ClancyWorks Dance Company is an ensemble of contemporary dance artists, based in Washington, DC and founded in 2001. We present award winning dance performances, provide professional development for dance educators, artists and administrators and offer high quality arts in education programs. Our mission is to increase the public appetite for dance, as well as the understanding and relevance of dance in people’s lives, by demonstrating that creative movement can be used to solve conflicts, develop community cohesion and promote civic responsibility. Adrienne Clancy, Artistic Director/Founder, creates choreography that features dynamic partnering work and reflects her powerful aesthetic and social vision, to form trust within a framework of diversity. The company’s outstanding skill lies in its ability to combine physically demanding, powerful movement with the sensitive portrayal of cultural nuances and personal emotions. The Washington Post has described Adrienne Clancy as a “wizard of invention,” and her choreography as “a tour de force of unpredictable partnering.”
Adrienne Clancy, Artistic Director of ClancyWorks, has won numerous awards for her choreography and has had her work presented throughout the US and internationally in Japan, Russia, Colombia, England, Israel, Mexico, Paraguay, and Poland. Clancy is currently working on a PhD in Dance from Texas Womans University (TWU). In addition, she holds a MFA in Dance from TWU, and a MA in Dance, emphasis in History & Criticism from University of New Mexico. Adrienne is serving on the faculty at George Mason University (VA), and University of Maryland College Park. Previously, Clancy was a member of the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company; a Rehearsal Director, Project Director, and Company Member for the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; a principal dancer for Nora Reynolds Dance, Paradigm Dance Company, and RoCoCo Modern Dance Company; and guest artist for: Maida Withers Dance Construction Company, Victoria Marks, Bill Evans Dance Company, Doug Hamby Dance, and Cathy Paine Mixed Media.
In Back to the Wall, ClancyWorks dancers face the wall as an opportunity as opposed to an obstacle. In a point in history where hope and optimism is a need for survival, the dancers will mount and partner with the wall in physically interesting and visually pleasing ways, with no harnesses or apparatuses – just strong physical partnering. In this work, the wall comes alive and offers solutions to challenges – when ClancyWorks sees a wall we don’t run away, we figure out how to transform the obstacle into an opportunity. Back to the Wall has received numerous awards including a Metro DC Dance Award (2002) and choreographic fellowships from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County and the Maryland State Arts Council.
Driven [by the female heartbeat] is a recent work choreographed by Adrienne Clancy receiving recognition as a Metro DC Dance award finalist for Outstanding New Work. Driven was selected for prestigious showcases including the Velocity DC Dance Festival, Maryland Choreographers’ Showcase, Dance Bethesda, and Yes, VA Dance! Sarah Kaufman of the Washington Post wrote, “..there were welcome surprises…notable was the layered aspects of female bonding in ClancyWorks Dance Company’s Driven [by the female heartbeat].” This piece examines the many roles and archetypes of women and explores relationships between females.
Light Armor is a journey that plays with the powers of light and light hearted partnering, in order to examine transparency in relationships. With support of a Plexiglas box structure, Light Armor calls upon us to gird ourselves with a shower of light and asks us to question the truth of what we allow people to see and how we protect ourselves from seeing our own truths. A recent review of Light Armor, [Karen Kullgren] declared, “ClancyWorks’ strong, graceful partnering riveted the audience.” (Bethesda Patch).
On Taking Steps to Climbing Mountains demonstrates Clancy’s passion for inventive partnering and her capacity to work creatively with unusual sets. This work has multiple performance versions tailored to suit the touring needs of a presenter. It may be performed as a duet (one dancer with a ladder), a trio (two dancers with one ladder), as a quintet (two dancers and three ladders) or in its most recent version for 5 dancers working with 5 ladders of graduated sizes. On Taking Steps to Climbing Mountains is a recent work that demonstrates what the Albuquerque Journal hailed as a “top-notch technical and dramatic performance.” This piece metaphorically comments on the process and abilities of individuals to shift the center of their own challenges, be they personal relationships, institutional partnerships or ideological obstacles. Placed skyward or repositioned on their sides, ladders create windows, doors, and pathways through which the dancers navigate alternative ways of seeing, relating to, knowing and creating a world in which we would want to participate.
