Choreographers
Jacqulyn Buglisi
Jacqulyn co-founded Buglisi Foreman Dance in 1994 with Founding Co-Artistic Director Donlin Foreman and Associate Founders Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin. Having created more than 25 ballets, she has had her works presented and commissioned by theaters, companies and universities throughout the world. She began her dance training at the early age of four with the Russian Swaboda sisters and studied contemporary dance in the Mary Wigman Technique with founder/director Jan Veen of the Boston Conservatory of Music before meeting Martha Graham in 1964.
During her 20-year association with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Jacqulyn performed as a principal dancer for 13 years, had her work Sospiri premiered at City Center, is featured in Conversations with Martha Graham and in Trailblazers of American Modern Dance for her Denishawn interpretations. Jacqulyn developed and taught her unique Techniques of Performance class at the Interlochen Academy, Alvin Ailey School, abroad during her commissions at the Shankar Performing Arts Center in India, and the Shanghai Ensemble in China, and participated in numerous educational residencies and collaborations with Purchase College Conservatory of Dance.
Jacqulyn is involved in bringing awareness to the human condition and world issues through such creative projects such as Rain and The Conversation. She is Chair of the Modern Department at the Alvin Ailey School, and serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School and the Martha Graham School. Jacqulyn has received numerous awards including the American Dance Guild Award for Artistic Excellence, Fiorello LaGuardia Award for Excellence, Harkness Ballet Foundation Grants, The Gertrude Shurr Award for Dance, and a National Endowment Grant for Choreography. Recently, Jacqulyn created Cage Machine for Jacob's Pillow Contemporary Traditions Program and is currently working on a new work, Sounds of Innocence, in collaboration with composer Daniel Bernard Roumai. As a former dancer with the Martha Graham Company, Jacqulyn Buglisi brings a unique perspective to modern dance choreography on the ice. She has created The Dreame for Ice Theatre of New York.
Ann Carlson
From Lincoln Center to the dairy farm, the opera
house to a public school, from the museum to the frozen pond, Ann
Carlson’s award winning work defies description and category while
expanding the context of choreography and performance. Carlson’s
work borrows from the disciplines of choreography, performance,
theater, public and conceptual art. Carlson’s work is project based and
often organized within a series format. Her Real People series is an
on-going group of performance works created with and performed by
people gathered together by a common profession, activity or other
relationship. The first work in the Real People series was
"Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore", created with and performed by
four New York attorneys. The series has continued with
performance works and video installations made with and performed by
day laborers, ranchers, doctors, security officers, basketball players,
fly fishers, corporate executives, a farmer and her dairy cow, school
teachers, nuns, the custodial staff at an Ivy league college. Her
other series of works, include Animals, White, Night Light and
Cake. Carlson has received over thirty commissions and numerous
awards for her artistic work. She also received a 2006 Fellowship
at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University,
2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in choreography as well as a 2003 New York
Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in performance. Ms. Carlson
has received multiple awards from the National Choreographic
Initiative, Doris Duke Award for New Work a fellowship from the
Foundation for Contemporary Performance in l999. She
was the first choreographer to receive the CalArts/Alpert Award and
also was the recipient of a prestigious three-year choreographic
fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ms. Carlson ‘s work has been performed and exhibited at various
cultural institutions nationally, including: San Francisco CameraWorks,
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland,
Oregon, Art Institute Chicago, Performing Arts Chicago, Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis, MN, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, NY, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, On
The Boards, Seattle, Washington, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Lee,
MA, The American Dance Festival, Raleigh/Durham, NC, Performance
Space 122, New York, NY, Dance Theater Workshop, New York, NY, The
Foundry Theatre, New York, NY, The Kitchen, New York, NY, Wave Hill,
Bronx, NY, EnGarde Arts, New York, NY, On Site Performance Network, and
Center for Cultural Exchange, Portland, ME., Richmond Art Museum,
Richmond, Va Sushi Art Center, San Diego, CA, Internationally Ms.
Carlson's work has appeared at Arca Theater, Prague, The Republic of
Czech, Centre Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico, theaters in Moosbach, and
Munich, Germany, theaters in Estonia and in the former Soviet
Union.
