DanceIt! Spring Intensive in Sofia, Bulgaria, April 1-7, 2019
Registration Opens for DanceIt! Spring Intensive 2019 in Sofia, Bulgaria
You can register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeVRuZymhIoOHoHvgEfMQ4j7z8FBQjcoPrzm3nY625UE1Ztjw/viewform?usp=sf_link
Dance It! Spring Intensive is a week-long annual dance training program which takes place in Sofia, Bulgaria during the academic spring break. In 2019 it will be held between April 1st and 7th at the Dance Station Studios at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia (April 1-5) and at the Dance Station Studios at Paradise Mall (April 6), with a final stage performance on April 7th at Dom na Kulturata Iskar (Krastio Pastuhov St. 23,) showcasing the repertoire created during the six intensive days of training.
The program is an international collaboration targeting young dancers from Bulgaria (mainly) and from all over the world with the goal to contribute significantly to their dance education – to build upon their existing technique, expanding and enriching it with the vocabularies and practices of several fundamentally different dance forms. It also aspires to allow the dancers to take part in a creative process, as well as to benefit from the international exchange and intercultural communication.
In the course of the week young dancers take classes in five different styles: Classical Ballet, Contemporary, Jazz, Character and Hip-hop. The classes are taught by renowned teachers and choreographers from the US – professionals who are at the top of their career. They bring their unique expertise to the young dancers who do not have the chance to experience this in their routine dance curricula. Each student also participates in the creation of repertoire, which is showcased in the final day of the program.
The spring program closes with a final stage production – a combination of the new pieces of the choreographers involving all workshop participants and repertoire shown by specially invited renowned guest dance artists.
The program also offers open classes and public discussions on relevant topics, which additionally enrich the program.
Each year several of the most talented and hard-working dancers receive scholarships for summer intensive programs at renowned dance schools and companies in the US.
This is the 12th edition of the program. Since 2008, more than 1200 dancers from Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Greece, Montenegro, Portugal and the US have participated in it, and more than 60 young talented dancers have received scholarships for schools such as Pacific Northwest Ballet School – Seattle, School of Ballet Chicago, Debbie Reynolds Dance Studios – Los Angeles, Syracuse University – New York, Deeply Rooted Productions – Chicago, American Dance Festival, Kansas City Ballet School and others. Many of our scholarship recipients are currently employed at dance companies in Italy, Germany and the US, as well as at Bulgarian national dance institutions and private dance companies.
TEACHERS
CLASSICAL BALLET (Balanchine style)
Paula Weber
Professor of Ballet, Chair of Dance, Conservatory of music and dance, University of Missouri at Kansas city
Paula Weber received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance from Butler University and her Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance from Smith College. She has studied ballet with such masters as Maria Tallchief, Jean Paul Comelin, Dermot Burke, Basil Thompson, Larry Long, Marjorie Mussman, and Maggie Black. During her professional career, Ms. Weber performed solo and principal roles of more than 45 major works which include such classics as Swan Lake (Odette/Odile), Giselle (Giselle), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Cinderella (Cinderella) and Coppelia (Swanhilda), and contemporary works as George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco (First Violin), Agnes DeMille’s Fall River Legend (Lizzy Borden), John Butler’s Carmina Burana, and Alvin Ailey’s The River. She has worked with renowned choreographers such as Bill T. Jones, Margo Sappington, Laura Dean, Sean Curran, Charles Moulton, and Kevin “Iega” Jeff. She has been a member of the Milwaukee Ballet (principal), the Albany Berkshire Ballet (principal), Lyric Opera Ballet of Chicago (soloist), Chicago Ballet and the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre, and guest principal artist with the Hartford Ballet. She is currently the assistant director and rehearsal director for the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company and is ballet mistress for the Albany Berkshire Ballet. Ms. Weber has been a guest instructor of ballet in many prestigious schools throughout the United States. In 1996, she was invited to be a guest instructor of ballet for the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, Shenyang, China, making her the second American ballet instructor to teach at that conservatory. Ms. Weber was the 1997 recipient of the Mrs. Ewing Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2001 recipient of the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2007-2008 recipient of the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2011 Muriel McBrien Kauffman Faculty Service Award all presented to her by the Conservatory of Music and Dance, University of Missouri – Kansas City. She is on the official adjudicator for Regional Dance America and a site evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Dance. Ms Weber’s choreography has been performed by the Kansas City Ballet, the Albany Berkshire Ballet, the Kansas Regional Ballet, the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, Midwest Youth Ballet, Alexandra Ballet, Kansas City Youth Ballet, Allegro Ballet of Houston and City in Motion. Her first professional choreographic work, Carmina Burana, was performed by the Kansas City Ballet in 1996 with repeated performances in 1998 and May of 2002. In 2003 Ms. Weber was commissioned to create a new ballet for the Kansas City Ballet, “Canzone” which later by invitation became the three movement ballet, “Toccata e due Canzoni”, created for the 2005 Fall Season of the Kansas City Ballet. She has received three Craft of Choreography Awards from Regional Dance America (2004, 2008, and 2014). Summer of 2008 her work, “From Within” and 2013 her pas de deux in the piece “Blue” were selected to be performed for the Young Tanzommers Dance Festival in Austria by the Allegro Ballet of Houston. In 2010 she received the Regional Dance America National Choreographic Award and was named a choreographer for the 2011 National Choreographers Initiative. She is a member and former President of the CORPS de Ballet International, Inc.
