Featured Dancers | Lindsey, Kellie, Tara

Lindsey Bauer

Lindsey Bauer (Dancer, Programming Director, Co-founder, Graphic Designer) is a dance artist, teacher and choreographer. As Programming Director, Lindsey has been able to implement partnerships with community organizations providing after school movement experiences for children in the public schools and at the Eli Whitney Museum’s summer program. Her dance work has been presented in CT, MD and AZ. In addition to ECDC artists, Lindsey has worked with Olushola Cole, Adejoke Tubiyele, Rachel Bernsen, A. Beck and Nicole Manus. Lindsey teaches dance full time at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, mentors the seniors in their capstone projects and advises the National Honor Society for the Dance Arts Chapter.  She has a B.F.A from Towson University and an M.F.A. from Arizona State University.  Lindsey loves experiencing dance in new ways and witnessing that experience in others. She is grateful for each day that she spends moving with ECDC and thanks everyone that makes this possible.
 

"The making of If You Knew You Then has been an incredible experience filled with rich story telling, playful movement research and curiosity. Though the work is not narrative, IYKYT has a very clear dialect that grew out of the unfolding of each of our stories. It feels like we (the dancers) are not only revealing ourselves but our company’s language for the first time. In rehearsal I often think, “we are suppose to be making work like this” – work that weaves together all of our experiences to make a complicated and enchanting dance quilt."

Kellie Ann Lynch

Kellie Ann Lynch (choreographer) is a co-founder and Artistic Director of Elm City Dance Collective. Since 2008, she has been making dances, performing and teaching for ECDC. In addition to her work with ECDC, she has also been performing and creating with Adele Myers and Dancers since 2008. She has had the great privilege of working with Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc for a number of years; and is currently working with Kate Weare Company in NYC. Other recent artists Kellie has worked with include Saar Harari and Lee Sher, Annie Kloppenberg, and Nicole Stanton. Kellie’s choreography has been commissioned, produced and performed throughout the Northeast including at Bates Dance Festival as an Emerging Choreographer. As a Guest Artist, she has taught at several colleges and universities in New England. Kellie holds a BA in Dance from Rhode Island College and a MFA in Dance from Smith College. When she isn’t dancing, Kellie can be found teaching Pilates at the movement oasis, Aldrich Pilates, in downtown New Haven.
 

"Focused, warm, eye-contact, memory. These words describe a few sensations when I'm dancing inside this work. It wasn't always this way. I came into this process to cover someone's role, so the movements were not my own. It was like being in someone else's shoes and having to wear them a little while before they begin to form to your feet."

Tara Lee Burns

Tara Lee Burns (dancer) moved to New Haven, CT after living and dancing in NYC for seven years. She is honored to have recently started working with Elm City Dance Collective’s generous and exquisite performers and creators. Tara also has been performing, teaching and creating with Adele Myers and Dancers since 2006 and has performed throughout the US and Europe with various choreographers including Alexandra Beller, Kelly Drummond Cawthon and Marjani Forté. Mrs. Burns has taught at Jacob’s Pillow, Connecticut College and the formerly known Dance New Amsterdam in NYC to name a few and she currently teaches at Educational Center for the Arts in downtown New Haven. Her own work has been performed throughout Florida, Connecticut, NYC and in the UK. Tara received a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Florida (Summa Cum Laude) and an MA in Digital Performance from The University of Hull, UK.

Featured Dancers | Luis Antonio and Samantha Russell

Luis Antonio

Luis Antonio (Teaching Artist, Dancer) is a original dancer of Elm City Dance Collective, performing since 2008. Luis graduated from the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, CT in 2005, where he studied dance under Susan Matheke and studied ballet at New Haven Ballet under Noble Barker. Luis wrote, choreographed, and produced “Escapade: An Unusual Experience,” which premiered in October 2015 at Lyric Hall Theater in New Haven. Luis has performed with Nazorine Paglia (New Haven, CT); Full Force Dance Theater (Hartford, CT); and Salix Productions (Hartford, CT). Luis is a teacher and choreographer at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in New Haven, CT; New England Ballet School in Orange, CT; and Cross Drama at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, CT. Luis is excited to be dancing with stunningly talented dancers and is thankful for the opportunity to be able to do what he loves.
 

"My short spurt of time here in New Haven has seemed to be divinely linked with the IYKYT project. I came in right as it was beginning and will be moving away only 3 short months after it's premiere. It has been a most incredible honor to step into the shoes of an ECDC company member for one of their full length works. The way ECDC collaborates with each other and pours their lives and souls into their creative process is unlike anything I've been apart of before. This is the first full-length, evening work I've been a part of from start to finish and it has been an absolute joy ride! I have learned so much about myself (both past and present) through this process and have simply fallen in love with this company of magnificent creatures. I will miss each of them and this magical work most ardently!"