Laura Dean
Laura Dean, internationally acclaimed as both a
choreographer and composer, is recognized as one of the most exciting
choreographers of her generation. Laura Dean’s music and dance
training began at the Third Street Music School in New York City. She
studied with Lucas Hoving, Muriel Stuart, Norman Walker, Merce
Cunningham and many other great teachers and has danced professionally
in the companies of Paul Sanasardo and Paul Taylor. Dance and music
works of Laura Dean have been commissioned by the New York City Ballet,
The Royal Danish Ballet, the Walker Arts Center, the American Dance
Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Joffrey Ballet, The
Spoleto Festival USA, the Ohio Ballet and the BAT-DOR Company of
Israel. Dean has created two highly acclaimed works for ABB: Arrow of
Time and Night Wind. She has collaborated with Ice Theatre of New
York to create a repertory piece, Reflections.
Alberto Del Saz
Alberto Del Saz is the Artistic Director of the Murray Louis and
Nikolais Dance Company as well as Co-Director of The Nikolais/Louis
Foundation for Dance and Assistant to Louis. Del Saz has been with the
Nikolais/Louis Foundation for 20 years, and at the moment his focus is
preserving the Nikolais/Louis technique, repertory and legacy through
his teaching and directing.
Del Saz was born in Bilbao, Spain in 1960. At an early age he studied
ice-skating, which later led to his first performing career. In 1980
Mr. del Saz became the Spanish National Champion in figure skating and
soon made his debut with Holiday on Ice-International. His early dance
training was received at the Nikolais-Louis Dance Lab from the great
teachers of the technique: Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis,
Claudia Gitelman, Tandy Beal, Beverly Blossom and others. In 1985
Mr. Del Saz made his debut as a lead soloist with the Nikolais Dance
Theater, later renamed the Murray Louis and Nikolais Dance Company. As
a member of this internationally acclaimed company he has toured to
virtually every continent on the globe.
Mr. Del Saz is the Reconstruction Director of the Nikolais/Louis
repertory and has staged the Nikolais/Louis repertory on university and
professional dance companies around the nation and world, including
North Carolina School of the Arts, The Juilliard School, Conservatoire
de la Danse de Paris, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Co., The Joffrey Ballet of
Chicago, Ballet Met, University of Washington, University of Illinois,
Rutgers State University, Brigham Young University, Centre National de
Danse Contemporaine in Angers, Southern Utah University, George Mason
University, Boston Conservatory, University of Utah, Georgia Tech,
Hunter College, Marymount Manhattan College, Barnard College, Montclair
State University). In 1997 he danced Rudolph Nureyev’s role in
“Moments” a work created by Mr.
Louis.
Del Saz work has been funded by NYSCA in collaboration with Ice Theater
of New York. He is currently choreographing for bronze medalist
figure skater Nicole Bobek and Olympic bronze medalist and World
Professional Champion Phillipe Candeloro. His Skating work has appeared
on Ice-Wars, Grand Slam and the Professional World Championships
televised on CBS, FOX and ABC networks as well as the official opening
of the Rockefeller Center sponsored by Champions on Ice.
David Dorfman
David Dorfman, a native Chicagoan, is the recipient of a 2005 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He has also been honored with four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, an American Choreographer's Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard, and a New York Dance & Performance Award ("Bessie") for David Dorfman Dance's community-based project Familiar Movements (The Family Project). Dorfman's choreography has been produced in New York City at venues ranging from the BAM Next Wave Festival to The Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, The Duke on 42nd Street, Danspace Project/St. Mark's Church, P.S. 122, and Dancing in the Streets. His work has been commissioned widely in the U.S. and in Europe, most recently by Bedlam Dance Company (London), d9 Dance Collective (Seattle), and the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia for the musical Green Violin, for which he won a 2003 Barrymore Award for best choreography. An avid fan of collaboration and collective processes, Dorfman is pleased to tour an evening of solos and duets, Live Sax Acts, with friend and collaborator Dan Froot, and a half-evening duet, Menne Awn Frauen, created with longtime colleague and friend Stuart Pimsler. Dorfman has been a guest artist at numerous institutions across the country and abroad, most recently at Illinois Wesleyan University, Rutgers University, and Knox College. As a performer, he toured internationally with Kei Takei's Moving Earth and Susan Marshall & Co. Dorfman holds a BS in business administration from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA degree in dance from Connecticut College, where he joined the faculty in the fall of 2004 and is currently William Meredith Associate Professor of Dance and department chair. Dorfman would like to thank long-time mentors Martha Myers and Daniel Nagrin for taking a chance and rescuing him from counting leisure suits in St. Louis, his mom Jeanette for inspiring him to dance to heal, his dad Oscar for teaching him the magic of a good joke, and Lisa Race and Samson Race Dorfman for collaborating with him on a very wonderful new version of The Family Project.
