience in a world recoiling and rebounding. Driven by the 21st-century sound of Nico Bentley’s Handel Remixed, the score fuses Handel’s 18th-century choral score Dixit Dominus with beats more commonly heard in clubs around the globe.

Kayla Farrish
June 25–27 at 7:30 pm
von der Heyden Studio Theater
ADF Debut
Put Away the Fire, dear is a live dance-theater work mapping the journey of six BIPOC and marginalized characters taking the reins of their narrative in an evening-length piece. Jumping through portals spanning reality and cinema, Put Away the Fire, dear, uproots power and history across generations of the American landscape to rupture the leading socio-political narratives living in American cinema of the 1930s-60s. In a 75-minute performance of moving stories, the six characters traverse scenes and worlds through dance theater, storytelling, set design, and a score of reclaimed exploited Black American music.

Les Ballet Afrik
June 28 at 7 pm and June 29 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
Back by popular demand, Les Ballet Afrik’s New York is Burning draws inspiration from the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning and its depiction of voguing as a powerful expression in the face of racism, homophobia, and the stigma of the AIDS crisis. New York is Burning reflects the aspirations of a diverse group of dancers in a city beset by health, racial, and financial crises. Highlighting the importance of community and connection to ancestry, Les Ballet Afrik provides a space for individual expression and radical acceptance.

Netta Yerushalmy
July 2 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
ADF Debut
MOVEMENT, by Netta Yerushalmy, synthesizes over one hundred citations from an expansive range of dances across genres and cultures. It is a radical quilt of borrowed material that stretches the idea of pluralism until it almost snaps. It features a score by award-winning composer Paula Matthusen and is performed by dancers from Korea, Senegal, Israel, Taiwan, and the US. This piece follows Yerushalmy’s PARAMODERNITIES, a six-part series generated through reverently and violently dissecting iconic modern choreographies, provoking dynamic conversations with the troubled legacies of the past. MOVEMENT continues Yerushalmy’s practice of repurposing, reorienting, and recontextualizing dance, spinning fragments of seemingly unrelated works into an enthralling new whole. This maximalist performance highlights dance as an inevitable and unifying force in a brittle and confused world. 

Pilobolus
July 5 at 7:30 pm and July 6 at 5 pm
July 6 at 1 pm Children’s Matinee
Page Auditorium
This summer, Pilobolus is bringing its Re:CREATION tour to ADF, presenting a dynamic collection of dance pieces—daring experiments and groundbreaking new collaborations alongside the classics that have altered the landscape of dance and theater. Walklyndon, a seminal piece in Pilobolus’s repertoire, is an all-time favorite that captures the playful essence of the company’s early days. The themes of youth, playfulness, and bawdy humor give way to a sophisticated narrative in Untitled, leaving the audience in awe of a theatrical work where contrasts coalesce into an unnamable and meaningful art form. Behind the Shadows tells a poignant and mysterious story using Pilobolus’ famous shadow dance technique, with moving illusions and surreal narrative. Thresh|Hold, a collaboration with the Venezuelan-born and acclaimed Latinx director, choreographer, and designer Javier De Frutos, is a physically daring quintet with psychedelic shifts in time and emotionally charged choreography. Tales from the Underworld, a new creation, harnesses the creative energy and collaborative spirit that defines Pilobolus, as the performance weaves together stories that reveal profound connections through elements of horror, humor, and revelation.

Made in NC
July 7 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
ADF-Commissioned World Premieres | ADF Debuts
The Made in NC program features the world premiere of four ADF-commissioned works by North Carolina artists. Dom-Sebastian Alexis, a Greensboro native, is a Hip-Hop and Contemporary Juxtaposition Artist trained in various degrees of Street Dance, Social Grooves, and contemporary dance techniques and has devoted their life to understanding dance diversity. Iyun Ashani Harrison, the founder and artistic director of the Durham-based Ballet Ashani – A Contemporary Ballet, and professor of dance at Duke University, collaborates with and presents the work of artists of color and women to expand racial and cultural diversity in ballet to attract new audiences. Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are the co-founders of Stewart/Owen Dance, based in Western North Carolina, where they are dedicated to building a thriving dance community. As passionate cross-genre collaborators, they cultivate the craft of storytelling through movement while incorporating work by local writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Stacy Wolfson and Curtis Eller, based in Durham, have devised a unique compositional approach combining movement, music, and lyrics to create a peculiar and compelling hybrid of dance and song.

