Studio Series: Sidra Bell

In Process Talks moderated by Tom Oppenheim

Sidra Bell is an emerging and sought after voice in contemporary dance with a strong vision creating works that ignite the imagination and explore the complexities of the human condition. The repertoire of her troupe, Sidra Bell Dance New York (SBDNY), features work that is haunting, emotionally transporting, articulate, sensual, ecstatic, and highly physical.  The company has become known for an unconventional, forward-looking investigative process that pushes past dance’s traditional vocabulary, venues, and boundaries. The movement material is risky, elegant, fantastical, peculiar, and darkly romantic with original themes and larger than life characters. The theatrical content approaches the psyche illuminating ideas that are beautiful, frightening, tragic, and life affirming, often exploring futurism, memory, dreams and nostalgia. With a creative system that values research over product, the company has created several highly successful installation and theater pieces including site-specific works.  Each piece uses a visceral and raw sense of physicality to create a signature atmosphere that depicts spectacular experiences with highly graphic and vivid imagery.

The Studio Series offers an opportunity for research and development in a creative residency format, providing resources of time, space and a commission. The Studio Series is a research laboratory for physical explorations and new movement investigations with a focus on process, not final performance/product. The “performances” are intended to be informal public showings to share ideas with an audience in the intimate working space of the studio. Studio Series artists are curated internally by the Artistic Director in conjunction with Programming staff and guest curators from Urban Word NYC.

Studio Series is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Jerome Foundation.