The National Ballet of Bulgaria will present the European and Company Premiere of Kathryn Posin's Stepping Stones on June 9, 10 and 11, 2011 at the Opera House in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Kathryn Posin's Stepping Stones, set to a commissioned score by Joan Tower, received its world premiere by the Milwaukee Ballet in 1993. Stepping Stones has also been danced by BalletMet, the Hartford Ballet, and the Kansas City Ballet.
Kathryn Posin studied composition with
Louis Horst,
Anna Sokolow, Merce Cunningham and
Hanya Holm. She is a graduate of Bennington College and holds a Master of Arts in interdisciplinary multi-cultural dance from New York University. In 1975 she received her first choreography commission, Waves, which she choreographed for the American Dance Festival.
Ms. Posin has choreographed works for Ballet West, Netherlands Dance Theater 1 and 2, the
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Feld Ballets/USA, the Ohio Ballet, The Kansas City Ballet, the Sacramento Ballet, the Cincinnati Ballet, the Hartford Ballet, BalletMet, the Repertory Dance Theater of Utah, Extemporary Dance Company of London, Ballet Pacifica, and the Milwaukee Ballet. She has also developed new works at the Joffrey Ballet School, the
Alvin Ailey School, and the Milwaukee Ballet School. She was the first international choreographer to stage a work for Cloud Gate Dance Theater, the national company of Taiwan.
In 1990 she choreographed Of Rage And Remembrance, set to
John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1, for the Milwaukee Ballet. It was voted "Premiere of the Year in Music and Dance" by the Milwaukee Journal. She is a recipient of ADF's
Doris Humphrey Fellowship. Ms. Posin also received a second award from Meet the Composer to underwrite music from the Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos for a work for the
Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble. Galena Summit, to the music of Steve Reich, was voted Choreography of the Year by the Boston Globe. Her work Four World Songs won first place in the Sarasota Ballet's 1996 Choreographic Competition.
Ms. Posin was also a recipient of a 1995-96 National Endowment on the Arts Choreography Fellowship.
During the 1996-97 season Ms. Posin restaged her comedy hit, Bach's Lunch, for the Milwaukee Ballet. This work was developed during the summer of 1995 for the Milwaukee Ballet School and was the first work in the School's 20-year history taken immediately into the Milwaukee Ballet's repertory. Ms. Posin also created Poem Without A Hero for the Cincinnati Ballet. In 1999 Ms. Posin re-staged Stepping Stones and created a new work, Crossroads, for the Hartford Ballet.
During the 1999-2000 season Ms. Posin created, Tehillim, a world premiere for the Milwaukee Ballet and re-staged Bridge of Song for the Milwaukee Ballet, Stepping Stones for the Cincinnati Ballet, and
John Adams Violin Concerto for the Sacramento Ballet.
Ms. Posin has also been the artistic director and resident choreographer for her own company, the
Kathryn Posin Dance Company. She has choreographed over 50 works for her company and the company has received support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the
Jerome Robbins Foundation. In 1991, Ms. Posin's company received two grants from the Joint Program of the Ohio Arts and Humanities Councils for the Appalachian Dance/Music work, Shady Grove.
Ms. Posin has taught in London, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Switzerland. For six summers she taught composition at Harvard Summer School and has taught full time at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
In 1999 Ms. Posin conceived and designed the Joffrey Ballet School/
New School University B.F.A. in Dance and was named founding Chair. She created the curriculum and budgets to interface
New School University, with its 70 million-dollar-a-year budget, with the Joffrey Ballet School. At the debut concert of this program, Copland and Dance, at the Joyce Theatre, the New York Times called the BFA "promising both artistically and academically." In 2000 Ms. Posin became an instructor in the program and continued with the program until 2001. In 2000 Ms. Posin created Piano Concerto for the students of this program's year-end performance at the Joyce Theatre in New York.
In 2003 Ms. Posin created her new version of Scheherazade for the Milwaukee Ballet, which was also acquired by the Louisville Ballet in 2004, and the Sacramento Ballet and Nevada Ballet Theatre in 2006. In 2004 the Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah revived Ms. Posin's Waves. In 2008 Ms. Posin created the choreography for the Florentine Opera's production of Salome.
Ms. Posin has shown her versatility in also choreographing for the theatre. She choreographed the hit rock musical, Salvation, with
Bette Midler and
Richard Gere, and Andre Serban's Lincoln Center revival of The Cherry Orchard with
Meryl Streep and
Raul Julia. She has also choreographed for plays at the
American Repertory Theater at Harvard, at the
Arena Stage, for
The Acting Company with Liviu Cuilei as director, and at Hartford Stage with Yuri Yurimen, of the Pushkin Theater in Moscow, as director. In 2002 Ms. Posin choreographed the dance for
Jennifer Jason Leigh in
Al Pacino's production of Salome.