Milka Djordjevich
July 11 & 12 at 7:30 pm
von der Heyden Studio Theater
ADF-Commissioned World Premiere | ADF Debut
Bob is a manic whirlwind of methodical, rapid-fire movements dictated, performed, and self-enforced by Milka Djordjevich. Set to bold music and silence, Bob eroticizes the labor of the dancing body—the repetition, the discipline, and the fallout. A mid-career taxonomy of sorts, Djordjevich confronts demands to optimize her female body and the market’s expectation to enhance her performance over time. Bob is an alter ego trained to be so skilled as to become other—the perfect kinetic subject in the service of her audience. Algorithmic movement patterns conjure approaches from trance, folk ritual, and rite—they become a means to no end. A reflection rivaling the self, Bob is on a rampage with and against self-consciousness to bask in reverie, delusion, desire, and rage. Show no mercy!

Footprints
July 13 at 7:30 pm and July 14 at 3 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
ADF-Commissioned World Premieres
The Footprints program, which bridges ADF’s performance series and education programs, delivers an outstanding presentation of three ADF-commissioned world premieres, choreographed by renowned choreographers and performed with impeccable technique and infectious energy by ADF students. This year’s choreographers are David Dorfman, Dianne McIntyre, and Kate Weare. ADF School alum and former faculty member David Dorfman, who founded David Dorfman Dance in 1987 to create politically and socially relevant work, is known for his movement-based dance theater. Dianne McIntyre, the 2008 recipient of the American Dance Festival Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching, is hailed as an artistic pioneer whose individualistic movement style reflects her affinity for cultural histories, personal narratives, and the boldness, nuances, discipline, and freedom in live music and poetic text. Kate Weare, known for her startling combination of formal choreographic value and visceral, emotional interpretation, charts a contemporary view of humanism by placing women at the center of the human story amidst the violence, sensuality, and yearning for intimacy that marks our age.

Urban Bush Women
July 17 & 18 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
ADF Commission | Live Music
Set in a fictional jazz club, SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar is a dance-driven musical that tells the love story of two people making their way during the Great Migration. It is a powerful tale of one family and what happens when dreams encounter the realities of American life in the ‘40s and ‘50s. The work features an original jazz score performed by a live band. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, who created, choreographed, and directed SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar, says, “It is my story. It is my family’s story. It is a personal and collective story of a family and a people, moving from the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration.” After the July 17 performance, Dr. James Frazier will present the 2024 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement to Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

ShaLeigh Dance Works
July 19 at 7:30 pm and July 20 & 21 at 2 & 7:30 pm
July 26 at 7:30 pm and July 27 & 28 at 2 & 7:30 pm
The Fruit
ADF-Commissioned World Premiere
enVISION: The Next Chapter is an immersive interdisciplinary performance that relies not on sight or sound but on the felt sense of sonic experiences and visual perceptions. In a collective creative process, the work has brought together a team of collaborators around two questions: Can we listen to what we see? Can we see what we hear? Conceived explicitly with and for individuals who are low-vision and blind, as well as low-hearing and deaf, the work proposes a new multisensory experience of dance and theater. The work will be presented to a live audience who can choose to experience the show blindfolded or with earbuds, and six audience members will be invited to join the experience onstage. This ADF commission builds on enVISION: Sensory Beyond Sight, which premiered at ADF in 2022.

Radical System Art
July 23 & 24 at 7:30 pm
Reynolds Industries Theater
ADF Debut
Choreographer and Radical System Art’s artistic director Shay Kuebler’s MOI-Momentum of Isolation is based on social isolation and loneliness, exploring objective and subjective experiences through the individual, the group, and modern society—a society with shifting values and an ever-advancing digital way of life. MOI places live interactive video and sound around the performers to shape a digital world on stage. These elements enhance ideas on how technology influences our lives and can empower and disempower us. Further distilling isolation, solo performances and the extended social isolation of one character on stage are critical to the arc of the performance. Within MOI, one character’s interactions are only with inanimate objects. The inanimate world comes to life through puppeteering and stagecraft, highlighting how social isolation can disrupt our connection to reality. Our social bonds allow us to understand that we impact what is around us ؅and that we exist.

