Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance inhabits the dynamic extremes of ballet, invoking both rigor and ease to create a passionate expression of the ever-shifting nature of our emotions and interactions. By confronting rather than transcending the physical limitations of pointe work and other virtuosities idiomatic to ballet, Lavagnino renders the expressive tools to magnify remote or un-idealized aspects of the human condition such as aggression, fragility, and struggle. Biography and narrative are woven into the emotional fabric of the dance.

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance was officially formed in 2000, with an inaugural season at Danspace Project. In 2001, Lavagnino was a resident choreographer at The yard's Bessie Schoenberg Residency and received the 2001 Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation Choreography Award. In 2003, Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance was presented by Inside/Out at Jacob's Pillow for a full evening of pointe work. In February 2004, Danspace Project presented Encounters, the company's second full evening at St. Mark's Church, In November of 2004, the company enjoyed a residency and performance series at the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center developing Snap Shots. The company was presented again by Jacob's Pillow in 2005 and Danspace Project in May 2006. This past spring Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance received a space grant from the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

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INWARD

This past winter '08 Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance collaborated once again with composer Scott Killian. Lavagnino and Killian have a long history of satisfying collaborations. Killian responded to Lavagnino's preference for live music and invited composer/violinist Jacob Lawson to join the creative process. INWARD contemplates the external/internal states of being, which are being redefined in today's electronically driven world. Exaggerated of line and rushing tempos of dense pointe work were set against adagio sections that brought calm and yoga like meditation to mind. Trios and duets explored states of interpersonal disconnection and other moments of yielding tenderness between two dancers. The technical deftness of the dancers heightens the emotional content of INWARD.


W O R K S H O P S

Cherylyn Lavagnino offers professional ballet training that emphasizes sound skeletal alignment, mechanical efficiency, and gravity in order to increase the dancer's own structural support for physical freedom, directness of intention, and ease with musical and technical complexities. Lavagnino's sophisticated and clear approach to ballet technique incorporates her wealth of information on the body with a strong sense of the person inside the movement. Through the release of personal and physical tensions, dynamic and expressive range is continually expanded and an honest level of performance is attained.

On the Ballet Faculty at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts since 1987, she directed the Second Avenue Dance Company for fourteen years, and in recognition of her superior work, she won New York University's prestigious David Payne Carter Award for Excellence in Teaching in May of 2003. Lavagnino currently serves as the Chair of the Dance Department at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.