Choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland’s A Place of Sun (World Premiere), a collaboration with visual artist Benjamin Heller, blends dance and sculpture in an investigation of adaptation inspired by the BP oil spill in the Louisiana Bayou. In Terra Firma (N.Y. Premiere), six dancers move through a billowing set of fabric sails in a work about migration, water, and new homelands.
A Place of Sun and Terra Firma were developed in residence at BAC with support from The Jerome Robbins Foundation New Essential Works (NEW) Program, The Enoch Foundation, and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
"A Snowfall of Feathers and Echoes of Sea Voices"
Stefanie Batten Bland
Stefanie Batten Bland graduated from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and studied dance at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. She attended SUNY Purchase on a dance scholarship, and the New School for Social Research on a scholarship for postcolonial literature studies. In 1998, she joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, where she spent several seasons as a soloist.
Photos by Julieta Cervantes