October 19 – 21
Family Weekend Dance
Produced by Michelle Bach-Coulibaly
Ashamu Dance Studio
The Family Weekend Dance concert celebrates the beginning of the dance season, provides an outlet for collaborators in the community and welcomes new students and their families to Brown, as the dance program kicks off a year of art making and community engagement.
October 19 @ 8:00PM
October 20 @ 8:00PM
October 21 @ 2:00PM
Featuring
Scattered Pieces choreographed by Gwi Young Bae
Performers: Shaung He ’19 RISD, Ty Scott ’22, Abby Perelman ’22, Elisabeth Schifrin ’20, Thaouyen Emily Pham ’21
Kicks choreographed by Megan Gessner ’20
Performers: Fusion Dance Company Sarah Hsu ’17 (Friday and Sunday), Aisha Zamor ’19, Leila Rajab ’20, Megan Gessner ’20 (Saturday only)
I am Both choreographed by Anna Bjella ’18
Performers: Dance Extension
Adeene Denton PhD ’21, Dana Karogodsky ’21, Claire Hawkins ’20, Julianna Marino ’19, Ben Morris ’20, Thaouyen Emily Pham ’21,Nia Sanders ’19
The Grace of Perfect Danger choreographed by Michelle Bach-Coulibaly and New Works/World Traditions
Performers: New Works/World Traditions Brown/RISD Undergraduates and Graduates: Aya Bisbee ’19, Aminata Coulibaly ’19, Kirby Engelman’18.5, Shuang He ’19 RISD, Ruchi Pathak ’19 RISD MA, Jessica Murphy ’19, Charlotte Senders ’19, Tessa Palisoc ’20, Chuyi Chen ’20 . Community Partners: Steven Choummalaithong, Trent Lee, Anthony Andrade
Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts (TAPA) High School: Matt Garza (Dance Artist in Residence, Brown ’11), Calyia Varella ‘19, KeiKei Harley ‘20, Natalie Gonzalez ’20, Kay Marte ‘21, Jasmyn Randle ‘22, Rjanae Poston ‘23, Suliany Santiago ‘23
Territory Suites choreographed by Stephen Ursprung
Performers: Dance Extension
Adeene Denton PhD ’21, Dana Karogodsky ’21, Claire Hawkins ’20, Julianna Marino ’19, Gracie Moreno ’21, Ben Morris ’20, Abby Perelman ’22, Thaouyen Emily Pham ’21, Nia Sanders ’19, Riya Kothari ’21
UNDER(expectations) choreographed by Anna Bjella ’18and Nyah Duckworth
Performers: Anna Bjella ’18 and Nyah Duckworth
Commencement Set choreographed by Leila Rajab ’20, Megan Gessner ’20, Ken Sudradjat ’18 RISD
Performers: Impulse Dance Company
Agnes Tran ’22, Aisha Zamor ’19, Carlos Tejada ’22, Chandler Carr ’22, Diana Cruz ’21, Leila Rajab ’20, Lily Edgerton ’21, Megan Gessner ’20, Minseok Kim ’20, Seneca Meeks ’20, Tafari Williams ’20, Viva Sandoval ’20, Tiffany Yim ’21, Valentine Walker ‘21′
Performance Companies
Dance Extension was established in 1979 as a modern repertory company in residence at Brown University. It was created by Brown University’s founding director of Dance, Julie Adams Strandberg, on the premise that the training of dancers must include the opportunity to perform, teach, and revisit masterworks. While the dancers in the company are encouraged and supported to create their own work, they also have the opportunity, rare in the academy, to work with some of our most revered choreographers and exciting contemporary innovators. Dance Extension has performed dances by Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, José Limón, Jack Cole, Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, Pilobolus, Colin Connor, Carolyn Dorfman, Anne-Alex Packard, Billy Siegenfeld ’70 and Lisa Race. The repertory includes works by Carolyn Adams, Ruth Andrien, Laura Bennett ‘92, Danny Buraczeski, Danny Grossman, Donna Jewell, Lorry May, Carla Maxwell, Donald McKayle, David Parsons, Pearl Primus, and Charles Weidman. Dance Extension has performed at elementary and secondary schools; at other colleges; for Brown University Alumni Clubs in England, Illinois, California, New York, and Washington, DC; for general audiences in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York City, Boston, and Saratoga Springs; and was hired to perform and lead workshops with dance educators and students in the Syracuse public school system.