Paul Taylor Dance Company
July 26 at 7:30 pm and July 27 at 5 pm
July 27 at 1 pm Children’s Matinee
Page Auditorium
The Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to ADF this summer, presenting three masterpieces from its repertory. Arden Court, a dance set to the baroque music of William Boyce and a nod to Shakespeare’s As You Like It, was an instant success after its premiere in 1981. Private Domain is the name of a mysterious dance that premiered in 1969 and was last performed at ADF in 1978. Mercuric Tidings, with music by Schubert, is one of the purest of Paul Taylor’s dance works, with thirteen dancers in pink costumes flashing across the stage in Taylor’s signature style.

Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs
September 12 at 6 pm
Nasher Museum of Art
Co-Presented by the Nasher Museum of Art
YOGGS FAMILY NEWSLETTER, 2014-present, is an immersive experience where the audience is led through the lobby of the Nasher Museum of Art by Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs alongside their daughter, Bea Yon. The audience is integrated into the trio as momentary chorus members to our family stories, dances, and drawing games. “Dance, for our family, is a parenthesis for life experience. Periods of our lives that we spent working on choreography coincide with periods of major things happening in our lives and the world.” While the dances look “abstract” or non-narrative, this collection addresses how the trio captures experiences, creates memories, and attaches significance to when and where we dance together and who we meet along the way as part of our family story.

Black Label Movement
October 11 at 5 pm, October 12 at 1 & 5 pm, and October 13 at 3 pm
Bahama Bluebs
ADF-Commissioned World Premiere | ADF Debut
Battleground is choreographer Carl Flink’s newest work, influenced by the physicality of Bodystorming, a technique he developed with biomedical engineer David Odde, and Flink’s intellectual curiosity surrounding war, violence, and its impact on the human body. A provocative, physical, and innovative piece grounded in science, ballistic movement, and the ethical and physical consequences of violence and perpetual war, it is intended to encourage meaningful conversations about violence in its many forms as an accepted and often celebrated component of our society. Battleground will be performed outdoors in a 30×25 feet dirt pit.

Additional Events and Performances

The Children’s Saturday Matinee series presents one-hour performances specially curated to ignite and inspire children’s imaginations. The 2024 Children’s Matinees include Ballet Hispánico (June 15, 1 pm), Pilobolus (July 6, 1 pm), and Paul Taylor Dance Company (July 27, 1 pm) at Page Auditorium. A FREE Kids’ Party follows each matinee at the Landing of the Bryan Center, complete with live music, face painting, and more. Tickets are $18 each.

On Friday, June 14, the dancers of Ballet Hispánico will transport you to a hot night in Havana with the rhythms of Latin America at ADF’s Latin Dance Party. Les Ballet Afrik will dance with us to the tunes of House and Latin music, Vogue, and Afrobeats, on Friday, June 28, celebrating the music and dance styles of Black and Latin Queer communities. Both ADF Dance Parties will be at The Fruit in Durham.

The 2024 Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching will be presented to Ishmael Houston-Jones, educator, performer, and choreographer, on Sunday, June 30.

ADF remains committed to its mission of being dedicated to education. Each year, dance students and artists from around the world converge on the campus of Duke University in Durham, NC, to discover endless possibilities at the American Dance Festival. Under the leadership of Director of Education Nile H. Russell, the ADF School hosts the Summer Dance Intensive (SDI), the Pre-Professional Dance Intensive (PDI), and the Dance Professional Workshops (DPW) each summer.

ADF’s Samuel H. Scripps Studios will offer dance camps this summer for young dancers aged 6-17 years, including Dance Adventures, Summer Dance Days, and Teen Dance Camp. Pilobolus is returning with their beloved Shadowland camp, allowing youth to explore their signature shadow dance technique. Two extraordinary artists from Ballet Hispánico will take campers on an incredible journey through Latin America, focusing on cultural immersion, movement exploration, awareness, and community building in a weeklong camp. A special multi-generational camp led by Ronald K. Brown will present a unique opportunity for movers of all ages to explore dance in a communal space.

ADF Ticket Programs

Get Out 4 Dance saves patrons 20% when purchasing tickets to four or more performances.

