Two people in white shirts stand facing each other in dramatic lighting, each extending one hand forward as if about to touch, against a dark background.

Prep School: (A)Way Out of My Body

Since 1987, David Dorfman Dance has created movement that seeks to de-stigmatize the notion of accessibility and interaction in post-modern dance by embracing audiences with visceral, meaningful dance, music and text. By sustaining a vision to create innovative, inclusive, movement-based performance that is radically humanistic, DDD maintains a core commitment to examine and unearth issues and ideas that enliven, incite, and excite audiences in dialogue and debate about social change and a myriad of other topics. In advocating his mission “to get the whole world dancing,” Dorfman’s work has enjoyed broad and diverse audiences nationally and internationally. Learn more.

GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY

Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.

  • David Grossman, See Under: LOVE (Betsy Rosenberg, Translator). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989.
  • Padmasambhāva, Bardo Thödol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead). Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000. 
  • Anna Pakes, Choreography Invisible: The Disappearing Work of Dance. London: Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • Michael Pollen, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.
  • Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.

OFFICE HOURS

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Is Dance Underfunded Because It’s Undervalued? by David Dorfman

“Our societal values honor competition, and we march subconsciously toward the idea of victory, aligning ourselves with those we believe have what it takes to be victorious. What if instead we were taught in school to value the simplicity of witnessing and participating in life without the desire to conquer? Would artists start to be worthy of more mass appeal?”

Dance Magazine | July 22, 2019(opens in a new tab)

Happy to Be Alive … and Dancing

“I love the fact that we all have our own messes,” he said, “and how do we live with that? And then what messes might we choose to clean up, and get out of, and not leave for generations to come?” An exuberant talker, Mr. Dorfman converses in run-on sentences, nested clauses, tangents begetting tangents. After some verbal rummaging, he added, “How, in our crazy lives, can we live with less, and live with more quality?”

New York Times | Oct 4, 2013(opens in a new tab)

What Is Love? by David Dorfman & DDD Company

“[Dancers] embody all feelings, urges, forces. We can be leaders on stage, in rehearsals, in workshops in a tactile manner, inviting folks to touch each other instead of killing each other, to embrace failure as much as success to celebrate our everyday selves, which means to celebrate and honor being alive!”

BAM Blog | Nov 8, 2017(opens in a new tab)

Close-up: Interview with David Dorfman

“I’m looking for people that want to communicate, through literal and figurative touch, want to be in community situations. Want to build relationships with them, moment to moment… I want it to be more communal; and then we’re living, we’re practicing what we preach all the time.”

Zouch Magazine | Apr 29, 2014(opens in a new tab)
EXTRA CREDIT

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

We’ve picked a book to complement each show in our season. We’ve got novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and memoir. 

Why this book? Two artists, working in different genres (with a shared interest in music), help us think about the great philosophical, existential, political – and personal – problem of the body. A comparative reading of the titles alone could fuel an hour long discussion.

Book cover of “A History of My Brief Body” by Billy-Ray Belcourt. The design features a blurred, abstract figure in black on a pink background, framed by a yellow border with black text.