Dance Makers Brian Brooks, Beth Gill, And Angie Pittman Sign On To Teach At Usdan Summer Camp For The Arts' New Choreographic Institute

Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts, the nation's preeminent arts summer day camp, today announced its new Choreographic Institute, an innovative new program launching in Summer 2018. Students in the inaugural Choreographic Institute will be taught by some of the most visionary choreographers today including Brian Brooks, Beth Gill, and Angie Pittman. Open via application and geared towards those with a passion for choreography and dance making, the seven-week program will act as an incubator for young dancemakers who want to expand and develop their choreographic voices.

"We are creating a summer program that doesn't exist anywhere in the New York Metro area for young choreographers in high school," says Choreographer Juliana May, chair of Usdan's Dance Department and person driving the launch of the new Institute. "Students will have the opportunity to work with three visionary choreographers to create their own solo and group works throughout the summer. It will focus on experimentation, risk taking, and discovering new compositional forms with an emphasis on improvisation and experimental choreographic systems." In addition to working with our young dancemakers, each choreographer will also set a new work on our advanced technical students through the Usdan Dance Ensemble in the afternoon.

"Usdan has a history of collaborating with major artists and cultural organizations, and that we are thrilled to welcome these four choreographers to our campus for this amazing new program," says Lauren Brandt Schloss, Usdan's Executive Director. "This builds on our strong Artist-In-Residence programs which include a three-year project with visual artist Pedro Lasch and classes featuring musicians/conductors from the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and dance teachers Xan Burley and Alex Springer (formerly of Doug Varone and Dancers) Nicholas Leichter (Nicholas Leichter Dance) Bessie-nominated performer and choreographer Jonathan Gonzalez and Jaqcueline Bulnes and Lauren Newman (formerly of The Martha Graham Dance Company and Limon Dance Company) and many more."

The Choreographic Institute is part of an expanding Dance department, under May's leadership. With options for both advanced and newly minted dance artists alike to engage with multiple dance forms and ideologies, the innovative program offers a three-track course of study with an emphasis on creativity and composition. The goal: Cast a wide net that responds to Usdan's diverse student body but while creating an intimate and challenging learning environment where risk taking and play are integral to each class.

Students interested in auditioning for a spot in the newly-minted Choreographic Institute should visit Usdan's website and submit a short video of their choreographic work and answer a few basic questions.

This program dovetails with the recently announced Uniquely U Scholarship Search, which invites young creative ages 7 through 18 to apply for a chance to receive a full seven week scholarship to the Camp. Those applying for Usdan's Uniquely U Scholarship can also be considered for the Choreographic Institute. More here at uu.usdan.org.

For more information about Usdan's Dance Department or other classes offered during the 2018 Camp season, visit www.usdan.org or call 631-643-7900 or 212 772 6060.

Juliana F. May is a Guggenheim and NYFA Fellow who has created nine works since 2002, including seven evening-length pieces with commissions and encore performances from Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Barnard College, The New School, Joyce SoHo and The American Realness Festival. May has been awarded grants and residencies through The Map Fund, The Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Gibney Dance In Process. In 2002, May received her BA in Dance and Art History from Oberlin College and in 2012, she received an MFA in Choreography from the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee. May is the Artistic Advisor for New York Live Arts' Fresh Tracks Residency Program and teaches composition at Sarah Lawrence College. In 2017, May was appointed as Chair of the Dance Department at Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts. Repulsion, May's newest work, is set to premiere at Abrons Arts Center in the Fall of 2018.

Brian Brooks is the inaugural Choreographer in Residence at Chicago's Harris Theater for Music and Dance. This innovative three-year fellowship supports several commissions for Brooks, including new works for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Miami City Ballet, and his own New York-based group. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, other recent awards include a NY City Center Fellowship, Joyce Theater Artist Residency and Mellon Foundation Creative Artist Fellowship. Brooks' work has toured internationally since 2002 with presentations by BAM's Next Wave Festival, The Joyce Theater, Jacob's Pillow, the American Dance Festival, NY City Center Fall for Dance Festival, and the Works and Process series at the Guggenheim Museum, among others. Lumberyard Performing Arts (formerly American Dance Institute) has provided ongoing support through commissioned premieres and Incubator Production Residencies. Beyond his company, Brooks has developed work with renowned ballet dancers, actors, and student groups. Damian Woetzel/Vail International Dance Festival has commissioned him to create three works featuring dancers from NYC Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet, including First Fall, in which he dances with former NY City Ballet Principal Wendy Whelan. He is in his fifth year collaborating and touring with Whelan, currently performing a duet evening accompanied by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider. Brooks has choreographed off-Broadway Shakespeare productions for Theatre for a New Audience including A Midsummer Night's Dream (2013), directed by Julie Taymor, and Pericles (2016), directed by Trevor Nunn. He has created dances for Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech, The Juilliard School, Boston Conservatory, The School at Jacob's Pillow, Harvard University, and many others. Brooks dedicated 12 years as a Teaching Artist at Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education and has been on part-time faculty at Rutgers University and Princeton University. He learned how to run up walls and fly off a trampoline while performing for three years with daredevil choreographer Elizabeth Streb.

Beth Gill is a Guggenheim, Doris Duke Impact and Bessie Award winning choreographer based in New York City since 2005. Through a steady exploration of aesthetics and perception she has produced a rigorous body of work with evolving interests in abstraction, psychology, theater and dance. Her formal and exacting works are toned with the themes of alienation, objectification, female sexuality, rage and obsession. Gill has been a Princeton Hodder Fellow, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Extended Life Artist in Residence, New York City Center Choreography Fellow and a 2012 FCA grant recipient.

Angie Pittman is a New York based Bessie award-winning dance artist, dance maker, and dance educator. Angie has performed her dances at Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center, The Invisible Dog, Danspace Project, and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (Illinois). Angie is currently working as a collaborator and dance artist with Ralph Lemon and Donna Uchizono Company. Angie has had the pleasure of dancing in work by Tere O'Connor, Jennifer Monson, Anna Sperber, Tess Dworman, Antonio Ramos, Jasmine Hearn, Jonathan Gonzalez, and others. She holds a MFA in Dance and Choreography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a graduate minor in African American Studies. She has been a guest artist at Old Dominion University and was a 2015 DanceWEB scholar for Impulstanz Dance Festival in Vienna, Austria. Her work has also been supported by residencies at Tofte Lake Center and Movement Research. Angie's work resides in a space that investigates how bodies moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2018, Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts (http://www.usdan.org) offers nearly 100 classes in music, dance, theater, visual arts, creative writing, nature, recreation and chess, annually hosting more than 1,600 students from towns throughout the New York City metro area. Open to all young people from age 4 to 18, no audition is needed for most courses, and transportation is provided in air-conditioned buses that depart from most Metro New York neighborhoods. One-third of Usdan's students receive scholarship assistance based on family need or merit. Alumni include members of Broadway shows and major music, theater, and dance ensembles such as the Boston Pops and the New York City Ballet. Usdan is an agency of the UJA-Federation of New York.