David Dorfman Dance

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Founded in 1987, David Dorfman Dance (DDD) is celebrating its 35th Anniversary and has performed extensively throughout the world – North and South America, Great Britain, Europe and was invited to tour countries in Central Asia: Turkey, Tajikistan, and Armenia with DanceMotion USA, with our most recent foreign tours taking us to El Salvador and Panama. Closer to home DDD has regularly performed in New York City at major venues, including The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, Danspace Project/St. Mark’s Church, The Duke on 42nd Street, The Met Breuer, and the 92ndSt. “Y”/Harkness Dance Festival. DDD celebrates its 16th year as Company-in-Residence at Connecticut College where David Dorfman earned his MFA in dance in 1981 and then returned as Professor of Dance in 2004. This is our 2nd Year as Commissioned Artist-in-Residence of Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson Hole, WY.

“To get the whole world dancing” is at the core of DDD’s mission to promote the appreciation and critical understanding of dance by bringing the company’s work to broad and diverse audiences. David and his company seek to destigmatize the notion of accessibility in post-modern dance by embracing viewers with visceral, meaningful dance, music, text and visuals. By sustaining a vision to create innovative, inclusive, movement-based performance that is radically humanistic, DDD maintains a commitment to examine and unearth issues and ideas that enliven, incite, and excite through dialogue and debate about social change, personal growth, agency and a myriad of other topics. For this work David and the company’s dancers and collaborators have been honored with eight New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards. 

DDD’s works include tonight’s (A)Way Out of My Body (2022); Aroundtown (2017); Come, and Back Again (2013); Prophets of Funk (2011), set to the music of Sly and the Family Stone; Disavowal (2009), inspired by radical abolitionist John Brown; underground (2006), inspired by The Weather Underground; Older Testaments (2005), set to music by composer/trumpeter Frank London of The Klezmatics; Lightbulb Theory (2004), original commissioned score by Michael Wall; Impending Joy (2004), original commissioned score by Chris Peck; and See Level (2003), original commissioned score by Chris Peck and visual design by Samuel Topiary. 

Throughout the past thirty-five years, DDD has engaged audiences worldwide, with community-based projects playing an important role, particularly in the 1990s. In Out of Season (The Athletes Project) and Familiar Movements (The Family Project), the members of the company rehearsed and performed with groups of volunteer athletes or family members selected in the communities to which the company toured. In No Roles Barred, DDD examined the personal roles assumed, formed, and interwoven in our modern social construct, engaging groups ranging from corporate executives and underserved youths to college administrators, doctors, carpenters, and social dance enthusiasts. These three community projects have been presented over 30 times in 18 states and two foreign countries. The company’s recent work in foreign communities have been projects such as the collaboration in El Salvador with Glasswing International and the United States Agency for International Development. Together there our company and youth volunteers, in centers dedicated to the prevention of violence, pledged to use our bodies for peace and co-created movement vocabulary celebrating the possibilities of freedom through movement. All of these efforts help DDD promote its mission of Kinetic Diplomacy: the idea that if you’re dancing, you’re not hurting another human being.

DAVID DORFMAN DANCE / ART SWEATS, INC.

Board of Directors 

Rudy Nickens, President
Solunis Nicole Bay
Chloe Carlson
David Dorfman
Ginger Gillespie
Mitchell Karp
David Kyuman Kim
Kellie Ann Lynch
Matt Oldani
Paul O’Neil, Emeritus
Karen Waltuck

Artistic Director: David Dorfman
Executive Director: Erin Roy
Company Manager: Journee Hardaway
Company Intern: Julia Ramirez
Development Consultant: Benvenuti Arts
Bookkeeping: Quant Solutions

Exclusive USA Tour Representation: PENTACLE, Sandy Garcia
www.pentacle.org

Consider making a tax-deductible donation to DDD (checks payable to “Art Sweats, Inc.” at PO Box 1227 Peter Stuyvesant Station NY, NY 10009) or online at daviddorfmandance.org.

Follow DDD on Facebook @DavidDorfmanDancePage and on Instagram @dorfmandance. Share your thoughts and experience of A(Way) Out of My Body with us by emailing them to info@daviddorfmandance.org.

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