Harkness Dance Festival

Ellen Cornfield/Cornfield Dance – World Premiere

Ellen Cornfield/cornfield dance – World Premiere

Celebrating its 25th season, the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival honors the Centenary of Merce Cunningham.

Ellen Cornfield/Cornfield Dance exemplifies the exhilarating combination of heart and intellect, performed by dancers who “are among the most proficient technical and kinetically expressive dancers around” (Gus Solomons, 2014) and reveling in a mix of the elegant, robust and quirky. Ellen Cornfield was a member of MCDC from 1974-1982.

Join us for the rest of the festival celebrating the Centenary of Merce Cunningham, March 1-30, 2019. Our opening weekend features choreography by Merce performed by New York Theatre Ballet, New World School of the Arts and Melissa Toogood with Calvin Royal III. The following four weekends feature four world premieres from four generations of Cunningham dancers who have established their own companies. In addition to Ellen Cornfied of Cornfield Dance, we feature Douglas Dunn + Dancers, Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e, and Jonah Bokaer Choreography.

Program is subject to change.

Tickets from $35
Buttenwieser Hall

Ellen Cornfield

Originally from Great Falls Virginia, Ellen Cornfield has been active in the dance field for over 45 years as a dancer, choreographer and teacher …

Ellen Cornfield

Originally from Great Falls Virginia, Ellen Cornfield has been active in the dance field for over 45 years as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. Her passion and interest in movement has its roots in her very physical childhood spent playing and singing in the expansive outdoor space of the Virginia countryside.

She began modern dance training (Graham Technique) in 1968 at the University of California at Berkeley, performed in the University Company, and by her fourth and last year was teaching Graham technique, the beginning of her long career as a dance teacher. After a 1971 summer workshop with the Merce Cunningham Company at Berkeley, Ellen was inspired to move to NYC. She joined Merce’s company in 1974 and toured the world, earning a reputation as one of the foremost Cunningham dancers of her generation. She was in the original casts of his choreographed works from 1974-1982, in all of his early video works, and was on the teaching roster at his studio from 1972-2003.

The formation of her company Cornfield Dance in 1989 allowed Ellen to bring her elegant, robust and at times quirky choreography to new audiences through performances in theaters, universities and public spaces around the world. Ellen has taught and performed with her company in the U.S., Japan, England, Holland, Germany, France, Poland and Russia. Her works have been performed in non-traditional venues since her company’s first performance outdoors at Cooper Union in New York City, and have since been presented at venues such as the Freedom Plaza in Washington DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a plaza in Bytom, Poland, on a subway car in Tokyo and in New York City at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, The Buskers Fare in downtown Manhattan, Tompkins Square Park, Battery Park, Bryant Park, the 6th Street Garden and Elizabeth Street Garden. Her commitment to performance in non-traditional venues stems from her desire to bring the freedom and exhilaration of movement she experienced growing up outdoors to her dancers and audiences alike.

A master teacher, Ellen has taught at many of the world’s major dance institutions, including North Carolina School of the Arts, Harvard Summer Dance Center, SUNY Purchase, The Ohio State University, Hofstra University and the University of California at Berkeley. Ellen lived in Europe for fifteen months in the 80’s, teaching at The Laban Centre and The Place in London, the Rotterdamse Dansacademie in Holland, and for several European companies including Ballet Rambert in London, Companie Emile Dubois in Grenoble, France and Charlesleroi Danses in Charleroi, Belgium.

In 2008 Ellen created two new works on the Jose Limón Dance Company over a two-week residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University. She has received numerous commissions and funding for her work from both private and government sources, and has set works on companies and dancers such as Dartmouth Dance Company, Reflex Dance Company in Holland, Scranton Civic Ballet, and students at Ohio University, The Ohio State University and CalArts.

Continuing education and learning has been a cornerstone of Ellen’s development as an artist. She received her MA in Performance Studies from New York University in 2000, and over the years has worked with private practitioners to continue refining her body alignment. She began studying a technique called breathing coordination in 2004, a training that minimizes effort in breathing and maximizes the flow of oxygen. Her daily practice includes the breathing work, meditation and her own private dance class. Her experience as a dance artist has guided her more deeply into the beauty of the body’s energy and spiritual systems, a path that has become her constant guide and informs her art at every turn.

Cornfield Dance

Cornfield Dance has been active in New York City and throughout the world since its formation in 1989 …

Cornfield Dance

Cornfield Dance has been active in New York City and throughout the world since its formation in 1989. Artistic Director Ellen Cornfield’s choreography is grounded in movement, and in the power of an articulate, robust dance language to create a fully alive moment. Her dances focus on the use of space, time and geometric relationships, and have rigorous structures that carry a pleasure all their own. She works with a mix of elegant, vigorous and at times quirky movement material interspersed with surprising details, suggesting stories that never become literal or obvious. She is fascinated by pedestrian and gestural movements, and considers them legitimate material to be included within the vocabulary of a dance. For many years, she has been developing ways to use this less refined and more pedestrian material in combination with full-out technical dancing, and in some works has woven facial expressions into the line of a dance phrase. Her goal is for these dance works to provide a movement canvas that stimulates the viewer on a non-verbal kinesthetic level, and at the same time triggers recognition of shared human emotions, character and motivations, stimulating the viewer to connect on multiple emotional levels.

Cornfield’s interest in making her work available to a wide spectrum of audiences has been realized in much of the company’s work since that time, performing in alternative spaces - gardens, museums, plazas – as well as inside traditional theater spaces. International venues for her choreography include the International Dance Festival in Bytom, Poland (four times), the C. Munch Theatre, Paris, The Place Theatre in London, the OPEN LOOK Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia and three venues in Japan over a two-week tour, with performances in Tokyo and Okayama. Venues within New York City include the Abron’s Art Center, the Ailey Citigroup Theater, Playhouse 91, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, The West End Theater and the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival; venues outside of NYC include the Stephens Institute in NJ, The University of Maryland, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, The Yard in Massachusetts, The Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck New York and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, 2016 and 2018.

Support for Cornfield’s work has come from numerous sources. In 2008 she participated with the José Limón Company as part of a two-week MANCC residency hosted at Florida State University, developing material on the Limón dancers. A duet from her repertory was performed in the Limón Company’s Gala at the Joyce Theater, NYC. She has received commissions from the 92nd St. Y New Works in Dance Fund, Fete de la Musique, Danspace Project, Buskers Fare, the Harkness Dance Festival 2019 and the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, among others. She has received funding from the American Music Center, Pentacle Help Desk, the Asian Cultural Council, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Meet the Composer, Manhattan Community Arts Fund, Harkness Foundation for Dance, American Express Company and the Sidney Stern Memorial Trust.