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Stefanie Batten Bland
Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
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Assistant Professor Theatre & Dance Department, College of Arts
Specialty: Dance-Theatre, Physical Theatre, Immersive Theatre, Dance-Cinema
3 times 2021 Bessie Nominated and Jerome Robbins awardee Stefanie Batten Bland is an interdisciplinary artist who situates her work at the intersection of dance-theatre, film, and installation, with a focus on the interrogation of contemporary and historical culture. She is a 2022 commissioned artist with Duke Performances in partnership with The Yard and Baryshnikov Arts Center, a 2021 Lincoln Center RESTART artist, a 2021 Toulmin Creator Fellow for the Center for Ballet Arts at NYU, and choreographer for American Ballet Theatre’s inaugural Women’s Movement Initiative.
Known for her unique visual and movement aesthetic, Batten Bland served as movement director for Eve’s Song at the Public Theater (Forbes 2018 Best Theatre), European Union at the United Nations, and is currently casting and movement director for Emursive Productions (producers of Sleep No More). She has created for fashion and lifestyle partners Louis Vuitton, VanCleef & Arpels, Hermés, and Guerlain. Her choreography is currently in active repertory at American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey II, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Transitions Dance Company in Greenwich, UK, and Frontier Danceland in Singapore. Her work has been seen internationally at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Danse à Lille in France, and Tanztendenzen in Germany.
Company SBB’s 2021 dance film Kolonial, produced by Baryshnikov Arts Center, was nominated for three Bessie Awards, including outstanding production, visual design, and costumes. Batten Bland has created 14 other dance cinema films that have been shown in international festivals in such places as South Africa, Buenos Aires, Greece, and Germany.
Batten Bland has been featured in The New York Times, T Magazine, Dance Europe, Marie Claire, The Brooklyn Rail, TV 5 Monde, and Dance Teacher Magazine.
A global artist, Batten Bland established her own company, Company SBB, in France in 2008 while head choreographer at the Paris Opéra Comique. Upon returning to New York City in 2011, she received the support of Mikhail Baryshnikov as a part of the esteemed residency program at Baryshnikov Arts Center, where she has continued to present work.
Batten Bland received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, is Assistant Professor at Montclair State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and lives in SoHo with her family.
Specialization
Specialization Dance-Theatre, Site-Sympathetic & Immersive Theatre teaching modalities.
Resume/CV
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Research Projects
Embarqued - Stories Of Soil - World Premiere 2022
Embarqued: Stories of Our Soil
Embarqued, an installation based dance-theatre work rooted in monuments and memory.Centered by a performative shipmast that invites reflection and reveals post-colonial foundations and mythology in the United States. Interrogating existing relationships to memorials, we call up our African ancestral stories integral to making our history united, enabling us to viscerally and holistically connect our country both forwards and backwards in space and time and through soil itself.
Life & Trust - Performance
Casting and Movement Director for Life and Trust production by Emursive Productions.
Challenging casting bias and patterning within immersive European American productions. Offering alternative casting visuals and parallel stories to support diverse hiring policies. Directing and creating movement to support story narration.
#WelcomeToBirdland - Guidebook in Dance Theatre and Space Making Modalities
#WelcomeToBirdland, is a manuscript which will inform makers of all types. My intention is for this book to foster collaboration with creators in theatre, dance performance and visual artists who have a performative installation practice as well as artist-educators and students.
At the book's core, is emphasis in articulation, presence, and dynamic decision making. By offering integrated examples of dance, theatre training and theory to students the book offers a current preparation that is tailored for the dance or physical-theatre trends that my students will be encountering in the majority of today’s immersive and installation performing art productions.