TrioDance Collective/Barbie Diewald and Emily Jeffries

About TrioDance Collective

TrioDance Collective seeks to champion the individual dance artist within the support of a group structure.  The company has performed the work of Artistic Directors Barbie Diewald and Emily Jeffries since its inception in 2010.   TrioDance Collective has produced full seasons of Ms. Diewald and Ms. Jeffries' work at The 92nd Street Y, The Cunningham Studios, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Triskelion Arts.  In addition to fully realized performances, TrioDance presents Open Dialogue, a studio series which invites the audience into an intimate studio showing for the sharing of new works in progress.  TrioDance Collective also curates a spring performance evening, Green Line, enriching communal support and establishing a unique platform that fosters artists' interaction. Through its diverse processes and programs, TrioDance Collective challenges its artists to explore, create and evolve.

In 2013, TrioDance Collective was a recipient of the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

About The Directors

Barbie Diewald is a New York based dance artist born and raised in Chicago. She began dancing at the School of the Chicago Festival Ballet, and continued her training with Midwest Ballet Theatre and Lou Conte Dance Center (Hubbard Street Dance Chicago). She holds a BFA in Theatre and Minor in Dance from Millikin University. Additionally, she has studied Viewpoints and the Suzuki Method extensively on scholarship with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company. She develops her projects within the Framework of TrioDance Collective, which she co-founded with Emily Jeffries in 2010.  In addition to presenting six seasons of work with TrioDance Collective, Barbie's choreography has been presented at by the Field at The Kitchen, Sarah Maxfield's THROW at the Chocolate Factory Theater, Newsteps at Chen Dance Center, Brooklyn Arts Exchange's Upstart Festival, Underexposed at Dixon Place, Dance Conversations at The Flea Theater, The CURRENT SESSIONS at The Wild Project, WiredArts Festival at the Secret Theater, Take Root at Green Space, WAXworks, Dumbo Dance Festival, and Dance New Amsterdam. Barbie has also developed new work through two Dance NOW[NYC] SILO Residencies, The Field’s Fieldwork Intensive, and The Field's Emerging Artist Residency. She was a selected choreographer for   Dance Theater Workshop's 2011 Bessie Schonberg Lab in Composition with Gwen Welliver, as well as SUMAC headed by Susan Marshall in 2012.  Administratively, Barbie works with Susan Marshall & Company and is a 2012-2013 Emerging Leaders in New York Arts (ELNYA) Fellow.

“In my choreographic process, I value discovery over preconception, and focus on generating movement first and confronting the meaning as it emerges.  I gather around the work with the dancers, and respond to it as it is made.  My works tends to start out richly ambiguous then it gains coherence, a specific articulation, a skeleton of images and repeated gestures from which to depart.  Movement itself has intrinsic resonance and beauty, and I find virtuosic codified movement and everyday gestures to be equally moving.”

Emily Jeffries co-Founded TrioDance Collective in 2010, continues as Co-Artistic Director, running performances, open discussions, artist development, and company programming.  She hails from Ohio and obtained her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Kent State University under the direction of Andrea Shearer. She received training at Orlando Ballet under Fernando Bujones, BalletMet, and with Laura Alonso at Canton Ballet.  Her choreography has been presented in The Cunningham Studio, Gibney Dance Center, 92Y Harkness Dance Center's Buttenwieser Hall, Mark Morris Dance Group, The Ailey Citigroup Theater, Dance New Amsterdam, and in Triskelion Arts.  As a choreographer she maintains a close relationship to process oriented work alongside practice based research which has been reviewed fondly by Dance Europe Magazine.  She has had the pleasure of collaborating with composers, Roman Rofalski and Dorian Wallace, as well as dramaturg Pele Bauch. Emily currently dances with Oren Barnoy, Tribeca Performing Arts Resident, and AreaDance.  Recently, she entered an apprenticeship with Anabella Lenzu and had the pleasure of performing her Ilusiones de Percantas. Additional performance credits include: Cirque Du Soleil, Danzare Dance, Judith Jacobs of Urban Bush Women, Karesia Batan, Off-Broadway in the play “Neither Heaven Nor Earth” directed by John Hansen-Brevetti and Gabriella Pinto, and as a Soloist with BalaSole Dance Company. She is a founding member of the Access2DANCE Program, which provides free dance classes to financially disadvantaged children and a Dancing Through Barriers Instructor with Dance Theater of Harlem. 

Find out more at www.triodance.com

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