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| Director, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center |
Renata Celichowska directs the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, which offers adults and young people of all interests and levels of ability classes in virtually every movement style—ballet, modern dance, jazz, hip-hop, tap, ballroom, salsa and swing—including ethnic dances like Afro-Caribbean, flamenco and Middle-Eastern. Ms. Celichowska also produces the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, the Y's annual celebration of modern dance, and oversees the Dance Center's Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) professional development program for dance teachers; the New Techniques Laboratory (NTL) program of classses and workshops for professional dancers; space grants and performance opportunities for choreographers; and Breaking Ground series in which Village Voice chief dance critic Deborah Jowitt interviews prominent figures of the dance world.
The 92nd Street Y has been a destination for dance lovers since the dance program's founding in 1935, and Ms. Celichowska has a keen appreciation for its rich history. An NYU student trained in the movement technique of the avant-garde choreographer Erick Hawkins, she was invited to join his company after he saw her in a student showcase. She later paid tribute to him in The Erick Hawkins Modern Dance Technique (Princeton Book Company, 2000), the definitive book on the subject. In 1996, inspired by Hawkins's frequent cross-cultural collaborations with visual artists and musicians, she founded U.S. Dance Artists in Prague, a program that brings together dancers from throughout Central Europe.
Before coming to the 92nd Street Y in the summer of 2004, Renata Celichowska spent eight years on the faculty of New York University's Dance Education Program. She has developed and taught classes in technique, choreography and dance history at universities and conservatories throughout the U.S. and abroad, and has created 30 film and stage works, some of which have been presented by the Glimmerglass Opera Festival and the Strada Facendo Festival in Pisa, Italy. Kol Nidre, a piece for four dancers and a string quartet, had its premiere at the 92nd Street Y in 2003 as part of the choreographers' showcase series Sundays @ Three.
Ms. Celichowska began her career in arts administration in 1988 at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. She is at work on a new book that profiles individuals who have successfully pursued their love of dance off stage as well as on. Seven Strategies for Survival: On the Possible and Impossible in Contemporary Dance (Dance and Movement Press) is scheduled for publication in 2007. She holds a BA in Art from Yale University and an MA in Dance Education from New York University. |
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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