CONTEMPORARY & JAZZ
Christian von Howard
Alvin Ailey School, Montclair State University, VON HOWARD PROJECT
Christian von Howard is the Artistic Director of the VON HOWARD PROJECT, a New York City contemporary dance company. As an international artist, he has worked with many dance artists such as Doug VaroneFernando Bujones,Douglas Becker, Germaul Barnes,Daniel Gwirtzman and various others. Christian is a NJ State Council of the Arts Choreographic Fellow (2006). His choreographic work has been produced in various venues across the globe including Germany, Japan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Chile, South Korea and in the states at Dance Theater Workshop (now New York Live Arts), Joyce SoHo, Dixon Place, and the Ailey Citigroup Theater to name a few. He is a teaching artist for Dance New Amsterdam (2013), the American Dance Festival (Winter Intensive), Korean Dance Festival (2012) and the Dance It! Program (Bulgaria). Christian is a 2013/2014 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement in Teaching Award from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts where he was part of the teaching faculty in the Department of Dance & Choreography from 2008-2014 He is currently an Associate Professor in the Theater and Dance Department at Montclair State University and concurrently teaches at Alvin Ailey Schoolin New York City. He holds a BFA from the School of Classical and Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University and a MFA from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
HIP HOP
Andrea Burr
Go to Talent Agency, Los Angeles
Andrea is a professional dancer and teacher based in Los Angeles, California. She is signed with Go to Talent Agency. This past summer, Andrea went on tour with Macy’s Glamorama “Fashion in a New Light” show where she shared the bill with Cirque de Soleil, the Backstreet Boys and Sheryl Crow. Her recent credits include the finale of the television show the Voice, Comic Con and Mandy Jiroux’s “Speakers Boom” music video. Last summer, Andrea was chosen as one of 8 girls in the US to be in “The Mobsters Way”, the Monsters of Hip Hop show in LA. Now she assists on the Monsters of Hip Hop convention tour. Andrea was recently in a short film called “Today is the Day”, directed and co-choreographed by Tamara Levinson and Daniel “Cloud” Campos. Last year Andrea danced with Rihanna on the X-Factor, where she performed the world premiere of “We Found Love” choreographed by Tina Landon and Tanysha Scott. In 2011, Andrea lived in China for 6 months teaching hip-hop and performing around the country. Upon return to the States, she co-directed a full length hip hop dance show in Seattle. Some of Andrea’s credits include: August Jackson Industrial in Las Vegas, Poser’s LA, Carnival LA, Cruz Control’s show at the Moore Theater, Seattle Seahawks halftime show, Vietnamese music awards, and the Young Tanzsommer Austriatour with Westlake Dance Center Performing Group. Andrea is credited with award winning choreography which has been selected to perform at Disneyland in CA, and the RDA Dance America Festival in Utah. She has received scholarships to Steps on Broadway in NYC, Millennium Dance Complex in LA, Debbie Reynolds in LA and various convention scholarships from Monsters of Hip Hop, Company Dance, Hollywood Vibe, LA Elite, Encore, and West Coast Dance Explosion.