The Kids’ Night Out program allows youth ages 6 to 17 to receive one complimentary ticket with the purchase of an adult single ticket or subscription. Not available for Children’s Matinees.

ADF Go is designed to make modern dance more accessible and affordable for young art enthusiasts. Audience members between the ages of 18 and 30 can purchase a $20* ticket to most ADF performances.

ADF’s Golden Ticket allows dance educators to purchase a mini-subscription of 6 performances for $125*.

The Caregiver Discount is for personal caregivers of elderly patrons or patrons with disabilities and offers one free ticket with the purchase of another ticket. 

Experience Dance is an effort to make dance accessible to as many groups as possible. ADF distributes complimentary performance tickets to nonprofit organizations that work with individuals, families, youth, and seniors in need who otherwise could not attend performances.

Groups of 10 or more people receive 25% off single tickets (purchased simultaneously). Select the “Group 10+” price when buying tickets.

Visit our website for more information about discounts and how to purchase tickets.

*Service fees may apply.

Thank you to all our major sponsors!

PRESS CONTACT
Katrin Deil
katrin@americandancefestival.org
919-684-6402

About ADF

Throughout its 91-year history, the American Dance Festival has been the home of an art form, attracting artists, audiences, and thousands of students worldwide. By preserving our modern dance heritage, promoting the creation of new works and collaborations, educating generations of dancers through intensive training programs, supporting artists at all stages of their careers, presenting live and screen dance to the public, and developing humanities and international exchange programs, ADF has served as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation. ADF was founded at the Bennington School of Dance and moved to Connecticut College in 1948. For the past 47 years, ADF has taken pride in calling Duke University and Durham home. Since 2012, ADF has managed its first year-round facilities, the Samuel H. Scripps Studios, offering movement classes for students of all ages and abilities, as well as choreographic residencies and outreach programs throughout the community.

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“I am honored to announce Ishmael Houston-Jones as the recipient of this year’s teaching award. As an educator, he pushes students to take risks, allowing them to discover that their abilities to create and find beauty in this world are boundless,” said Nile H. Russell, ADF’s Director of Education. “It becomes evident to any observer of Houston-Jones that he thrives off the energy he receives from teaching, which makes it a vital part of his practice.”

Ishmael Houston-Jones, who taught in the ADF School for many years, is an adjunct professor at The Experimental Theater Wing of NYU/Tisch School of the Arts and a master lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He has taught at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the California Institute of the Arts, Impulstanz in Vienna, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the New York University Department of Dance/Tisch School of the Arts, and Playwrights Horizons. As an artist and educator, he is an innovator of improvisational practices.

Beyond his teaching, Ishmael Houston-Jones is a choreographer, author, performer, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, the US, and worldwide. As an author, Houston-Jones’s essays, fiction, interviews, and performance texts have been published in several anthologies. Further, he sits on the Movement Research and Performance Space New York board of directors.

Ishmael Houston-Jones has won four New York Dance and Performance Awards, including the “Bessie” for Service to the Field of Dance in 2020. He is a 2022 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a 2021 recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship. He received the 2019 Edwin Booth Award, given annually by the Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association of the City University of New York. His work has also been supported by The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2013), The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (2015), The Herb Alpert Foundation (2016), The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2018), and The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation (2020). Houston-Jones curated Platform 2012: Parallels, which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism, and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now.

Photo by Marc Poucher

PRESS CONTACT
Katrin Deil
katrin@americandancefestival.org
919-684-6402

ADF’s 2024 performance season will take place from June 13 to July 28 in Durham, NC, with additional pre- and post-performances happening in April, September, and October across the Triangle. The full performance schedule will be announced on March 20. Tickets to ADF performances will go on sale on April 23, 2024. Tickets can be purchased online at americandancefestival.org or the Duke University Box Office.

About ADF:
Throughout its 91-year history, the American Dance Festival has been the home of an art form, attracting artists, audiences, and thousands of students worldwide. By preserving our modern dance heritage, promoting the creation of new works and collaborations, educating generations of dancers through intensive training programs, supporting artists at all stages of their careers, presenting live and screen dance to the public, and developing humanities and international exchange programs, ADF has served as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation. ADF was founded at the Bennington School of Dance and moved to Connecticut College in 1948. For the past 47 years, ADF has taken pride in calling Duke University and Durham home. Since 2012, ADF has managed its first year-round facilities, the Samuel H. Scripps Studios, offering movement classes for students of all ages and abilities, as well as choreographic residencies and outreach programs throughout the community.