IMPULSE Dance Company specializes in Hip Hop, but they relish the opportunity to infuse their choreography with a diversity of styles; they take pride in their versatility. They welcome those of all experience levels who share a common passion for dance.
New Works/World Traditions is an Engaged Scholarship course at Brown University with a focus on training young actors, musicians and dancers in Mindfulness practices towards the development of new theatre for the stage, street and screen. Here international and professional artists work closely with New Works members to educate, deliberate, and inspire social engagement through cross-cultural exchange and co-creation. These new works address important political, public health, and social landscapes and exist at the intersection of science, art, and social activism.
Comprised of Brown University faculty, alumni, current students, and professional international artist-activists, New Works’ mission is to further an egalitarian exchange of art and ideas through cross-cultural collaboration and social engagement programs between African, Asian, and American artists.
Fusion Dance Company in 1983, Paula Franklin, a black woman at Brown, felt the need for more student choreography on campus. That year, she choreographed a piece for the annual Fall Dance Concert, called “Portrait of a Studio.” This piece was the precursor to Fusion Dance Company. In the Spring semester of the same academic year, auditions were held to form a diverse company of 23 students. Over the past 34 years, Fusion has strived to uphold this tradition of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic group of dancers who perform a variety of styles and do not conform to modern-day constraints on body shape, size, dance style, or choreography.
Choreographer Bios
Gwi Young Bae is an award winning choreographer, professor and journalist who has choreographed over 50 performances with the support of the South Korean government and UNESCO where she choreographed Korea’s Dance Meets World’s Music – Arab Music. She choreographed the opening ceremonies for the Korean national athletics game two times with the sponsorship of the South Korean government. She has worked as a columnist for the Korea Times in the United States of America and South Korea on the topic of “Dance and Health”. Her PhD dissertation was entitled, The Anthropometric Trait and ACE gene polymorphism in elite ballet dancers.” Bae has served as a visiting professor at UC Riverside in 2008, is currently the artistic director of Bae Gwi Young Ballet Company and a professor at Changwon National University. She has been an invited guest teacher and choreographer in the Department of Theater Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University since 2012.
Anna Bjella ’18 is a dancer, choreographer, and improviser based in New York City. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she co-founded a student choreography incubator called the Dancers/Choreographers Alliance that fosters collaborations between interdisciplinary artists and questions normative notions of choreography and dance through the use of improvisational scores. While at Brown University, she also had the pleasure to perform with Dance Extension in works by Rachel Erdos, Danielle Davidson, Robert Battle, Ruth Andrien, Donald McKayle, and many more. Additionally, her senior year she danced as a company apprentice for American Dance Legacy Initiative. She had the pleasure of attending Sidra Bell’s MODULE during the winter of 2018, which has highly influenced the role of improvisation in her work. While studying at American Dance Festival under Nia Love, she developed a passion for creating site specific dance and aspires to continue doing so.
Michelle Bach-Coulibaly is an educator, choreographer and movement specialist who teaches in the Department of Theatre Arts and 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.
Stephen Ursprung is an Assistant Professor of Dance Studies at Dean College and serves as the Operations Director at the American Dance Legacy Initiative (ADLI). He holds an MFA in dance from Smith College and an AB in economics and Italian studies from Brown University. Locally, his choreographic work has been presented at the Dance Complex, the Somerville Arts Council, and the Boston Center for the Arts. He has performed work by Paul Taylor, Pilobolus, Monica Bill Barnes, Robert Battle, Danny Buraczeski, David Parsons, Ruth Andrien, and Danny Grossman, many of whom he worked with as a Brown Student and through his work with ADLI. He has choreographed for Columbia Records, performed in Cape Town, South Africa, and choreographed for the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. A proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, Stephen was most recently seen in OKLAHOMA! at Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, RI in 2016. Stephen currently creates work with NilsSprung Dance Project and Reject Dance Theatre and works as a freelance choreographer and educator throughout New York and New England.
Nyah Duckworth is a native of Gulfport, Mississippi where she received her formal dance training under the mentorship of Casey Hild and Kristen Dixon of Island School of Performing Arts. Nyah is currently pursuing her BFA in Dance with a minor in business at The University of the Arts, under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield. While in college, she is taught by Tommie-Waheed Evans, Jesse Zaritt, Curt Haworth, amongst others. She has performed works by Sidra Bell, Jillian Peña, Jesse Zaritt, and more. Within her practice, Nyah is exploring site-specific dance in collaboration with poetry and photography.