CHARACTER
Petur Iliev
Iliev Dance Company; Pacific Northwest Ballet – Seattle
Petur Iliev is a Bulgarian-born dancer and choreographer whose career is deeply steeped in the rich folk dance traditions of his family. He started dancing at the age of five at the dance ensemble of his father. Later he graduated from the Bulgarian National School of Dance Art and from the Bulgarian National Institute of Choreography in Sofia, Bulgaria. He began his professional career as a Principal Dancer of Kutev National Dance and Music Ensemble where he worked for five years, before continuing his training at the National Dance Institute in New York where he studied under the supervision of one of the gurus of American dance, Jacques d’Amboise. Subsequently, Iliev became the Artistic Co-Director of Believe in Me — a dance ensemble in Austin, TX, where for four years he trained more than a thousand young dancers. Moving to California, Iliev continued working in the American educational system teaching dance to hundreds of children in a performing arts magnet school. A year later he was appointed the Artistic Director of Westwind International Dance Company — one of the first companies in the US whose mission was to present to the American audience the richness and diversity of ethnic dance. All along Iliev has been teaching master classes in Character dance and Bulgarian folk dances at many colleges and universities in different parts of the US, and has been creating new choreographies for professional and non-professional dance companies in the US and Canada. In 2003 he joined the faculty of the renowned School of Pacific Northwest Ballet and two years later was attracted to the School of Ballet Chicago. Along with that, for several years Iliev shared his expertise with numerous students in the public school system in Chicago through a 21st Century grant. With this invaluable experience in hand he resumed his activity in Bulgaria in 2008 through the various programs of his foundation established in the same year. The Iliev Dance Art Foundation has since been running several highly successful educational programs: Spring and Summer Intensives featuring five different dance styles, a solid scholarship program for summer training in the US, and the children’s dance program Dancing Kids, targeting youth from public schools. Back in Bulgaria, Petur Iliev’s artistic creativity gradually reached its full potential resulting in the creation of highly innovative choreography. In his works, he reaches to the core of the Bulgarian ethnic dance and unlocks its structure, unleashing its potential as a contemporary means of expression by enriching it with the vocabulary of ballet and modern technique. In this endeavor Iliev has creatively collaborated with distinguished American choreographers like Christian von Howard, Theresa Ruth Howard and Paula Weber, as well as with some of the most talented and prolific contemporary European composers, who wrote music especially for his productions: Petar Ralchev, Peyo Peev, Nedyalko Nedyalkov, Svetoslav and Vladimir Karparov, Konstantin and Alexander Wladigeroff and Stoyan Yankoulov. Some highlights of choreography include: Click (2013, a full-length children’s show); 5?5+1 (2014, a conceptual, interdisciplinary project); A Swallow’s Flight (2014, another joyful children’s production); Who Stole the Chips? (2015, a colorful detective story); Outside the Frame (2015, a combination of different art forms); Where Are the Elephants? (2017, a new phantasmagorical invention for kids). In addition, Iliev has also been teaching and choreographing for the final musicals performed by the graduating classes at The Anglo-American School of Sofia.
SCHEDULE
Dance Station Studio – NDK
STUDIO 1
9:00-11:20 Ballet (class & repertoire) Paula Weber
11:30-13:50 Contemporary (class & repertoire) Christian von Howard
14:15-15:15 Character Petur Iliev
15:25-17:45 Jazz (class & repertoire) Christian von Howard
STUDIO 2
11:30-12:30 Ballet for children Paula Weber
15:30-17:50 Hip-hop (class & repertoire) Andrea Burr
Тhe Iliev Dance Art Foundation is a non-profit organization and we believe that high-quality dance education should be accessible for all. This is why the fees for our Spring Intensive are the lowest possible.
Participants pay the registration fee after filling out the online registration form. The fee is paid in advance via bank transfer to the Iliev Dance Art Foundation bank account: First Investment Bank (Fibank), IBAN: BG62FINV91501016819649 BGN, BIC: FINVBGSF
Put as “Reason for Payment”: Dance It! Participation Fee for … (full name of the participant).
There is NO REFUND if you decide to stop taking classes after the first day of the Intensive.
PARTICIPATION FEES
Early registration – before March 15
One style – 200 EURO
More than one style – 280 EURO
Late registration – after March 15
One style – 220 EURO
More than one style – 300 EURO
Deposit In order to secure your spot in the program you need to deposit a non-refundable fee of 50 EURO within five days of the day you registered. Your registration is considered complete only when the deposit has entered our account. You will be notified about it by us. You need to pay the rest of the amount by March 20 (for early registration), or the first day of the Intensive (for late registration).
Discounts
Group bonus: It is more fun to dance and train with friends!
A group of more than 4 dancers will be awarded with 10% discount for each participant
To notify us of a group attendance, please email us the names of all group members at ilievdance@gmail.com. To complete the registration process each group member should fill in the online registration form.