Samantha Russell

   Samantha (Sam), a dancer from North Carolina, has been with ECDC since June of 2014, right as the creative process for IYKYT was beginning. Although you won't see her physical self inside of the piece (due to maternity leave) know that many of her "isims" live inside of the work with her spirit embedded in its blueprint.
   
Sam attended Purchase College, SUNY, as a student of their dance conservatory program and completed her BA in Dance at Appalachian State University in 2011. She co-founded the non-profit, NC based, dance company Defero Dance Collective back in 2009 and still works with them from afar. Sam also works for Aldrich Pilates as a Pilates, GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® instructor. She will be moving back home to NC this June; a bittersweet return.
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Featured Dancers | Nikki and Alicia

ALICIA WHITE

Alicia White (Dancer) is a Rhode Island Native and graduate of Rhode Island College (’10) where she earned a BA in Dance and a minor in Theater. She has been dancing with ECDC since 2012. Alicia is Founder, Director and Choreographer of Metamorphosis Dance Company based in Pawtucket, RI. She has had the pleasure of performing in works by Eva Marie Pacheco (Providence Ballet Company Member ’10-’14), Wanda Strukus, Michael Bolger, Keith Terry, and Gus Solomons Jr. Alicia is also a teacher/choreographer for studios and arts education programs through out the state of Rhode Island. Her main drive is to share the spiritual, cultural and community building aspects of her art with everyone she encounters. Alicia is grateful for the opportunity to be apart of this production, for the love and support of her family and friends, and the ability to share these moments of joy with all of you.

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"Collaborating with the dancers and Kellie to create IYKYT has been a long and satisfying process rich in exploration and discovery. Our stories are beautifully wound and woven together, and yet there is plenty of space for witnesses of the work to see their own lives as a part of this environment we are creating. I hope the audience is moved by the work in a way that is like how I have been moved in helping to make it."    

NIKKI CARRARA 

Nikki Carrara (Dancer) is a dance artist and educator living in Pawtucket, RI. Her choreography has been presented in theaters, studios, art galleries, and fields, produced by Island Moving Company, Frazier Festival, Perishable Theatre, Providence College, and The Dance Complex. Outside of ECDC, she has performed extensively in the works of choreographers Nathan Andary, Daniel McCusker, and Melody Ruffin Ward. For the past 7 years Nikki has developed and implemented RI’s only public, non-charter dance education program in Pawtucket Public Schools. Her students have gone on to major in dance at the Jacqueline M. Walsh High School for the Arts and have stepped into the professional RI dance community as performers and teachers. She is currently working on a new multi-disciplinary work with Providence-based poet and playwright Christopher Johnson. This fall, Nikki will be an MFA candidate and teaching fellow at Smith College. Nikki is also a photographer, and loves to help things grow.

Photography by James Lastowski

People in Motion

Elm City Dance Collective invites you to a viewing of our community performance project, People in Motion, on June 5th, 2pm, Trinity Lutheran Church.

New Haven, CT -  Elm City Dance Collective (ECDC) presents People in Motion, an Afternoon Showing of Dance, performed by ECDC and Friends. The showing will consist of three performances: “People in Motion”, performed by members of the New Haven and surrounding areas community; “If You Knew You Then” (in process), performed by ECDC; and “borderland” performed by Chloe Carlson. People in Motion will take place on Sunday, June 5th at 2pm, Trinity Lutheran Church | 292 Orange Street, New Haven. The showing is FREE and open to the public.

Over the last few months, ECDC has been working with community members from New Haven and surrounding areas on a performance project called People in Motion. Through a series of dance improvisation classes and a weekend-long workshop, ECDC’s People in Motion, community of non-dancers and dancers alike, focused on the process of creating a dance, as a community, in the moment. People in Motion engaged their creative sides through physical explorations and collaborative movement play. The community worked on building confidence and trust in themselves and each other; and cultivated a collective awareness with the intention of composing a dance in the moment. The guidelines and movement structures used to inform this project came directly from the process of “If You Knew You Then”, ECDC’s latest evening-length work (in process). “If You Knew You Then” will premiere in 2017.

People in Motion (the community performance project) is generously supported by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven through a community engagement grant. ECDC demonstrates the importance of having contemporary dance be more accessible in New Haven by offering experiences like People in Motion. We believe appreciating the art can come from welcoming others to participate in the act of making. Come out and support ECDC and Friends! We hope to see you there.