Donlin Foreman
Donlin Foreman, an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Dance at Barnard College, is also Co-Artistic Director/Choreographer of Buglisi/Foreman Dance. He served as chair of the NYSCA Dance Panel for 2000 and 2001. Former principal dancer of 20 years with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Donlin performed with Eliot Feld Company, the Jacques d’Amboise National Dance Institute, and La Scala Ballet. He has staged his works for the New Jersey Ballet, Ice Theatre of NY, and La Scala Ballet, and the North Carolina Dance Theatre next spring. Foreman’s volume of poetic writings, Out of Martha's House, was published in 1992. He has written several articles in Dance Teacher and Dance Spirit magazines, and continues to contribute to the Martha Graham issue of Choreography and Dance, an international journal. He was recently awarded the Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography.
Heather Harrington
Heather Harrington graduated from Boston University with a degree in psychology. She then moved to New York City and danced with the Doris Humphrey Repertory Company, the Martha Grahm Ensemble, the Pearl Lang Dance Theater, and the Bella Lewitzsky Dance Company. Her choreography has been presnted by various venues including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Sitelines Series, where she choreographed and performed an onsite piece, "Giscard Games," on the stairs of Federal Hall Memorial on Wall Street. Harrington has also created pieces for Danspace Project's City/Dans series and the Toronto Finge Festival.
As a figure skater, Harrington has performed, taught and choreographed for Ice Theatre of New York. In 2001, she received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) through Ice Theatre of New York to choreograph a new piece,"Once Again." This repertory piece was performed in the Company's Home Season at Sky Rink and in the Concert Series at The Rink at Rockefeller Plaza. Harrington also created a haunting work, "The Lottery." She is currently a coach at Sky Rink and Figure Skating in Harlem. Danspace Project presented Harrington's full length evening piece, Devil's Playground, in 2005 at St. Mark's Church.
DAVID LIU
David was born in Taiwan, immigrated to the United States at the age of six and began studying dance and figure skating at the age of eight. He auditioned for New York City Ballet's School of American Ballet (SAB) and was accepted on full scholarship, under the tutelage of Richard Rapp and Andre Kramerevsky. George Balanchine promoted him to the first "Special Class" at the SAB under the intensive training of the late Stanley Williams. After finishing his dance training at SAB, David pursued his skating career and competed at three Olympic Games for his native country, Taiwan. He teaches, choreographs and performs in both skating and dance. He has performed and given workshops and intensive classes in the United States, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Finland. David has choreographed programs for skating luminaries such as Brian Boitano, Lu Chen, Midori Ito, Nicole Bobek, Rosalynn Summers, and for major television specials including Kurt Browning's Gotta Skate, Divas on Ice with Katarina Witt, PBS' An Evening with Champions, and NBC's Rockefeller Center Christmas Specials. In 2002, David received a commissioning grant from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) through Ice Theatre for a collaborative work with choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw. In April, 2004, David was invited to China where he created an ice extravaganza for the opening of an ice rink. In June, 2004, the world premiere of David's latest dance choreography, Visual reference, part of H.T. Chen's Ear to the Ground project was presented by the Mulberry Street Theatre in New York City. Francis Mason of WQRX Radio called David, "Nijinsky on ice". Liu has choreographed at least five works for and/or with Ice Theatre in the years he has been with the Company, some of which were showcased in Dance Visions on Ice last season.
Lar Lubovitch
Lar Lubovitch was born April 9, 1943 in
Chicago. Lubovitch was educated at the University of Iowa and the
Juilliard School in New York. His teachers at Juilliard included Antony
Tudor, Jose Limon, Anna Sokolow and Martha Graham. He danced in
numerous modern, ballet, jazz and ethnic companies before forming the
Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. He founded the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
in 1968 and has since then created a repertory of over 100 pieces.
Based in New York City, he and the company have toured worldwide. He
has been noted as one of the most important contributors to
twentieth-century ballet. In addition to the company, Lar has
also done creative work in ballet, ice-skating venues with Ice Theatre
of New York, and musical theater notably "Into the Woods," “The Red
Shoes,” and the revival of “The King and I.” He has also played a
key role in raising funds to fight AIDS. Lubovitch’s work is
renowned for its musicality, rhapsodic style and sophisticated formal
structures. His radiant, highly technical choreography and deeply
humanistic voice have been acclaimed throughout the world.