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“Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder of Urban Bush Women, the all-female troupe of beauty and strength, has led the way in transforming and diversifying the field of dance. Her masterful and innovative storytelling that focuses on the importance of cultural identity, equity, and community engagement as well as her careful lifting up and nurturing of women choreographers of color, has had a profound impact on this art form. Her life-long dedication has moved us all forward. I am beyond thrilled that we will honor her this season,” said Jodee Nimerichter, ADF’s Executive Director.

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar grew up in Kansas City, MO, and earned her B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980, Zollar moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion, and in 1984, she founded Urban Bush Women, inspired by her desire to create a company that shared values around making work and wanting to look at the folklore, the religious traditions, and the culture of African Americans and the African diaspora. The company became a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. Zollar developed a unique approach to enable artists to strengthen their involvement in cultural organizing and civic engagement, which evolved into the company’s acclaimed Summer Leadership Institute.

In addition to creating over 34 works for Urban Bush Women, Zollar has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, and many universities across the United States. Her collaborations include Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Nora Chipaumire. She has recently worked as choreographer for Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of American Popular Music and Daniel Fish’s Most Happy in Concert. Zollar directed and choreographed a new Jake Heggie opera, Intelligence, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera in 2023.

The company has toured five continents and was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State in 2010. She serves as director of the UBW Summer Leadership Institute, founding and visioning partner of Urban Bush Women, and the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.

Zollar has been a United States Artists Wynn fellow and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellow. She holds honorary degrees from Columbia College Chicago, Tufts University, Rutgers University, and Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA.

Zollar has received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the Dance Magazine Award, the Dance/USA Honor Award, the “Bessie” Lifetime Achievement in Dance Award for her work in the field, the Dance Teacher Award of Distinction, and the Martha Hill Dance Fund Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, The Ford Foundation declared Urban Bush Women one of America’s Cultural Treasures. Zollar has recently been awarded a 2021 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellow, the 2022 APAP Honors Award of Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

Photo by Crush Boone

PRESS CONTACT
Katrin Deil
katrin@americandancefestival.org
919-684-6402

ADF’s 2024 performance season will take place from June 13 to July 28 in Durham, NC, with additional pre- and post-performances happening in April, September, and October across the Triangle. The full performance schedule will be announced on March 20. Tickets to ADF performances will go on sale on April 23, 2024. Tickets can be purchased online at americandancefestival.org or the Duke University Box Office.

About ADF:
Throughout its 91-year history, the American Dance Festival has been the home of an art form, attracting artists, audiences, and thousands of students worldwide. By preserving our modern dance heritage, promoting the creation of new works and collaborations, educating generations of dancers through intensive training programs, supporting artists at all stages of their careers, presenting live and screen dance to the public, and developing humanities and international exchange programs, ADF has served as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation. ADF was founded at the Bennington School of Dance and moved to Connecticut College in 1948. For the past 47 years, ADF has taken pride in calling Duke University and Durham home. Since 2012, ADF has managed its first year-round facilities, the Samuel H. Scripps Studios, offering movement classes for students of all ages and abilities, as well as choreographic residencies and outreach programs throughout the community.

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Dom-Sebastian Alexis, a Greensboro native, is a Hip-Hop & Contemporary Juxtaposition Artist trained in various degrees of Street Dance, Social Grooves, and contemporary dance techniques. They have taught at major universities, performed nationwide, and facilitated workshops in England and Canada. Alexis is now the artistic director of the community project Gate City Grooves, teaching youths the true foundation of street culture. Most of their life has been devoted to understanding dance diversity, and they have adopted the concept of “Teaching as a student and learning as a professional.”

Iyun Ashani Harrison is the founder and artistic director of the Durham-based Ballet Ashani – A Contemporary Ballet, formerly Ashani Dances, and professor of dance at Duke University. Harrison collaborates with and presents the work of artists of color and women to expand racial and cultural diversity in ballet to attract new audiences. This is reflected in his most recent work, Giovanni’s Room. Harrison has been described as “an artist of diverse talents with sophisticated musical tastes and an understanding of how to use a bare stage to full effect” (The Seattle Times).

Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are the co-founders of Stewart/Owen Dance, based in Western North Carolina, where they are dedicated to building a thriving dance community. As passionate cross-genre collaborators, they cultivate the craft of storytelling through movement while incorporating work by local writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Stewart and Owen’s “humorous, elegant, and wild” (Seattle Dances) choreography has been presented across the U.S.

Choreographer Stacy Wolfson and her collaborator Curtis Eller, a banjo player and songwriter, are the artistic directors of the Durham-based dance-theater company The Bipeds. Wolfson and Eller have devised a unique compositional approach “to blur modern dance, live music, and theater into a dreamlike unity, not to paste them into a simple collage” (Indy Week). Together, they also curate the dance and live music series Shadowbox Sessions.

ADF Director Jodee Nimerichter has been following the work of each of these artists for multiple years and is delighted to share their artistry with festival audiences. Nimerichter remarked, “NC artists are extremely important to our state. They not only bring beauty into our lives and push us to experience new things, but they provide a positive economic impact to the cities where they live.”

During the next eight months, the artists will each create a 15–20 minute dance work and have the opportunity to use up to 40 hours of rehearsal space at ADF Samuel H. Scripps Studios. ADF’s Production Manager, David Ferri, will design lighting for each new work that will be performed on a shared program as part of ADF’s 2024 season. The artists will also offer masterclasses to the public and ADF students. ADF will announce its entire season in March 2024, and tickets will go on sale through the Duke Box Office later in the spring.

Lead support for Made in NC is provided by a grant from The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. Made in NC residencies at ADF Samuel H. Scripps Studios are made possible with support from the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation.

PRESS CONTACT
Katrin Deil
katrin@americandancefestival.org
919-684-6402

About ADF:
Throughout its 90-year history, the American Dance Festival (ADF) has been the home of an art form, attracting artists, audiences, and thousands of students from around the world. By preserving our modern dance heritage, promoting the creation of new works and collaborations, educating generations of dancers through intensive training programs, supporting artists at all stages of their careers, presenting live and screen dance to the public, and developing humanities and international exchange programs, ADF has served as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation. ADF was founded at Bennington College and moved to Connecticut College in 1948. For the past 46 years, ADF has taken pride in calling Duke University and Durham home. ADF also manages its first ever year-round facilities, the Samuel H. Scripps Studios, offering movement classes for students of all ages and abilities as well as choreographic residencies and outreach programs throughout the community.

Photo of Dom-Sebastian Alexis by Aura Marzkou
Photo of Iyun Ashani Harrison by Khalil Goodman
Photo of Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen courtesy of Stewart/Owen Dance
Photo of Stacy Wolfson and Curtis Eller by Pamir Kiciman

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“Gerri’s impact on the American Dance Festival’s educational programs over the past four decades has been profound. She has nurtured hundreds of dancers, choreographers, and educators from around the world at different points in their lives. She has helped us share American modern dance techniques, history, and ideas in countries with little or no exposure to this field. And most recently, she has helped us build an even stronger dance community in Durham. We are thrilled to announce that ADF has established the Gerri Houlihan Scholarship Fund in her honor. Our goal is to raise $40,000 within the next two years leading up to her 80th birthday,” stated ADF Executive Director Jodee Nimerichter.

Gerri Houlihan studied at The Juilliard School with Antony Tudor and members of the Martha Graham and José Limón dance companies. She performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, the Paul Sanasardo Company, and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. From 1991 to 1999, Houlihan directed her own company, Houlihan and Dancers, based in Miami, FL. Houlihan taught at Florida State University, where she was the Pearl S. Tyner Distinguished Professor in Teaching and now Professor Emerita. This summer, Houlihan continues teaching at the ADF Samuel H. Scripps Studios and the ADF School, where she will lead a workshop for professional dance educators from June 25 through July 1. As the founder and artistic director of the Big Red Dance Project, Houlihan leads the multi-generational company in bringing performances to the Triangle. Upcoming Big Red Dance Project performances will take place from May 5 through 7 at the Durham Arts Council.

Click to contribute here: Gerri Houlihan Scholarship Fund. For more information, please contact ADF at (919) 684-6402 or email sbowdoin@americandancefestival.org.

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