Webmasters is an evening-length work, which premiered at Mead Theatre Lab and simultaneously at Dance Digital in Essex, England in March 2011. Director and Choreographer Adrienne Clancy looks at relationships as reflections in this new performance piece. Via Internet connections, dancers in two distinct locations are often paired with one another, both in physical and virtual space via image projection. Multiple layers of reality exist in each moment. Clancy’s choreography builds upon Spider Grand Mother emergence tales and asks: how do we maneuver in another’s web, and what happens when we traverse through our own labyrinth of gossamer paths?
ClancyWorks Lecture/Demonstration- Partnering into Performance:
For K-12 school assemblies, ClancyWorks creates a program that excites students about the possibilities of dance to create community through teamwork and collaboration. While highlighting the cultural history and origins of various dance styles. The assembly program can be tailored to accommodate different age groups. Stylistically the members of ClancyWorks have a diverse movement background, which is highlighted in the performance in order to cover a range of dance that includes: contemporary modern dance, ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, step, and dances that include props/sets. A specific strength of the ClancyWorks Dance Company is the use of partnering in choreography. Partnering techniques are used as a vehicle to exhibit the ways that an individual enhances his/her abilities by connecting with a positive group creating an environment of mutual respect.
ClancyWorks ASPIRE Workshop:
ASPIRE workshops and residencies are adapted for K-12 students and demonstrate that creative movement can be used to:
Acquire knowledge
Solve conflicts
Partner to accomplish greater goals
Improve academic achievement through arts integration
Respect self and others
Embrace diversity
ClancyWorks teaching artists will adapt this program to meet the specific needs of each population with whom we partner. Additionally, we work with participants of all ages, backgrounds, and ability levels. Students will learn multiple genres of dance and get a chance to put forth their own artistic voice. The class will foster structured and supportive interactions with classmates, give practice in problem solving, and build academic as well as artistic skills. Workshops are designed individually for each population and can be structured to focus on arts integration, culturally histories and legacies, anti-bullying and building positive leadership models, as well as life skill development.
ClancyWorks Pre-professional, Professional, and College Residency Workshop:
Adrienne Clancy’s contemporary modern dance technique class combines elements from her experiences as a professional dancer with the Bella Lewitzky, Nora Reynolds (Bella’s daughter), Liz Lerman, and Bill Evans Dance Companies. Clancy’s modern technique draws from each of these artists to create a class that focuses on building a strong and sound physical body with an acute awareness of anatomy and kinesiology while stretching and strengthening performance aspects of focus, clarity and efficiency in movement execution. The class involves athletic movement, floorwork, interesting gesture phrases, and combinations that push each dancer to travel through space with the understanding of professional dance performance philosophies.
ClancyWorks Senior Movement Workshop:
These movement workshops provide a fun and safe environment that will allow participants to focus on building a strong and sound physical body as well as introducing exercises that explore creative movement and storytelling. The class includes variations for all exercises including seated activities as well as standing. Participants will collectively create new movement for the class based on stories from their own experiences.
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| SEP 17, 2011 |
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| NOV 5-6 2011 |
Dance Place Washington, DC http://www.danceplace.org/ |
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| JAN 8, 2012 | Pentacle’s Gallery Showcase The Theater at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School 120 West 46th St (bet 6th and 7th Aves) 7:00 – 10:00 pm ClancyWorks Dance Company: 8:24 pm |
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| APR 13-14 2012 |
Round House Theatre Silver Spring, MD |
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| APR 20, 2012 |
DeSales University Center Valley, PA |
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| APR 28-29 2012 |
Theatre Project Baltimore, MD http://www.theatreproject.org/ |
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| MAY 18-20 2012 |
BlackRock Center for the Arts Germantown, MD http://blackrockcenter.org/ |
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