Dance Theater Workshop and The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Launch a New Partnership

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 26, 2007

TALLAHASSEE, FL  – The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University (FSU) and Dance Theater Workshop have launched an institutional partnership to provide creative development residencies for artists receiving commissioning and presentational support from Dance Theater Workshop. The first artist to receive support is award-winning director, dance and video artist Dean Moss.  

This new initiative will engage choreographers, their collaborators and performers to pursue artistic experimentation that includes a process-driven residency within FSU’s comprehensive academic research setting, followed by access to Dance Theater Workshop, an internationally recognized performing arts venue, to further develop and present their work. Selected artists will have access to the extensive resources of both institutions. The goal is to deepen the commitment to contemporary choreographers through the integration of resources needed to create work over time, from inception to final product.  Carla Peterson, Artistic Director of Dance Theater Workshop, states that “this pilot partnership enables our two institutions to take a leadership role together in creating an ongoing platform that will deliver these critical resources of time, space, and funds to experimental U.S. based artists. Such support will fuel their ability to experiment with new ideas, to take necessary risks, and, overall, to be able to manifest artistically whatever their process demands.”

Dean Moss will conduct research at MANCC June 15-30, 2008 with Korean choreographer Yoon Jin Kim for a new work tentatively titled "Kisaeng becomes you". The multimedia work is a meditation on our enduring struggle for connection and self-awareness.  It is inspired by the lives and poetry of Korea's Joseon Dynasty [1400-1900] artist/courtesan called "Kisaeng.”   Mr. Moss and Ms. Kim will work in residence with a cast of five who will perform in both Korean and English.  During the residency, the artists will create and develop the interviews, dances, videos, and diaries that inform the work.  "Kisaeng becomes you" will have its world premiere at the 2008 SiDance Festival in Seoul and its U.S. premiere at Dance Theater Workshop in 2009.

Dance Theater Workshop is an internationally recognized center for the development and presentation of contemporary dance and performance, and for the artists who create it. Dance Theater Workshop fully presents over 110 performances by some 45 different artists and companies each year. The artists presented are primarily based in New York City, but we have a long history of presenting the work of emerging and more established artists from across the United States and from abroad.

Now entering our fourth decade as a leading performing arts center, Dance Theater Workshop has grown into a multi-faceted organization that provides professional programs and resources to independent artists, and cultivates public involvement in the arts.

The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography opened in 2004, as a new model of support for professional choreographic research within a comprehensive research university. Programs provide choreographers time, space and resources to research, risk, reflect, retreat, experiment, collaborate, test and edit; in turn providing students and audiences the opportunity to engage with innovative artists in their creative process.
 
MANCC (pronounced man-see) shares the dance facilities of Montgomery Hall with the Department of Dance at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL.  Montgomery Hall includes six large dance studios, a 400-seat theater, black box, audio lab, recording studio, computer and media lab, classrooms, offices, dressing rooms and conditioning studio for dancers.  To learn more about MANCC programs and artists visit www.mancc.org.

Dean Moss is a director, choreographer, and video artist. Past presentations and exhibitions include The Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Paris University, New York Expo of Short Film and Video, The FNB Vita Dance Festival in Johannesburg South Africa, The Brooklyn Museum, Anthology Film Archives, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Walker Art Center, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Moss has received a BAXten Arts and Artists In Progress Award, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, a Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Fund grant, an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, an Artist Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and a New York Dance and Performance BESSIE Award.  His video works are included in the collections of The Kitchen and Third World Newsreel.

Moss served as the Curator of Dance and Performance at The Kitchen from 1999-2004.  He was a Guest Professor from 2003-04 at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He currently is a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, the Director of Resource Development at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and a Curatorial Advisor at The Kitchen.  He is the founding director of Gametophyte Inc.: a performance and media production company that supports creative works and collaborations blending dance and performance.

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