Lubovitch works are included in the repertories of companies throughout
the world, including the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre,
Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater, Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project and
Netherlands Dance Theater. Recent projects have included the Lubovitch
company’s world premiere of My Funny Valentine as part of the company’s
2001 season in New York at City Center, and in 2000 staging the world
premiere of its acclaimed hit Men’s Stories as part of the company’s
2000 season in New York at the Orensanz Center for the Arts. Recent
projects also include the creation of a 3-act ballet based on Othello
in an unprecedented collaboration between the Lubovitch company and
American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet. Othello was broadcast
nationwide on PBS’s “Great Performances” and nominated for an Emmy
Award.
In addition to his work for stage, screen and television, Lubovitch has
also made a notable contribution to the advancement of choreography in
the field of ice dancing. He has created dances for Olympic gold
medalists John Curry, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill and has
choreographed a full-length ice-dancing version of The Sleeping Beauty,
starring Olympic medalists Robin Cousins and Rosalynn Sumners. The
ballet was broadcast throughout Great Britain and America. He also
choreographed a TV project with Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay, who won
the silver medal for France at the 1992 Olympics. The show, based on
The Planets by Gustav Holst, was broadcast by the A&E TV-network in
June 1995 and was nominated for an International Emmy Award, a Cable
ACE Award and a Grammy Award. Most recently he created two new ice
dances for Paul Wylie, a duet for Renee Roca & Gorsha Sur, and an
ensemble piece, “Strike up the Band,” for the Ice Theatre of New
York.
Elisa Monte
Elisa Monte was trained in classical dance at the School
of American Ballet and in pilates with Kathy Grant. Monte
performed for many years with The Martha Graham Dance Company, Lar
Lubovitch, and Pilobolus among others. Monte's choreography is
widely
recognized for its highly athletic and sensual style, as well as its
technical and physical acuity, exploring a multitude of topics and
themes. Monte created her signature work Treading in 1979, which was
originally commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company. Her other
40 works include such renowned pieces as Dreamtime, Run to the Rock, Light Lies, and Pigs and Fishes, originally commissioned by Alvin Ailey.
Monte has taught workshops and master
classes in residencies around the world. In New York City, Monte has
taught at Steps on Broadway, Peridance, the Alvin Ailey American Dance
Theater Studio, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and
Barnard. In New York State, Monte has conducted residencies at the Lake
Placid Center for the Arts, SUNY/Fredonia, SUNY/Buffalo, Hamilton
College, and the new Kaatsbaan International Dance Center. Additional
teaching residencies have included Robert Redford's Sundance Institute,
Southern Methodist University in Dallas, California State University's
Summer Arts program, Philadanco, and Dance Strides Barbados, among
others across the US and abroad.
Moira North
Moira was designated one of the 25 Most Influential Names in Figure Skating by International Figure Skating Magazine in 1998 and 2003 for being a driving force in the development of figure skating as a performing art. She and partner Patrick Dean skated Ice Theatre's first work, a collaboration with dance choreographer Marc Bogaerts, which won them first place in the 1984 Professional Championships in Jaca, Spain. In her subsequent work as Artistic Director of Ice Theatre, Moira has continued to integrate the work of dance and performance artists into the repertory of ice choreography and classes. Moira's artistic credits include teaching actress Ileana Douglas to skate for her role in the film To Die For; teaching and choreographing a skating scene in the film The Preacher's Wife with Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington; choreographing five productions of Montreal Fashions on Ice for the Quebec Delegation at Rockefeller Plaza; and choreographing the opening ceremonies for both the National Hockey League All-Stars Game and World Cup Hockey. She also served as creative consultant for Arts & Entertainment's Winter Solstice on Ice, a television special aired during the 1999 holiday season.
David Parsons
David Parsons has enjoyed a remarkable career
as a performer, choreographer, teacher, director and producer of dance.
His work has been enthusiastically embraced by audiences, presenters
and critics the world over.
Parsons was born in Illinois and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. From
1978-1987, Parsons was a leading dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance
Company, where Taylor created many roles for him in works such as Arden
Court, Last Look and Roses. Companies with which he has made guest
appearances include the New York City Ballet, the Berlin Opera, MOMIX,
and the White Oak Dance Project. Parsons founded the company, which
bears his name with lighting designer, Howell Binkley in 1987.
