About The Company

Since its founding in 1985, David Dorfman Dance has performed extensively in New York City and throughout North and South America, Great Britain, and Europe, most recently in St. Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk in Russia and Bytom and Cracow in Poland. David Dorfman and the company’s dancers and artistic collaborators have been honored with eight New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Awards.

Prophets of Funk – Dance to the Music, the company’s newest project, previews at Vanderbilt University in September 2010, and through the generous support of National Dance Project/NEFA will be performed across the country, including the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at California State University - Long Beach in April 2011. Prophets of Funk is a dynamic engagement of movement driven by the popular - and populist - funk sounds of Sly and the Family Stone. Disavowal, inspired by the life and legacy of radical abolitionist John Brown, premiered in Chicago in September 2008 and received its New York premiere at Danspace Project/St. Mark’s Church in May 2009. Other recent creative projects include underground, which received its New York premiere in 2006 during the company’s second appearance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival (following performances at the American Dance Festival, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and tours around the world); Older Testaments, to music by composer/trumpeter Frank London of The Klezmatics; Lightbulb Theory, to an original commissioned score by Michael Wall; and A Cure for Gravity, set to music by popular composer and recording artist Joe Jackson.

Community-based projects have played an important role in the life of the company. In Out of Season (The Athletes Project) and Familiar Movements (The Family Project), the members of the company rehearse and perform with groups of volunteer athletes or family members selected in the communities to which the company tours. In No Roles Barred, David Dorfman Dance examines the personal roles assumed, formed and interwoven in our modern social construct. This project has been wildly successful with groups ranging from corporate executives and “at-risk” youths to college administrators, doctors, carpenters and social dance enthusiasts. No Roles Barred continues to advance David Dorfman’s goal to “get the whole world dancing.” The company’s three community projects have been presented over 30 times in 18 states and two foreign countries.

Performances and residencies during the 2009-2010 season include the Edison Theater at Washington University in St. Louis, California State University-Los Angeles, the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, the Florida Dance Festival in Tampa, and the New York University Tisch Dance Summer Residency Festival.

David Dorfman Dance has been company-in-residence at Connecticut College since 2007.