Royston Maldoom, OBE (born 1943) is a British choreographer whose works, including Adagietto and Ursprung, have been performed for various dance companies, such as The Jefferson Dancers and Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Royston Maldoom, OBE (born 1943) is a British choreographer whose works, including Adagietto and Ursprung, have been performed for various dance companies, such as The Jefferson Dancers and Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Royston Maldoom's career as a choreographer began in 1972 when he received a major Gulbenkian Foundation award for his work in a Royal Ballet workshop, he had previously been studying dance with Hilde Holger. Since then he has created works for companies in Britain and abroad, including Dance Theatre of Harlem (New York), 'Atlanta Contemporary Dance Company' (Georgia USA), 'Ballet San Marcos' (Peru), 'Northern Ballet Theatre' (Manchester UK), 'EMMA Dance Company' (Leicestershire UK), Scottish Ballet (Glasgow UK) for whom, in collaboration with Graham Bowers, he created 'Ursprung'.
In 1975 his small group, 'Mercury Dance Company', won first prize at the 7th International Choreographic Competition at Bagnolet in Paris, and was subsequently awarded the 'Foundation of France' prize for choreographer and company.
Maldoom was appointed 'Dance Artist in Residence' jointly by Fife and Tayside Regional Councils in January 1981. The year's residency with financial support from the Scottish Arts Council, was the first of its kind to cover an area rather than a single institution, and through his unique and unconventional approach to dance successfully encouraged participation and interest in dance within communities, with performance workshops and classes, on a scale not seen before.
He was responsible with others in forming Dundee Repertory Dance Theatre and in his role as Artistic Director, established a solid, successful and ongoing base for professional contemporary dance in Scotland. He also maintained his commitment to community dance by setting up annual summer projects, where people within the community regardless of age and experience, could participate in a work that culminated in a performance to commissioned music and stage design at a professional venue. One such work was ‘Bivouac’ where Gordon McPherson wrote the musical score and Graham Bowers designed the costumes and stage set. The company was renamed several years later and adopted the name Scottish Dance Theatre, after the closure of Peter Royston's original company of the same name.
In a projects with the Berlin Philharmonic in the first season of Simon Rattle as chief conductor, he trained 250 children from public schools Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps . It was performed in January 2003, and documented in Rhythm Is It! . [1]
He also came to NYC in 2007 and worked with four inner city schools to reproduce the Rite of Spring dance with the Berlin Philharmonic. (Twelve students from PS 161 in West Harlem as well as two Harlem high schools & six students from an elementary school were the dance performers.) [2]
In 1996, Dance United founders Andrew Coggins, Mags Byrne and Royston Maldoom, together with the Ethiopian Gemini Trust, created a unique dance project in Addis Ababa with street children which led to the foundation of the Adugna Community Dance Theatre Company. In 2000, Dance United was officially established.
Trained intensively over many years in Addis Ababa by dance artists from all over the world, eighteen young Ethiopian dancers graduated in 2002 with accreditation from Middlesex University (UK). In 2004, Junaid Jemal Sendi won the international Rolex Young Choreographer award, the first ever African artist to win this prestigious accolade. Junaid and fellow Adugna dancer, Addisu Demissie, also played key roles in Dance United's DESTINO at Sadler's Wells in 2009.
Addis Ababa is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. In the 2007 census, the city's population was estimated to be 2,739,551 inhabitants. Addis Ababa is a highly developed and important cultural, artistic, financial and administrative centre of Ethiopia.
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in 1931 by Dame Ninette de Valois. It became the resident ballet company of the Royal Opera House in 1946, and has purpose-built facilities within these premises. It was granted a royal charter in 1956, becoming recognised as Britain's flagship ballet company.
Mark William Morris is an American dancer, choreographer and director whose work is acclaimed for its craftsmanship, ingenuity, humor, and at times eclectic musical accompaniments. Morris is popular among dance aficionados, the music world, as well as mainstream audiences.
The Joffrey Ballet is a dance company and training institution in Chicago, Illinois. The Joffrey regularly performs classical and contemporary ballets during its annual performance season at the Civic Opera House, including its annual presentation of The Nutcracker.
Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) is an American professional ballet company and school based in Harlem, New York City. It was founded in 1969 under the directorship of Arthur Mitchell and later partnered with Karel Shook. Milton Rosenstock served as the company's music director from 1981 to 1992. The DTH is renowned for being both "the first Black classical ballet company", and "the first major ballet company to prioritize Black dancers".
