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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Newcomb Dance Company works with Guest Directors on Gogol's Waltzes

The Newcomb Dance Company has the privilege of working with the Jill Karp Guest Director, Lev Shulman, and Movement Director, Melissa Ellberger, on the original piece movement piece Gogol's Waltzes.  Gogol's Waltzes is based on The Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol, a series of five short stories about St. Petersburg, Russia.


About Nikolai Gogol and The Petersburg Tales: Nikolai Gogol, a Ukrainian playwright whose works span 1840-51, is considered one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian Literary realism.  Marked as a writer with romantic sensibilities, his works contain strands of Surrealism and the grotesque. Though the collection was not titled by Gogol, The Petersburg Tales is a collection of short stories that he wrote between 1830-1840, including Nevsky Prospekt, The Nose, The Portrait, The Overcoat, and Diary of a Madman.

About Lev Shulman: Russian director and the Jill Karp guest artist, Lev Shulman joins the Newcomb Dance Company this fall in Gogol’s Waltzes. Founder of one of Russia’s first contemporary dance companies, “Provincial Dances,” he has continued to be an innovator and creator for dance.  He holds the title of Knight of Dance from Russia’s Ballet magazine.

By training and education, Shulman is a drama director, though he began to focus on directing and producing dance and movement pieces in 1990. Since then, he has founded “Provincial Dances,” acted as Director for the Yekaterinburg Contemporary Arts Center, head of the Contemporary Dance Department at Yekaterinburg Liberal Arts University, guest lecturer in the Choreography Department at St. Petersburg State Conservatory of Music and Opera (Russia), and guest artist at the Danish National School of Contemporary Dance (Cophenhagen).

About Melissa Ellberger: Melissa Ellberger is a choreographer who combines elements of breakdancing, post-modern dance, circus, physical theatre and visual arts. She graduated in 2003 from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, majoring in aerial acrobatics at The Circus Space. Consequently she performed internationally in the fields of dance and contemporary circus with companies such as Cirkor Events (Sweden), Accrorap/Kader Attou (France), ISH Dance-Theater  and The Dutch National Ballet (Netherlands).

Her choreographic activities began in 2008 while collaborating with choreographer Andrea Boll (Artistic Director Tanzhaus Zurich), resulting in the successful show Flying Tea, Floating Women, produced by the Frascati Theater in Amsterdam.  Since 2011, her choreographic work has been funded by national and international arts organizations and commissioned by a number of organizations and companies including Breakthrough Dance Festival, Roundhouse London/Collectif and Then, Dansgroep Amsterdam/Krisztina de Chatel, Fontys and Codarts Dance Academies, Tanzhaus Zurich and Cinedans/NTR TV Channel.

Gogol's Waltzes runs November 15-17 at 8 pm, and November 18 at 2 pm.