User:Statjuan/David Dorfman (modern dance choreographer)

David Dorfman is a dancer, choreographer, musician and teacher. Currently the chairperson of the department of dance at Connecticut College in New London, CT, he received his MFA in dance from Connecticut College in 1981. Four years later, he founded his company David Dorfman Dance, one of the nation's leading modern dance companies. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2005 to continue his research and choreography in the topics of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissidence and underground movements. He has also been awarded 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 1996 New York Dance & Performance Award (“Bessie”).

His choreography has been produced in New York City at venues ranging from the BAM Next Wave Festival to The Kitchen, The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, 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.

In addition to his work in dance, Dorfman also performs with the New London based hip hop band Above/Below, playing baritone saxophone.

Works

 * Disavowal, which examines the life and legacy of abolitionist and (in)famous "race traitor" John Brown.
 * underground, inspired by a documentary on the Weathermen
 * Older Testaments, to music by composer/trumpeter Frank London of The Klezmatics
 * Lightbulb Theory and Impending Joy
 * See Level, the company's first evening-length work
 * To Lie Tenderly and Subverse
 * A Cure for Gravity, set to music by popular composer and recording artist Joe Jackson.