ballet coming in june
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Program Note.
flower catalog ballet
choreographed by eryn renee young for xaoc contemporary ballet
Flower Catalog is a set of 12 preludes for piano, each commissioned by a different piano soloist about her own favorite flower. The entire collection can live and breath as a full concert set but each prelude will also be utilized as a uniquely personal encore. Flower Catalog is a commission by Lise de la Salle, Marianne Parker, Diane Katzenberg Braun, Eunbi Kim, Holly Roadfeldt, Adrienne Park, Susie Maddocks, Sarah Bob, Marta Aznavoorian, Jenny Lin, and Lucille Chung.
eryn renee young
Eryn Renee Young is the founding artistic director and resident choreographer of XAOC Contemporary Ballet, a New York City-based neoclassical ballet company founded in 2010.
She is an inaugural fellow of the Jacob’s Pillow Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellows Program and a 2018 resident choreographer of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Institute.
She has been commissioned annually since 2012 by Norte Maar for their CounterPointe series celebrating women making work on pointe and since 2016 has for them created collaborative works with female visual artists. Her collaborators include artists Amanda Browder (2016 “The Edge of Sunset Gems”), Leslie Kerby (2017 “The Container Series”), and Jeri Coppola (2018 “Land Earth Sea Cloud Sky”). Her most recently completed commission, “Voyager I” for the Columbia Ballet Collaborative, premiered in November 2018 in New York City alongside works by NYCB’s Silas Farley and ABT’s Zhongjing Fang, and was restage for XAOC Contemporary Ballet in Spring 2019. Her most recent commission from Eryc Taylor Dance for its EARTH presentation features an original commissioned score by composer Stephanie Ann Boyd.
Her choreographic work has been showcased at the Battery Dance Festival, The Ailey Citigroup Theater, NYC Summer Streets Dance Festival, the Young Choreographer’s Festival at Symphony Space, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival at the Paramount Theater, the White Wave Dumbo Dance Festival at the Jay Street Theater and the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, Dance at Socrates, Mark Morris Dance Center, the Martha Graham Studio Theater, the CounterPointe Series with Norte Maar and the Brooklyn Ballet at the Actor’s Fund Arts Center, the Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition, the Brooklyn Dance Festival, Brooklyn Ballet’s First Look, the Pushing Progress Series, Hatch, the Choreographer’s Canvas at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center, NYC10: an initiative for NYC Dance Week at Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, Triskelion Arts Center, Steps on Broadway, the Moving Beauty Series, the Algonquin Arts Center, Peridance Capezio Center, the Boston Conservatory, the Bart Leukede Theater at Rider University, the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem, the Agnes DeMille Theater at U. North Carolina School of the Arts, and New York University, including her first solo choreography show entitled “A New Era: Elements of Dance” in 2009 and a second evening in the Gallatin Arts Festival in 2012.
Additional accomplishments include selection as a 2017 Resident Artist for Dance at Socrates at Socrates Sculpture Park, selection as one of five finalists of the 2015 Edward Villella Choreographers Competition at Rider University, the 2014 Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreography Grant, selection for the 2013 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training, selection as a choreographer for the 2013 Women in Dance Series, a space grant in 2016 from the Joffrey Dance Center, and a 2015 Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant for her ballet outreach program “Project Ignite.”
Ms. Young launched outreach program Project Ignite in 2015, partnering with charity Headbands of Hope, to present a fundraising benefit gala featuring the company in a full evening of repertory with special guests Buglisi Dance Theatre and Marlena Wolfe (of Battleworks Dance Company and Camille A. Brown & Dancers), as well as performance events in children’s hospitals and repertory workshops for professional dancers.
