STEFANIE BATTEN BLAND

5/9 + 5/11

2:00PM-4:00PM

COST : $5

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway NYC
Entrance 53A Chambers

The Playground NYC allows dancers to experience various choreographic styles and ideas, engage with a new community of dancers, and gather resourceful information and inspiration from the array of choreographers involved. In turn, established choreographers are paid for their creative investigations, are given free space to explore new movement with professional dancers, and are provided with the opportunity to establish relationships with new dancers and fellow choreographers.  

CLASS DESCRIPTION:
Physical Perspectives - A Dance-Theatre class is Company SBB’s practicing technique which fuses theatre and perpetual movement exercises into one expressive vocabulary. This approach focuses on articulation, presence, and dynamic decision making both physically and vocally. It is suitable for any level interested in developing different ways of being, enabling action and reaction to learnt and improvised material in the present tense.

BIO:
Beginning in New York City, followed by over ten years in Europe before a return to Soho six years ago, Stefanie Batten Bland’s career has taken a geographically circuitous path to her present stage as a Jerome Robbins Award honoree.

Stefanie Batten Bland's interdisciplinary creative practice is embedded in human relationships, the communicative choices we make, and how we fit into space and place. She interrogates the preconceived notions embedded within contemporary and historical culture and situates her work at the intersection of installation and dance theatre in live performance settings.

Her own company, Company SBB, was founded in 2008 in France while head choreographer at the Paris Opéra Comique under the direction of Jérôme Savary.  Interested in impact on a local community and global level, the social and philosophical messages of SBB’s work are visceral and accessible to a diverse public, enabling people to embrace emotional content from a place of kinetic empathy. Her pieces are made in passionate response to global issues, commenting on what is and what could be with an optimistic belief in the common human community.

In addition to dances commissioned by TU Dance (Minneapolis/St Paul), Second Avenue Dance Company (New York City), Modlin Center for the Arts (Richmond, VA), Zenon Dance Company (Minneapolis, MN), Transitions Dance Company (London), Alvin Ailey ll Company (New York City) and Frontier Danceland (Singapore), SBBs work has been seen in the United States, Europe and Asia.

SBB has created eleven films that have been seen in international festivals in Europe, South America, the United States and South Africa. She has also choreographed outside of concert platforms for galas, publicity and industrials such as Guerlain Perfumes, Van Cleef & Arpels, Louis Vuitton, SYTYCD-Poland and a French Presidential Gala.

Recent creative scholarship and academic residencies include: NYU Tisch School of The Arts, Indiana University, Oakland University, Wayne State University, Spelman College, Santa Fe College, University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, Ohio University, Middle Tennessee State University, Guest Faculty at Ithaca College and Rutgers University.

SBB currently has two theatrical commissions in development, performs for PunchDrunk, is a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University and is completing her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts with a concentration in Performance Creation at Goddard College in Vermont. She resides in SoHo, New York City, with her family.