There are several dance companies in our city that have grown tremendously in the past few years and all this has happened despite Covid19 interfering.
Erin Prange is the executive director of The Big Muddy Dance Company and Kirven Douthit-Boyd is the relatively new artistic director. Together they are striving to invigorate life through dance by providing strong, experimental and highly entertaining performances, classes, festivals and even a yearly dance ball.
The touring program engages both emerging artists as well as world renowned choreographers and as Prange says, "The dance programs are providing new light to this creative art form."
When I asked Prange to define dance, she stated that dance is simply a natural form of expression. Britannica says, "Dance is a universal language that communicates emotions directly and sometimes is more powerful than words."
Dance St. Louis has been in existence for more than fifty- five years. This organization brings truly world class dance that wouldn't be in existence without the guidance of choreographers and former dancers such as their current curator, Michael Uthoff.
Dance St. Louis makes dance widely accessible to diverse audiences and includes first rate education and outreach programs.
This season Dance St. Louis has brought troupes such as the Trinity Irish Dance troupe, a primarily female company which shows and encourages female empowerment, and Alvin Ailey II which was founded in 1974 merging the country's best young dance talent with outstanding emerging choreographers. This group was founded as the Repertory Ensemble which embodies Alvin Ailey's mission to establish an extended cultural community that provides dance performance, training and community programs for all people.
I love going to Strauss Park in Grand Center to watch the Karlovsky and Company Dancers perform during the summer in the open air. Twenty-five years ago Dawn Karlovsky moved to St. Louis after working with companies from San Francisco to Chicago and in 2012, she formed her own company. The troupe has performed across the region and even to other parts of the world.
Last year, I was lucky to have seen Karlovsky and Company perform with a South African Dance troupe in "Conversations" at the Grandel Theater. The two companies met on the internet and performed in each other's countries and what a thrill it was to see their performance.
And of course we have St. Louis Ballet whose mission is to provide a, professional, residential ballet company that performs both classical and contemporary works of a very high quality for the cultural enrichment and enjoyment of the entire community.
The company employs twenty-one paid dancers and has five artistic productions per year under the direction of Gen Horiuchi who was originally asked by George Balanchine to dance for the New York City Ballet and went on to become a principal dancer.
Consuming Kinetics Dance Company is the region's first professional dance company to specialize in drop-in classes. Consuming Kinetics invites people of all levels to take to the dance floor. Though some newcomers might be apprehensive at first, fellow students are quick to offer encouragement. Founder Arica Brown says, "We create a culture that's infectious to our clients. "The company produces inspiring performances."
COCA (Center of Creative Arts) is in the lead for dance instruction and has under the leadership of the late Lee Nolting sent many dancers from the COCA dance program on to major professional dance careers. Antonio Douthit-Boyd, a former student at COCA, has the position of Artistic Director of Dance at COCA. Both Antonio and his husband Kirven Douthit-Boyd danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and among many national honors presented to both dancers, they were awarded the Excellence in the Arts Award from The Arts and Education Council of St. Louis.
There are literally hundreds of schools of dance and some of St. Louis's universities offer degrees and certificates in dance. Washington University's Dance Collective is very well known and serves as the Performing Arts resident dance company. WUDC is a unique blending of talented and expressive movers from very diverse backgrounds who bring with them a wide range of movement styles and performance acumen.
And with all of this I didn't mention all the ethnic and folk dance companies, ballroom dance or dance in religion and mythology. The list goes on.
I'll end with another definition of dance from an internet dictionary, "Dance is a non-material product of culture that portrays thoughts, beliefs and social norms of a culture."
Nancy Kranzberg has been involved in the arts community for more than forty years on numerous arts related boards.