Catherine Gallant/DANCE

About

Catherine Gallant/DANCE
Catherine Gallant/DANCE was formed in 1999 after Ms. Gallant began working with her present group of dancers, creating works ranging from solos to large group dances. Ms. Gallant’s work often explores themes of chance, doubt and the body as a source of comfort and torment. In addition to traditional theatrical settings, Ms. Gallant has created works to be performed in train stations, abandoned piers, rose bushes, church balconies, in the middle of streets, in cemeteries, at the beach, in soccer fields and on rooftops. Catherine Gallant/DANCE has been seen at Danspace St. Mark's Dance Access, The Figment Festival, Chashama, GreenSpace, American Dance Guild and at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center. Since 2007 Catherine Gallant/DANCE has focused on non-traditional sites for its work. The company's goals include cultivating new audiences for dance and building an awareness of dance in the fabric of everyday life in both urban and natural environments. After performing in traditional indoor venues, it seems clear that true advocacy for this art form needs to include more performance events which take place in the public arena where potential dance audiences are waiting to be challenged and included in the vibrant exchange of ideas through movement. Currently the focus on dance video as a mode of sharing has increased our audience base and offered new and welcome challenges for our creative process.

Catherine Gallant, Choreographer & Director
Catherine Gallant, performer, choreographer and teacher, has been making dances over the last 30 years. She has been teaching at PS 89 in Manhattan since 1998 where she explores dance with children using an integrated approach to the arts which includes the language of Laban Movement Analysis and investigations of dance across culture and history. Catherine and her students appear in the PBS documentary, PS DANCE. Ms. Gallant served on the writing committee for the NYCDOE’s Blueprint for the Arts in DANCE and is on the faculty of the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) and Hunter College. Ms. Gallant is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory and holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University. During the 1980’s Ms. Gallant was an apprentice with the Limon Co. and appeared with Muna Tseng, Ze’eva Cohen and Dancers, Anna Sokolow and Beth Soll among many others. She is also a dance historian with a specialty in the art and technique of Isadora Duncan. In 1989 she co-founded Dances by Isadora (with Patricia Adams) which has performed for audiences around the world. Catherine performs throughout the US in Jerome Bel's new work Isadora Duncan. She has received funding for her work from the Harkness Foundation for Dance, Arnhold Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council the Bossak Heilbron Foundation, NYFA , City Parks Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and DanceNYC Covid Relief Fund.

Escape from the House of Mercy was scheduled to be performed in April 2020. We recently created a short video designed and edited by company member, Erica Lessner. Inspired by our hour length choreography dancers created their own video footage at various location across the country. Erica then combined existing video that was to be projected in our performance with these dancer generated clips.

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still from video by Erica Lessner