Artistic Director, David Dorfman Dance
Independent Choreographer

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR of David Dorfman Dance since 1987, has been Professor of Dance and now Chair at Connecticut College since 2004. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2005 to continue his research and choreography in the topics of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissidence, and underground movements, culminating in DDD’s, underground, which toured for four years engaging community dance casts in each venue. DD has also been honored with four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, an American Choreographer’s Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard, and a New York Dance & Performance Award (“Bessie”) for DDD’s community-based project Familiar Movements (The Family Project). His work has been commissioned widely in the U.S. and in Europe, most recently by AXIS Dance Company (Oakland), Bosoma Dance Company (Boston), Bedlam Dance Company (London), d9 Dance Collective (Seattle), Eisenhower Dance Theatre (Detroit), and the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia for the musical Green Violin, for which he won a 2003 Barrymore Award for best choreography. 2012 found DD appearing on several episodes of A Chance to Dance, a reality show on OvationTV starring his friends the Ballet Boyz. The Ballet Boyz also invited DDD to make a short video for BBC Channel 4 Random Acts. Dorfman tours an evening of solos and duets, Live Sax Acts, with dear friend/collaborator Dan Froot, most recently in New York City and at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe.  As a performer, he toured internationally with Kei Takei’s Moving Earth and Susan Marshall & Co. Dorfman hails from Chicago and holds a BS in business administration from Washington University in St. Louis (1977), and an MFA in dance from Connecticut College (1981).