This preview has been provided by the American Dance Festival.
Roy Assaf‘s all male trio, The Hill, which won first prize in the 27th International Competition For Choreographers in Hanover, Germany, is based on the Hebrew song Givat Hatahmoshet–about Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, the site of bitter battles in the Six Day War. Ate9 Dance Company’s Exhibit B explores the difficulty that the Israeli conflict brings to daily lives. Choreographer Danielle Agami continues her collaboration with composer Omid Walizadeh with a mashup of hip hop and Iranian music.
Roy Assaf was born in 1982 in the rural community of Sde Moshe in southern Israel. Though he did not train formally, Assaf has been dancing and creating as long as he can remember.
In 2003 he started working with Emanuel Gat and danced alongside him until 2010. In 2005, Assaf created his first work, We Came for the Wings, Stayed Because We Couldn’t Fly, as part of the Shades In Dance competition in Tel Aviv. The work won the Judges Choice and Audience Favorite awards. From 2006 through 2010, Assaf worked as assistant choreographer of Emanuel Gat, developing new works and re-staging existing repertoire throughout the world.
In 2010, he was appointed Artistic Associate at the NND company in Groningen, where he created Rock. In 2011 he created and danced in Six Years Later which was awarded first prize in choreography at the 5th International Choreography Competition in Copenhagen. The following year, he created and danced in The Hill, which was won first prize in the 27th International Competition For Choreographers Hanover. The production prize given by the Staatstheater Tanz Braunschweig at this competition eventually culminated in the commission of Girls & Boys, which premiered in the company’s November 2014 season.
More recently, Roy’s invitation to participate in 7th edition of [re]connaissance danse contemporaine with The Hill resulted in being awarded first prize of both the jury and audience as well as a residency in the 2016/2017 season through the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble.
Assaf continued to explore the theme of gender with two distinct full length works Girls (2014) and Boys (2015), both supported by the Intima Dance Festival hosted by Tmuna Theatre in Tel Aviv.
In September 2014 he created II Acts for the Blind for L.A. Dance Project under the direction of Benjamin Millepied, which premiered in the Biennale de Lyon, followed in February 2015 by Ballader, a collaboration with the Swedish pianist and composer Roland Peter Pöntinen, for the Royal Swedish Ballet.
In 2016 Assaf created new works for National Dance Company Wales and for the Batsheva Dance Company.
Ate9 Dance Company founder and artistic director,Danielle Agami, was born in Israel in 1984, where she studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance High School and was a member of the Batsheva Dance Company. Between 2007 and 2009, Agami served as the Artistic Director of Batsheva Dancers Create and functioned as the company’s rehearsal director from 2008-2010. After 8 years with Batsheva, Agami moved to New York to serve as the Senior Manager of Gaga U.S.A.
In 2012 Agami relocated to Seattle, where she founded Ate9—an undertaking that fully realized her artistic voice as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. “With intriguing imagination, well-developed craft and an eye for nuance, this budding choreographer may surprise us yet.” (Ora Brafman, The Jerusalem Post). Danielle was the grand prize winner of the 2013 & 2014 Annual Choreography Festival at the McCallum Theatre and Dance Magazine’s Top 25 to watch in 2015. In 2016, recognized with the Princess Grace Award for Choreography.
The presentation of Roy Assaf is made possible with support from Israel’sOffice of Cultural Affairs in North America.
The presentation of Roy Assaf and Ate9 Dance Company is made possible with support from The Consulate General of Israel to the Southeast Region and The Israel Center of the Jewish Federation of Durham-Chapel Hill.
Performances
Reynolds Industries Theater
Tuesday, July 18, 8:00pm
Wednesday, July 19, 8:00pm
Tickets
$10 – $32.25