New Directions

directed by Professor Yolande Snaith

choreographed and performed by undergraduate dancemakers

Performance Dates

June 2-4 @ 7:30pm

Venue

Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre

Ticketing

Please contact our virtual box office at tdpromo@ucsd.edu if you need help with a promo code.

The Pieces

Ether by Sequoia Alvero

featuring Sequoia Alvero, Holly William, and William Kessinger

butterfly garden by Giovanna Francisco

featuring Giovanna Francisco, Holly Robertson, and Lucy Kudlinski

No Offense by Sabrina Fritz

featuring Sabrina Fritz and Ryan Warner

Paradise is Very Fragile by William Kessinger

featuring William Kessinger

Awaken by Erica Kahn

featuring Annie Wang, Alycia Thomas, Audrey Freund, Geneva Baker, Clara Williams, Gaby LeBaron, and Jalaysah De Los Santos

Victory by Nathaniel Kim

featuring Nathan Kim, Lucy Kudlinski, Maya Ordonez, and Holly Robertson

Countercurrent by Olivia (Yunyu) Lin

featuring Olivia (Yunyu) Lin, Mira Mitre, William Kessinger, Nathan Kim, Gabrielle Chen, Sherry Zeng, Evelyn Rivera, Maya Ordonez, and Ryan Zhang (violinist)

untitled by Kristina Little

featuring Kristina Little

Guiding Light by Isabelle Wong

Featuring Isabelle Wong, Maya Ordonez, and Holly Robertson

Big Fish by Boning Yang

featuring Boning Yang and Chenhao Zhu (pianist)

Click image for full digital program!

The Creative Team

Dance Maker (Ether): Sequoia Alvero
Dance Maker (butterfly garden) Giovanna Francisco
Dance Maker (No Offense): Sabrina Fritz
Dance Maker (Paradise is Very Fragile): William Kessinger
Dance Maker (Awaken): Erica Kahn
Dance Maker (Victory): Nathaniel Kim
Dance Maker (Countercurrent): Olivia (Yunyu) Lin
Dance Maker (untitled): Kristina Little
Dance Maker (Guiding Light): Isabelle Wong
Dance Maker (Big Fish) Boning Yang
Assistant Choreographer (Awaken): Annie Wang
Production Stage Manager: Stephanie Diana Carrizales
Lighting Designer: Elba Emicente Sanchez
Lighting Designer: Ericka Rivas-Navarro
Projection Designer (Awaken): Joseph Stommel
Projection Designer (Awaken): Emma Thomas
Assistant Stage Manager: Avery Simonian
Assistant Stage Manager: Shaila Sarathy
Production Assistant: Jason Tran

About NEW DIRECTIONS

NEW DIRECTIONS is an annual opportunity for student choreographers, dancers, designers, and stage managers to collaborate in the creation of an evening of new dance works.

This year's performance will be the first live, in-person, production of New Directions since 2019, and will be directed by dance faculty member Yolande Snaith.

About the Director

Yolande Snaith’s choreographic and performing career spans over thirty years. Her range of artistic engagement is broad, from solo performance work to group choreography and dance theatre, choreographic commissions and improvisation ensemble practice. Her work has been presented internationally in more than fifteen countries, and she has created several dance films in collaboration with renowned film directors. Yolande has been commissioned to choreograph works for dance, theatre and opera companies internationally. Yolande’s artistic roots lie in her native Britain, where she emerged in the mid 1980’s as one of the UK’s most innovative young choreographers, at a time when the European dance theatre scene was rapidly evolving. Having trained in visual art at Wimbledon Art School UK, and dance and theatre at Dartington College of Arts UK, the foundations of her artistic practice are multidisciplinary. Between 1985 and 1990 Yolande created a number of full length solo and duet works which toured the British dance venues and European festival network, with support from the Arts Council of England, and the British Council. Yolande received a number of dance awards including; two Digital Dance Awards, a Barclays New Stages Award, the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award and three Time Out/Dance Umbrella Awards.

Yolande’s UK company, Yolande Snaith Theatredance was established in 1990 with funding support from the Arts Council of England. The company’s work was renowned for its innovative collaborations with composers, designers, writers, dancers and actors, creating striking visual and theatrical worlds with their own unique performance vocabulary and internal logic. The company created and toured eleven full length works between 1990 - 2004, visiting dance festivals and venues in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, Romania, Lithuania, Isreal, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, UK and Scotland. One of Yolande Snaith Theatredance’s most renowned works, Blind Faith won the Prix D’auteur du Conceil Generale de la Seine-Saint-Denise, 1998.

Yolande has received commissions from dance, theatre, opera, film and television companies, including the English National Opera, Birmingham Dance Exchange, Transitions Dance Company, CNDC, Ricochet Dance Company, The Verve, Paines Plough Theatre Company, McCaleb Dance, Jean Isaac’s San Diego Dance Theater and Trolley Dances and the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj. Yolande has created eight dance films in collaboration with a range of directors, designers and composers, including director Ross MacGibbon, composers Graeme Miller and David Coulter, and designer Robert Innes-Hopkins. Should Accidentally Fall (1992), Swinger (1996) and Tablecloth Garden (2000) were all screened on television stations internationally, including the BBC and Channel 4. In 1997 Stanley Kubrick commissioned Yolande to choreograph his final film Eyes Wide Shut, and in 1999 she was the choreographic adviser for David Hinton’s film Birds, which was the overall winner of the 2001 Monaco Dance Screen Awards.

Yolande moved to the US in 2002 to join the faculty of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego, and since then her choreographic and performance work has diversified through a broad range of artistic collaborations, commissions, site specific works, improvisation ensembles, film and solo projects, with performances in Los Angeles, San Diego, Germany, France, Holland, UK, Romania and Hungary. IMAGOmoves was established in 2006 as an artistic ‘umbrella’ for collaborative projects with other artists and performers. Since its inception IMAGOmoves has created nine full length collaborative dance works and several shorter pieces, including large group site-specific events in urban city locations, to intimate smaller group and solo work presented in a range of venues, from the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj, Romania, to San Diego’s alternative performance spaces such as SUSHI Visual and Performing Arts, Space4art, The White Box and The Geoffrey Theatre Off Broadway, and the California Institute of Telecommunications and Technology Calit2.

Since relocating to the US, Yolande has fostered collaborations with renowned dance and theatre practitioners, composers and designers on numerous international projects including; theatre directors Gabor Tompa and Robert Castro; composer / sound designers Shahrokh Yadegari, Nick Drashner, Ryan Welsh, Splash Yang, Stephen Kent and Kristopher Apple; scenic/projection designers Ian Wallace and Victoria Pertovich; lighting designers Thomas Ontiveros and Wen-Ling Liao; co-performer/ dance-makers Liam Clancy, Jess Humphrey, Mary Reich , Alicia Peterson Baskel, and Katie Duck; visual / performance artist Eleanor Antin; theatre company the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj; film-makers Mark Freeman and Loren Robertson; music ensembles The Bach Collegium San Diego and musical directors Pierre Joubert and Rodolfo Richter.

Yolande has also created three full length solos works in recent years, One Hundred Feet (2011 - 2013), Once I Dreamed I Was a Dinosaur Swimming Backwards (2016), and most recently Of Body and Ghost (2019), presented in the Tête-a-Tête Opera festival, London, UK.