BUGLISI DANCE THEATRE

ABOUT THE COMPANY

 

Honored with the American Dance Guild Award for Artistic Excellence, Buglisi Dance Theatre is distinguished for poignant, theatrical repertoire and imaginative multi-disciplinary collaborations which fuse classical sensibility with intuitive creativity.  The company was founded by Artistic Director Buglisi, Capucilli, Dakin and Foreman, who performed together as Principal Dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company. BDT presents its home seasons at such venues as The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Ailey Citigroup Theater, and Victory Theater. World-class production values and theatrical appeal have won BDT invitations worldwide to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; the Sosnoff Theater at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Bard College; The Kravis Center, West Palm Beach; SUNY Purchase Performing Arts Center; Westhampton Performing Arts Center; Evening Stars Festival; Vail International Festival; Society of Performing Arts, Houston; Baryshnikov Arts Center; The Juilliard Theatre; Lincoln Center; Dance St. Louis’s Spring to Dance Festival; the Yale Center for British Art; Fire Island Dance Festival benefiting Dancers Responding to AIDS; and abroad to festivals in Australia, France, the Czech Republic, Israel and Italy, reaching over 25,000 people annually in live performance  BDT expands its service to the community with site-specific performances at such venues as The Whitney Museum; the steps of Federal Hall and New York Stock Exchange for the LMCC/River to River Festival; Battery Dance Festival, Bryant Park Contemporary Dance series, NYC; Utica College football field for the Special Olympics Opening Ceremony; and Dancing at the Crossroads in Times Square.  The company’s repertoire of over 100 original works is seen on such companies as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Richmond Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and Ice Theatre of New York, to name a few. 

 

In 2011, Ms. Buglisi conceived and choreographed the Table of Silence Project 9/11, a performance ritual for peace to commemorate the loss of life and honor the bravery of all individuals affected by acts of terror, war and oppression of freedom. Since the inaugural performance, it is performed every year on the early morning of September 11th on the Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center by over 150 dancers, musicians and chorus representing New York City’s diverse artist community, hailing from cities across the U.S. and abroad. Presented in partnership with Buglisi Dance Theatre and Lincoln Center as A Project of the Arnhold Dance Innovation Fund, the ritual is streamed live around the world, reaching international viewership to date by over 4.4 million people and growing in all 50 states and 238 countries/territories. 

Declared a UNESCO Siti by the Mayor of Assisi, Italy, the “Table” received Proclamations in 2014 from Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio for uniting the global community through dance.  Subsequent Table of Silence Project performances were held at the Pan Am 103 Remembrance Wall at Syracuse University; the University of California, Santa Barbara; in NYC for the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women; and the Piazza San Rufino, Assisi, Italy on the Day of Forgiveness. Screenings of the live stream were presented at the Global Summit, London and the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, Rome. The Table of Silence Project is available for viewing at youtube.com/buglisidance and at tableofsilence.org. 

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Artistic Director Jacqulyn Buglisi believes that movement is a basic element of human expression and that joy and inspiration flow from its wellspring.  “Using images, literature, poetry, heroic archetypes and a consuming physicality, I craft dances that explore human relationships revealing the bold visceral strengths, humor and exquisite vulnerabilities of the individual. My dances such as Requiem, Letters of Love on Ripped Paper, Wild Mannequins & Wing Walkers; Rain, Sand, Acapelorus, Frida, and Suspended Women represent my dream to embrace the integration of art forms through the collaborative process and current multi media technologies and my passion to inspire, engage, and attract the next generation of artists and diverse audiences into the realm of theatrical dance theatre.

 

Committed to connecting the global community, BDT has a long history of multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural collaborations with artists of the highest caliber including innovative composers Daniel Bernard Roumain, Jeff Beal, Paola Prestini, Tan Dun, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, Glen Velez, Alex Weiser, Daniel Brewbaker, Andy Teirstein; cellist Maya Beiser; Cassatt String Quartet, the New York Choral Society, and the Syracuse University Symphony Orchestra and Singers; spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi J0seph; visual artist Rossella Vasta; mannequin maker Ralph Pucci; and projection designer Wendall K. Harrington, Yana Birykova, Joey Moro, and Jan Hartley. 

 

In recognition of BDT’s contribution to the American dance field, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center films and archives the company repertoire for public viewing in the Archive of the Recorded Moving Image. 

 

Fundamental to the Company’s mission are its interactive educational residencies, workshops, and outreach programs which allow the company to share its creative process with educational institutions, and community’s across America. These include California State University/Long Beach; UC, Santa Barbara; George Mason University; University of Richmond; Jacques d’Amboise’s National Dance Institute, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School, NYC; Frank Sinatra School of the Arts; the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees; the Long Island Children’s Museum, BOCES Long Island; IB Program at Locust Valley High School; SUNY Purchase, the Joyce Theater Educational Residency, Stamford Center for the Performing Arts, Western Washington University, Cornish College, Seattle, Dance Masters Wesleyan University; Miami New World School of the Arts, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts; American College Dance Festivals; Florida State University, Contemporary Traditions at Jacob’s Pillow, Contemporary Voices and Visions at Hamilton College, New Dances at the Juilliard School Lincoln Center, Ailey/Fordham BFA program; Hospital Audiences; Michele Obama’s First Lady Let’s Move Initiative; NYSCA long-term residencies at Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute and Syracuse University; and more. 

 

BDT is deeply honored to receive public funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts, and important grants from The Arnhold Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, O’Donnell Green Music and Dance Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, the Heinz Family Foundation, NewMusicUSA, and The Harkness Foundation for Dance.  Among Artistic Director Jacqulyn Buglisi's many awards and honors are the 2022 Juilliard President's Medal presented by President Damian Woetzel, the 2020 Bessie Award Special Citation for the Table of Silence Project 9/11, 2016 Fini International Lifetime Achievement Award, Dance Parade's 2016 GrandMarshall/Lifetime Achievement Award, 2014 Kaatsbaan Playing Field Award, Altria’s 2007 Women Choreographer Award for her body of work, and the Gertrude Shur Award for Dance.  In 2014 Ms. Buglisi was named a “New Yorker for Dance” by Dance/NYC.  

 

Through all of its programs and performances, BDT continues to build the legacy of American culture, striving to nurture within the community a personal commitment to dance as a lifelong process of discovery.

 

Buglisi…works in images that seduce the eye as much as the imagination, with shapes, luminous textures, and stilled moments in time that offer an adventure in perception. Buglisi is a rarity in today’s world, a woman who delights in the many splendid forms of female being. Probably no woman, other than Graham, has plumbed such emotional depths choreographically. 

– Dance Magazine