Summer Dance Intensive offered with Nimbus Dance Works
HACKETTSTOWN — Centenary Stage Company will offer the Summer Dance Intensive with the professional Nimbus Dance works. This four day summer intensive, open to the public, runs from July 6 to 9 on the campus of Centenary College in Hackettstown.
Intended for ages 14 and up, workshops will include contemporary technique and creative work/performance presentations. Students will learn professional choreography and develop a new dance working on Nimbus Dance Works’ Surface Tension company piece.
Nimbus Dance Works focuses its work on the intersection between high-level dance and innovative ways of involving communities and audiences. Nimbus presents performances and programs to diverse audiences locally and on tour: serving present audiences and building future ones.
Performers with Nimbus Dance Works are top-tier dance artists drawn from widely recognized companies including Ballet Hispanico, Ailey II, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. In addition to work by Artistic Director Samuel Pott, the company commissions dances by leading international dancemakers including Pedro Ruiz (Cuba/USA), Huang Yi (Taiwan), Korhan Basaran (Turkey), and Xiao-Xiong Zhang (Australia/Taiwan). Through critically acclaimed performances throughout New Jersey and the Northeast, programs for Jersey City youth and seniors, partnerships with institutions such as the Jersey City Board of Education, Rutgers University, and the Newark Museum, and collaborations with notable composers and visual artists, Nimbus weaves together artistic excellence and community impact.
Entering the company’s 10th season, Nimbus Dance Works programs impact more than 9,000 people each year. The company’s JC Grooves program serves more than 2,000 youth each year in the Jersey City public schools. Nimbus presents biannual home seasons in Jersey City, tours regularly throughout New Jersey and the Northeast and recently opened the School of Nimbus Dance Works offering dance classes to diverse youth and adults from the region.
Samuel Pott founded Nimbus Dance Works in 2005 drawing on a deeply held personal belief in the value that the arts can play in bringing people and communities together. Under his direction the company has grown each year adding performances, new repertory, and new community initiatives and projects. Known for creating structured and musical dances that evoke deep-rooted emotional connection, Pott’s choreography has been shown in New York City and throughout New Jersey, New England and California at venues including the Joyce Theater and the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
He has choreographed dance to chamber music, choral music, jazz, new music, folk, and mainstream vocal ballads; collaborations have included productions with theater groups, visual and video artists, composers and music improvisers. He has also collaborated with many esteemed contemporary artists including composers Daniel Bernard Roumain, Samson Young, Judd Greenstein, Aaron Parks and visual artists Nicola Lopez and Trudy Miller.
A member of the New Jersey State Arts Council’s Arts in Education roster of artists, he has taught dance at the elementary, high school, college, and professional levels and has served on the faculty of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. He is a certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method. Pott received a Choreography Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 2008 and was named a Distinguished Teaching Artist by the council in 2012. He serves on the board of directors of Dance New Jersey and on the Arts Advisory Council for the Jersey City Board of Education.
To learn more about Centenary Stage Company’s Summer Dance Intensive or all other summer offerings visit centenarystageco.org. To register call the box office at 908-979–0900. Registration deadline is June 29.