As Artistic Director, Parsons has created over 60 works on The Parsons
Dance Company, having received commissions over the years from eminent
presenters such as the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Hancher
Auditorium/University of Iowa, the Spoleto Festival, Krannert Center
for the Performing Arts, National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada, Ruth
Eckerd Hall, Het Muziektheater, Dance Theater Workshop and the American
Dance Festival. He has also choreographed works for the Paul Taylor
Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, Atlanta
Ballet and National Ballet of Canada, and Ice Theatre of New
York. The list of companies that have performed his works
includes Paris Opera Ballet, Feld Ballets/NY, Netherlands Danse
Theater, English National Ballet, Ballet National de Nancy, Hubbard
Street Dance Company, BatSheva Dance Company of Israel, among many
others.
Mr. Parsons' works have been featured extensively on television.
Caught, Mr. Parsons' signature work, was televised on Alive From Off
Center in 1987. Mr. Parsons has been a featured dancer on PBS' Dance in
America, having performed in three programs with the Paul Taylor Dance
Company and one with New York City Ballet. In 1992, Mr. Parsons
collaborated with Julie Taymor and designer Michael Curry on a film
project called Fools' Fire. In 1995, 1989 and 1988, Mr. Parsons
received Choreography Fellowship Grants from the National Endowment for
the Arts. He has lectured at numerous locations, including Harvard
University, The Yale Club and the Columbia University Business School.
Mr. Parsons choreographed and directed the dance elements for Times
Square 2000, the festivities in Times Square for 24 hours celebrating
the turn of the Millennium, which was watched by billions of people all
over the globe. Mr. Parsons was a recipient of the Dance Magazine Award
for the year 2000. In 2001, Mr. Parsons served as a
director/choreographer for AEROS, a production featuring the Romanian
Gymnastic Federation. Also in 2001, Mr. Parsons was appointed the
Artistic Director of Dance for the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia,
Italy.
JoAnna Mendl Shaw
New York-based dance choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw established her
career in the Pacific Northwest, where she founded and directed a large
professional dance company, taught on the faculty at the University of
Washington and Cornish College and played a leadership role in arts
advocacy for the Northwest. Relocating to New York in 1991, Shaw has
national gained recognition for her large-scale site specific works and
collaborative projects with athletes. The recipient of two National
Endowment for the Arts Choreographic Fellowships, Shaw has
choreographed for ice dancers, in-line skaters, gymnasts and
equestrians. Her dance work has been presented at numerous NYC venues
and commissioned by dance companies throughout the States and in Europe.
In 1998 Shaw launched The Equus Projects, a performance company
that merges dance and equestrian artistry. The company has created
large commissioned works for The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts
and Virginia Commonwealth University and has presented its work at
museum sites and equestrian centers and will create a new work for the
2007 opening of the UC/Davis Equestrian Center. Shaw currently teaches
in New York City, serving on the faculty at The Juilliard School and in
the Ailey /Fordham BFA program. She has taught at Tisch/New York
University, Montclair State University and Mount Holyoke College.
International teaching and choreographic commissioned include
residencies in Hungary, Japan, Korea, Canada, Yugoslavia, Scotland,
Wales and coaching and teaching for the Swiss Gymnastic Federation.
Shaw holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA in Dance from the
University of Utah. She is a Certified Movement Analyst in the
Laban/Bartenieff work.
DOUGLAS WEBSTER
Douglas has coached and choreographed for skaters on the National, International, and Professional levels, including Lucinda Ruh's debut at the World Professional Championships. As a choreographer, Douglas has worked with outstanding skaters such as Lu Chen, Elena Leonova and Andrei Khvalko, and Elena Leichenko. He has developed a Theatre on Ice program for the Skating Club of New York, taught edge and theatre class seminars around the country, choreographed for the television special Winter Solstice on Ice through Ice Theatre of New York, and had the opportunity to translate many fine dance choreographers works to the ice including Elisa Monte, Ann Carlson, and Johan Renvall. As a skater, Douglas was coached by Audrey Weisiger and competed at the National level. He then went on to partner Judy Blumberg during a portion of her professional career. Currently, Douglas resides in Salt Lake City, and is the Associate Artistic Director at the Salt Lake SportsComplex. Douglas has a keen interest in bio-mechanics, kinesiology and yoga and, with Stephanee Grosscup of the SportsComplex, has helped create and teach two new classes to augment skaters' training, Skadoga Piloga and Let It Flow.