David Dorfman Overview

David Dorfman, a native Chicagoan who labels his work as “post-postmodern,” started out in athletics, and began dancing in college. In 1985, he started his own dance company, David Dorfman Dance. Dorfman’s choreography can be rough and tumble; dancers collide and... [more]

David Dorfman, a native Chicagoan who labels his work as “post-postmodern,” started out in athletics, and began dancing in college. In 1985, he started his own dance company, David Dorfman Dance. Dorfman’s choreography can be rough and tumble; dancers collide and speak onstage. He has been known to play music while dancing. He is not afraid to explore ethnic and sexual identities, kinetic boundaries and personal issues. Dorfman’s creation process consists of committing to and fully researching an issue that will become a dance piece. By taking on political and social themes, he is lauded for works that challenge the audience to think about the issues he brings up in his work. Dorfman is very much interested in dancers as distinct individuals, not just as bodies on which to fit his movement. He works this ethic into his performance pieces. Dorfman is the 2007 recipient of The Martha Hill Fund for Dance’s Mid-Career Award and a 2005 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. He has also been honored with four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, an American Choreographer's Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard, and a New York Dance & Performance Award ("Bessie") for David Dorfman Dance's community-based project Familiar Movements (The Family Project). Dorfman's choreography has been produced in New York City at venues ranging from the BAM Next Wave Festival to The Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, The Duke on 42nd Street, Danspace Project/St. Mark's Church, P.S. 122, and Dancing in the Streets, and throughout North and South America, Great Britain, and Europe, most recently touring underground in St. Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk in Russia and Bytom and Cracow in Poland. His work has been commissioned widely in the U.S. and in Europe. As a performer, Dorfman toured internationally with Kei Takei's Moving Earth and Susan Marshall & Co. Dorfman holds a BS in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA in Dance from Connecticut College, where he joined the faculty in the fall of 2004, is currently William Meredith Professor of Dance and Department Chair, and where David Dorfman Dance is company-in-residence. [show less]