Stuart Theatre

75 Waterman Street

Providence, RI 02912

The DNA Cafe
Collaborators: Natsu Nakajima, Michelle Bach-Coulibaly, Ellen Santaniello, Dr. Paula Arai and New Works/World Traditions

Performers: New Works/World Traditions

Sharing of the Water
Choreography by Ze’eva Cohen

Performers: Dance Extension

Grin and Bear
Choreography by Rachel Erdos in collaboration with Dance Extension

Performers: Dance Extension

Ecce Etude
Choreography by Danny Grossman

Performers: Dancing Legacy

Hevel
Choreography by Rachel Erdos

Performers: Dance Extension

Natsu Nakajima is one of the most prominent artists in the current Butoh scene and carries with her the legacy and traditions of Tatsumi Hijikata, a founding member and architect of the Japanese Butoh movement. Her career spans decades of tradition and innovation and deep embodied investigations. She is a master teacher and artist who tours throughout the world. In the early days of Ankoku Butoh, Natsu Nakajima was one of the first women to train in Butoh and worked under both Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Since the late 1960s she has been a major force for Butoh internationally, performing her own work and teaching around the world, from Australia to France, Israel to Mexico. She is a leader in working for dance and disability in Japan and has received accolades and awards too numerous to list here. She is a lasting and prolific connection to the founders of this powerful part of dance & development. Concert dance around the world has been impacted, effected by artists such as Nakajima bringing Butoh performance and training far and wide.

Michelle Bach-Coulibaly is an educator, choreographer and movement specialist who teaches in the Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies at Brown University. Since 1987, she has developed over 35 new works for the stage, street, and screen that incorporate new music compositions, intermedial film work, and art installations that address social, political, and environmental concerns. As the co-founder of the Yeredon Centre for Art, Culture and Social Engagement in Mali, West Africa, Bach-Coulibaly works closely with international organizations in Mali and the USA to support transnational collaboration, cultural preservation, public health, and humanitarian projects.

Paula Arai, author of Women Living Zen: Japanese Buddhist Nuns (Oxford, 1999) and Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Buddhist Women’s Rituals (U. of Hawaii Press, 2011), received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University. She is currently bringing to press a volume on Iwasaki Tsuneo’s Heart Sutra art as well as curating art exhibitions of his art, including at the LSU Museum of Art and the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, TX. Her research has received support from Fulbright, American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, and the Reischauer Institute of Harvard University. She is currently an associate professor of Buddhist Studies at Louisiana State University.

Ellen Santaniello (‘86 Biology) has worked as a singer and percussionist in an improbably broad range of musical styles and historical periods, from modern to medieval. In addition to numerous collaborations in and around New England, she’s recorded and toured internationally with the women’s vocal trio ZORGINA, The Boston Camerata, Hesperus, Ensemble Unicorn, and others. She is currently a holistic psychotherapist in Providence, RI and plays locally in a genre-defying pop music trio, The Strange Attractors.

Ze’eva Cohen was born and raised in Tel Aviv, where she began to dance at age 5, studying with Gertrud Kraus and Rena Gluck. In 1963, after dancing with Anna Sokolow’s Israeli-based Lyric Theatre, Cohen made her way to New York, where she studied at Juilliard and performed with Sokolow’s U.S. company—and became a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop. In the early seventies, Cohen set up her own dance company as a solo artist. Over twelve years, she built a repertoire of twenty-eight solo dances, performing works by such artists as James Waring, Viola Farber, and Margalit Oved. Cohen has also choreographed works for such companies as Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, and Batsheva Dance Company, as well as Ze’eva Cohen and Dancers. Cohen’s series Female Mythologies, initiated in the mid 90s, deals with cultural, political, and social issues focusing on women’s myths and lives. In 2015, Cohen produced a film, “Ze’eva Cohen: Creating a Life in Dance”,  featured at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera festival and was a finalist at the Dance Camera West festival at MOCA in Los Angeles. A dance educator throughout her career, she began working at Princeton University in the late sixties. She spearheaded the university’s dance program, which blossomed during her forty years there. Since 1999, Cohen also worked with the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), helping create, consult, and oversee their diploma curriculum and assessment criteria for multicultural dance taught in high school around the world.

Rachel Erdos is an independent choreographer born in England, living and working in Tel Aviv. She received her MA in choreography from The Laban Centre London. Rachel won first prize in the AICC International choreography competition in Aarhus, Denmark in 2008 and in 2009 won City Dance Ensemble’s commissioning project, Washington DC. In 2012 Rachel received the prize for artist of the year in from The Ministry of Absorption, Israel. In 2014 she was awarded NorthWest Dance Project’s Pretty Creative Commission prize, Portland USA. In 2015 Rachel was awarded prize for independent choreographer of the year by The Ministry of Culture, Israel. Her work has been shown around the world including The Kennedy Center, Washington DC, The Joyce Theatre, New York, and the Royal Opera House, London, England. She is visiting artist at Brown University supported by the Israel institute/Schusterman Foundation and the Sue E. Perlmutter Fund for Dance at Brown. ”Rachel Erdos is calling attention to herself and her works through their diversity and the skill behind them,.”  (Ora Brafman, Dance Critic,). www.rachelerdos.com

Danny Grossman was born in San Francisco in 1942. In 1963, he joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York and spent the next 10 years performing and touring with the company. In 1973, Grossman joined Toronto Dance Theatre in Canada, working as a guest artist and became a faculty member at York University. In 1975, he choreographed Higher to tremendous praise leading to the formation of the Danny Grossman Dance Company in 1977. Grossman has since created a repertoire of more than 50 works, touring across Canada and internationally. His choreography has been in the repertoire of Toronto Dance Theatre, The Paris Opera Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and The National Ballet of Canada and has also been performed by modern dance training institutions such as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, New York State Summer School of the Arts, Adelphi University, City College of New York, Brown University, York University, School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Ryerson University, and Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre. Grossman has been the recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious Toronto Arts Council Foundation’s William Kilbourn Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, the company embarked on a new initiative, the Danny Grossman Dance Foundation, as a means of reconstructing and licensing his repertoire.