She has provided choreographic consulting on projects including the 2012 MashRome Festival’s production of Medea under the direction of Jimmy Ferguson. She works administratively at the award-winning Ellison Ballet, has served as Production Coordinator then Assistant Stage Manager for Buglisi Dance Theatre’s annual Table of Silence Project 9/11 at Lincoln Center since 2012, and has been Coordinator for Peridance Capezio Center's Summer Intensive and Assistant Coordinator for Peridance Capezio Center's Certificate Program and Blueprint Summer Intensive. Ms. Young began her dance training locally in New Jersey and has studied previously at the Boston Conservatory, Peridance Capezio Center, Broadway Dance Center, and MAX Ballet Academy in Florence, Italy.
She holds a degree in Contemporary Ballet Choreography and Fine Art from New York University, where she was mentored by acclaimed choreographer Kathryn Posin. She is also grateful to count among her mentors such luminaries as Lauren Lovette, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Helen Pickett, Risa Steinberg, Dianne McIntyre, and Molissa Fenley, as well as teachers Liza Kovacs, Stuart Loungway, and Peter Brandenhoff. She began choreographing in 2007 and draws inspiration from Balanchine-Stravinsky works, classical sculpture, Greek myth, Christopher Wheeldon, and William Forsythe, among others.
xaoc contemporary ballet
XAOC Contemporary Ballet is a New York City-based neoclassical ballet company founded by choreographer Eryn Renee Young in 2010. The name XAOC (pronounced zay-ock) is derived from the Greek ‘χαος,’ which means ‘chaos’ and implies explosive creation. It is meant to portray the spirit of the company as they move ballet into the future, while maintaining strong ties to classical form. XAOC operates under the belief that there is room for ballet to evolve into the 21st century, led by women with a vision of inclusivity, generosity, inventiveness, spirit, humanity, and love.
XAOC has performed its brand of dynamic, powerful contemporary ballet around the New York City area consistently for the past eight years at venues including Battery Dance Festival, the Ailey Citigroup Theater, Symphony Space, the Boston, Dumbo, and Brooklyn Dance Festivals, and received awards from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, the Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreographers Grant, and the Edward Villella Choreography Competition. The company/Ms. Young have received residencies and fellowships at Jacob’s Pillow, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Institute, and Dance at Socrates in Queens, NY.
STEPHANIE ANN BOYD, COMPOSER
Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette, Ashley Bouder, NYCB soloist Peter Walker, and XAOC Contemporary Ballet’s Eryn Renee Young. Eero, a ballet commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York, was written for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Her music has been praised as “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP), and “wide ranging, imaginative” (Portland Press Herald).
Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Roosevelt University Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, the JVL Festival Orchestra, the Texas State University Symphony, the Cremona International Academy Orchestra, the UW La Crosse Symphony, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, and the El Paso Youth Symphony. Her work has been presented by the Thalia and her Sisters concert series, the Moirae Ensemble, and Sandcastle New Music in New York City; Æpex Contemporary Music in Michigan; Juventas New Music, Collage New Music, and the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston; Cincinnati Soundbox, and others. Stephanie has worked with conductors such as Andrew Litton, Lina Gonzales, Earl Lee, Nathan Aspinall, Cliff Colnot, Gill Rose, Julian Benichou, Kristo Kondakci, and Kevin Fitzgerald.
The 2020/2021 season includes commissions from the Wyoming Symphony, Astral Artists with cellist Tommy Mesa, violinist Megan Healy, pianists Lara Downes, Lise de la Salle, Marta Aznavoorian, Lucille Chung, Susie Maddocks, Adrienne Park, Diane Kaztenburg Braun and Music Street, Sarah Bob and the New Gallery Concert Series, Holly Roadfeldt, Marianne Parker, Eunbi Kim, the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others. This season also includes performances by the Lincoln Trio, Juventas New Music, Jennifer Reason, Lisa Pegher, Shouthouse, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, including concerts at the Kaufman Center, the Boston New Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music, Pianoforte in Chicago, live on Chicago’s WFMT radio station, and elsewhere.
Stephanie holds degrees from Roosevelt University and New England Conservatory, and she was one of the last violin students of renowned pedagogue John Kendall.