Big Dance Theater
Founded in 1991, Big Dance Theater is known for its inspired use of dance, music, text and visual design to expand and refract literary texts, weaving disparate sources and forms into seamless theatrical wholes.
Under the Co-Artistic Direction of Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater has created 15 dance/theater works, generating each piece over months of collaboration with its associate artists, a long-standing, ever-evolving group of actors, dancers, composers and designers.
Big Dance Theater is an artistic leader in New York City’s performance community, with a loyal -and growing - following. In 2000, the company was awarded an OBIE for its “passionate practice of the most implausible choreographic and literary concoctions,” and in 2002 Co-Directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson were honored with a BESSIE for their “boldly arranged marriage of dance and theater.” Big Dance also received the first Creativity Award from Jacobs Pillow in 2007.
Big Dance Theater has been presented in both dance and theater venues in New York City, nationally, and abroad, including Dance Theater Workshop (where the company has performed for seven seasons), The Performing Garage, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kitchen, The Guggenheim Works and Process Series, the Fall for Dance Festival, Classic Stage Co., The American Dance Festival, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, UCLA Live!, On the Boards in Seattle, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Big Dance has performed internationally at the Bonn Biennale, The Polverigi Festival in Italy, The VIA and EXIT Festivals in France, The GIFT Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, as well as theater in Belgium, Rotterdam and Germany.
Big Dance Theater has been supported by individual donors, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts; Rockefeller MAP Fund; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; NYFA’s BUILD Program; The Greenwall Foundation; FUSED, a program of the French US Exchange in Dance in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, Culturesfrance and NEFA/NDP; Altria Group, Inc.; The Association of Performing Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Grant Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Theatre Initiative; Asian Cultural Council; Mental Insight Foundation; Mid Atlantic Foundaiton's US Artists International, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The Tobin Foundation; The JPMorganChase Regrant Fund and the Editih Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation at A.R.T./NY; the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation; the New Generations Program, funded by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for American Theater; LMCC Swing Space Program; Jacob's Pillow Residency Program; and Baryshnikov Arts Center Residency Program.
Under the Co-Artistic Direction of Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater has created 15 dance/theater works, generating each piece over months of collaboration with its associate artists, a long-standing, ever-evolving group of actors, dancers, composers and designers.
Big Dance Theater is an artistic leader in New York City’s performance community, with a loyal -and growing - following. In 2000, the company was awarded an OBIE for its “passionate practice of the most implausible choreographic and literary concoctions,” and in 2002 Co-Directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson were honored with a BESSIE for their “boldly arranged marriage of dance and theater.” Big Dance also received the first Creativity Award from Jacobs Pillow in 2007.
Big Dance Theater has been presented in both dance and theater venues in New York City, nationally, and abroad, including Dance Theater Workshop (where the company has performed for seven seasons), The Performing Garage, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kitchen, The Guggenheim Works and Process Series, the Fall for Dance Festival, Classic Stage Co., The American Dance Festival, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, UCLA Live!, On the Boards in Seattle, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Big Dance has performed internationally at the Bonn Biennale, The Polverigi Festival in Italy, The VIA and EXIT Festivals in France, The GIFT Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, as well as theater in Belgium, Rotterdam and Germany.
Big Dance Theater has been supported by individual donors, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts; Rockefeller MAP Fund; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; NYFA’s BUILD Program; The Greenwall Foundation; FUSED, a program of the French US Exchange in Dance in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, Culturesfrance and NEFA/NDP; Altria Group, Inc.; The Association of Performing Arts Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Grant Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Theatre Initiative; Asian Cultural Council; Mental Insight Foundation; Mid Atlantic Foundaiton's US Artists International, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The Tobin Foundation; The JPMorganChase Regrant Fund and the Editih Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation at A.R.T./NY; the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation; the New Generations Program, funded by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for American Theater; LMCC Swing Space Program; Jacob's Pillow Residency Program; and Baryshnikov Arts Center Residency Program.
