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| Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance is a New York City based contemporary ballet company formed in 2000 as a platform for the choreography of Cherylyn Lavagnino. The company’s mission is to excite dance audiences through the medium of classical ballet while expressing the immediacy and humanity of post-modern contemporary dance. The company has been presented for four NY Seasons by Danspace Project in St. Mark’s Church and has performed at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, DanceNow/NYC Festival, The Joyce Theater’s “Evening Stars” series in Battery Park, Symphony Space’s “Dance Sampler”, The Field’s “Uptown/Downtown” workshop and performance |
series, and three times at Inside/Out at Jacob’s Pillow. Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance has been supported by space grants from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, company residencies at The Yard and SILO, and has received corporate matching grants from Computer Associates, Inc. for the past four Seasons. The company has received funding from the American Music Center’s Live Music for Dance grant and from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in support of its bi-annual “Salon Series”. This Series of artist salons, curated by Lavagnino, feature performances of dance and live music in a gallery setting to bring together artists of various disciplines living in Manhattan to create a dialog between enthusiasts of dance, music and visual art. |
Cherylyn Lavagnino (Artistic Director/Choreographer) has an MFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, as well as a BA in Philosophy from USC. Lavagnino toured nationally as a soloist with the Pennsylvania Ballet, performing at New York’s City Center and at BAM. Her merits as a performer include work with the San Diego Ballet, Arizona Ballet Theatre, and Ballet Teatro del Espacio in Mexico City. She has performed a range of classical repertoire and contemporary work by choreographers including Balanchine, John Butler, Hans Van Manen, and Tere O’Connor, and the diversity of these experiences has informed the dialogue between classical and contemporary in her work with Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance.
Lavagnino has created over thirty works in the past fifteen years, and since 2000 the platform for her choreography has been Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance. Many of those works were created in collaboration with composers Scott Killian and Andy Teirstein, and she regularly incorporates the performance of live music into her performances. Lavagnino’s choreography has been presented in New York City by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church (for four NY Seasons), and by The Field, Dance Theater Workshop, Symphony Space, DanceNow/NYC, Ballet Builders at Florence Gould Hall, and The Joyce Theatre’s “Evening Stars” series. Lavagnino is a recipient of the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation’s award for choreography and of a space grant residency from the Baryshnikov Arts Center and her choreography has been supported by the American Music Center’s Live Music for Dance grant and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Manhattan Creative Communities Fund.
Cherylyn Lavagnino offers professional ballet training that emphasizes sound skeletal alignment, mechanical efficiency, and gravity in order to increase the dancer's own structural support for physical freedom, directness of intention, and ease with musical and technical complexities. Lavagnino's sophisticated and clear approach to ballet technique incorporates her wealth of information on the body with a strong sense of the person inside the movement. Through the release of personal and physical tensions, dynamic and expressive range is continually expanded and an honest level of performance is attained.
Lavagnino has taught professional ballet internationally and in several New York City studios. She was invited to teach in summer programs including Bates Dance Festival, Jacob's Pillow, The Paul Taylor Intensive, and the International Summer School of Dance in Tokyo. In 2002, she gave daily company class for the Lyon Opera Ballet.
On the Ballet Faculty at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts since 1987, she directed the Second Avenue Dance Company for fourteen years, and in recognition of her superior work, she won New York University's prestigious David Payne Carter Award for Excellence in Teaching in May of 2003. Lavagnino currently serves as the Chair of the Dance Department at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.
Jacquelyn Arcati, Hollis Bartlett, Selina Chau, Joshua Green, Coco Karol, Ramona Kelley, Jackie McConnell, Christine McMillan, Hayley McNellis, Joshua Palmer, Iain Rowe, and Regina Sobel.
Jane Chung (Mosaic String Quartet / Composer), Scott Killian (Composer), Jacob Lawson (Violinist / Composer), Andy Tierstein (Composer).