Arthur Mitchell was an American ballet dancer, choreographer, and founder and director of ballet companies. In 1955, he was the first African-American dancer with the New York City Ballet, where he was promoted to principal dancer the following year and danced in major roles until 1966. He then founded ballet companies in Spoleto, Washington, D.C., and Brazil. In 1969, he founded a training school and the first African-American classical ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem. Among other awards, Mitchell was recognized as a MacArthur Fellow, inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame, and received the United States National Medal of Arts and a Fletcher Foundation fellowship.
Fisseha Adugna is an Ethiopian diplomat who was the Ethiopian ambassador to the United Kingdom. He served in this post from 8 March 2002 until March 2006. He was succeeded by Berhanu Kebede.
Harlem School of the Arts (HSA) is an art school in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City.
Peter Royston is an English dancer, choreographer, teacher and director. He was a successful dancer, but his success increased after he began choreographing new works.
The Scottish School of Contemporary Dance is a dance and performing arts school affiliated with the Dundee College. It offers a four-year training from foundation level and prepares students for careers as dance performers, choreographers, and community artists. The School is relatively small and has close links with a variety of professional artists, including the Scottish Dance Theatre, and Thomas Small, director of Shaper Caper.
Northern Ballet, formerly Northern Ballet Theatre, is a dance company based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with a strong repertoire in theatrical dance productions where the emphasis is on story telling as well as classical ballet. The company tours widely across the United Kingdom.
Robert Garland is the artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, where he was a principal dancer and their first official resident choreographer. He has also choreographed for the New York City Ballet, The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the Oakland Ballet, among many others.
The Dayton Ballet is a ballet company based in Dayton, Ohio.
Rambert is a leading British dance company. Formed at the start of the 20th century as a classical ballet company, it exerted a great deal of influence on the development of dance in the United Kingdom, and today, as a contemporary dance company, continues to be one of the world's most renowned dance companies. It has previously been known as the Ballet Club, and the Ballet Rambert.
Rhythm Is It! is a 2004 German documentary film directed by Thomas Grube and Enrique Sánchez Lansch. The film documents a project undertaken by conductor Simon Rattle and choreographer Royston Maldoom to stage a performance of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps with a cast of 250 children recruited from Berlin's public schools. The choreographer inspired the young people from 25 countries in demanding rehearsals to work seriously and act as an ensemble, overcoming obstacles and frustration, and to find self-confidence based on body perception. A successful performance was given for 3000 spectators in the Berlin Treptow Arena in January 2003.
Creole Giselle is a version of the ballet Giselle in which the story's events are moved to 1840s Louisiana and given an Afro-Creole focus.
Mamela Nyamza is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, curator, director and activist in South Africa. She is trained in a variety of styles of dance including ballet, modern dance, African dance, the Horton technique, Spanish dance, jazz, movement and mime, flying low technique, release technique, gumboot dance and Butoh. Her style of dance and choreography blends aspects of traditional and contemporary dances. Nyamza has performed nationally and internationally. She has choreographed autobiographical, political, and social pieces both on her own and in collaboration with other artists. She draws inspiration from her daily life and her childhood growing up in Gugulethu, as well as her identity as a homosexual, Black, South African woman. She uses her platform to share some of the traumas faced by South African lesbians, such as corrective rape. Additionally, she has created various community outreach projects that have spread dance to different communities within South Africa, including the University of Stellenbosch's Project Move 1524, a group that uses dance therapy to educate on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and drug abuse.
Dance United is a non-profit organisation with projects in Ethiopia, Central London, Wessex and Yorkshire. Youths marginalised in society participate in intensive contemporary dance training, which in turn offers them educational qualifications and useful life skills. Each Dance United location has a professional dance company made up of past academy members or local university dancers. The performance company has worked with choreographers such as Dam Van Huynh, Sara Dowling, Lizzie Kew Ross, Darren Ellis and John Ross. Performances have been held in well-known venues throughout England including Sadler's Wells, Two-Temple Place, The Place, Royal Festival Hall, Theatre Royal Winchester, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Lawrence Batley Theatre. Over the years, Dance United has worked with a diverse range of beneficiaries, including Ethiopian street children, adult women prisoners and people from across the political divides in Berlin and Belfast.
Helen Pickett is an American choreographer for stage and film, and has been described as “one of the few prominent women in ballet today”.
Ananya Chatterjea is a contemporary Indian dancer and scholar. She is the founder, artistic director, and choreographer of Ananya Dance Theatre, a professional, contemporary Indian dance company composed of women artists of color. She is also a professor of dance at the University of Minnesota. Originally from Bengal, India, Chatterjea now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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