Tere O’Connor has been making dances since 1982 and
has created over thirty works for his company. The company
has performed throughout the US and in Europe, South America
and Canada. O’Connor has created numerous commissioned
works for dance companies around the world, among these
have been works for the Lyon Opera Ballet, White Oak Dance
Project, de Rotterdamse Dansgroep (Holland); Carte Blanche
(Bergen, Norway); Zenon (Minneapolis, MN); Dance Alloy (Pittsburgh,
PA); as well as a new solo work for Mikhail Baryshnikov
entitled Indoor Man. O'Connor received a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship in 1993. He is a recent recipient of a Foundation
for Contemporary Performance Art Award, a National Dance
Project Award, and Arts International’s DNA Project
Award. He has also received three New York Dance and Performance
"Bessie" Awards - One for Heaven Up North in 1988,
another in 1999 for Sustained Achievement, and most recently
for his work Frozen Mommy (2005). He is a recipient of repeated
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York
State Council on the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation/MAP Fund,
The New York Foundation for the Arts, Jerome Foundation,
Altria Group, Inc., Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation,
The Harkness Foundation for Dance, and Arts International:
The Fund for US Artists at International Festivals. O'Connor
was a ballet instructor at New York University's Tisch School
of the Arts for nine years (1990-99). He has taught at the
American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Colorado
Dance Festival, Ohio State University, University of Minnesota,
Arizona State University, University of Illinois, the School
for New Dance Development in The Netherlands; and Tanzwochen
in Vienna; among others. He teaches regularly at Movement
Research in New York City. Tere O’Connor is currently
a professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.
Current Project –
RAMMED EARTH
With great admiration for the brazen new structures being
built around the world today, Tere O’Connor looks
to concepts of adaptability in contemporary architecture
as a source for RAMMED EARTH. The new evening-length work
brings into evidence the shifting layers of architectural
reference in dance. Audience members are incorporated into
the expanding, contracting, liquid space of the work, as
they are escorted into different viewing positions throughout
the performance. RAMMED EARTH was created in collaboration
with O'Connor's longtime artistic partners – lighting
designers Michael O’Connor and Brian MacDevitt and
composer James Baker, and is performed by his four versatile
dancers – Hilary Clark, Heather Olson, Matthew Rogers
and Christopher Williams.
RAMMED
EARTH premiered at The Live Arts Festival in Philadelphia,
PA in September 2007, followed by performances in New York
City at The Chocolate Factory, a co-production with Danspace
Project (September-October 2007). Upcoming performances
include: Dublin Dance Festival, Ireland (May 2008); Skirball
Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA (June 2008); Summer Stages
Dance, Concord, MA (July 2008); Baryshnikov Dance Center,
New York, NY (September 2008); Tigertail Productions, Miami,
FL (November 2008); Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
(November 2008); Sushi Performance and Visual Art, San Diego,
CA (February 2009), EMPAC, Troy, NY (March 2009).
RAMMED
EARTH was made possible
by the Doris Duke Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project,
a program administered by the New England Foundation for
the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation,
The Ford Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JPMorgan
Chase Foundation and MetLife Foundation. Rammed Earth has
also been made possible with critical support from The Multi-Arts
Production (MAP) Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts
(a federal agency); Altria Group, Inc.; Bossak-Heilbron
Charitable Foundation; the New York State Council on the
Arts (a state agency), and the generous support of our patrons.
RAMMED EARTH was made possible, in part, with funds from
the 2007-08 Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative with
support from the Mid-Size Presenting Organizations Initiative,
implemented by the Nonprofit Finance Fund and funded by
the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Support for Dance
Umbrella has been provided by the National Endowment
for the Arts, the City of Austin, Texas Commission on the
Arts and private contributions.
