Education

Professional training programs for dancers, choreographers, and teachers.

• Six Week School (in 2012 ADF attracted 426 students from 18 countries and 42 states)
• Three Week School for Young Dancers (ages 12-16)
• Dance Professionals Workshop
• Winter Intensive in New York, a nine-day workshop designed for students interested in learning about New York’s dance scene from the artists who are creating it.
• The first American MFA program in dance between a dance entity, the ADF, and an academic institution, Hollins University. Using the resources of both institutions, the program offers a Year Residency Track for students, Low Residency Track for mid-career artists, teachers and dance professionals, and Low Residency Three Summer Track for emerging artists, teachers and dance professionals.
• The ADF provides full and partial scholarships to students based on both talent and need. Approximately, 50% of ADF students are awarded financial assistance annually.

PERFORMANCES

A six and a half-week series of performances and residencies by major established companies as well as emerging artists from around the world.

• One of the most important functions of the ADF throughout its history has been to provide choreographers with the opportunity to produce new works, many of which are especially commissioned by the ADF.
• The ADF has played a critical role in increasing the repertoires of our country’s modern dance companies (having been the scene of over 650 premieres, over 347 commissions, and over 50 reconstructions).
• The ADF has co-commissioned works with the Kennedy Center for choreographers and jazz composers, joining two indigenous American art forms.
• The ADF has supported, commissioned and helped launch the careers of choreographers such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, Bill T. Jones, Mark Morris, Meredith Monk, Pilobolus, Trisha Brown, Donald McKayle, Martha Clarke, Eiko and Koma, Ronald K. Brown, John Jasperse, Shen Wei, Tatiana Baganova, Rosie Herrera, Jodi Melnick, Helen Simoneau, and Reggie Wilson, among others, most of whom continue to present work at the ADF.
• Along with our main stage performances, the ADF has presented 65 North Carolina choreographers and their companies in a series titled Acts to Follow (2003-2007), offering audiences a showcase of statewide talent.

AWARDS

Giving status and importance to accomplished dance figures and to the profession itself.

• For distinguished choreographers, the ADF has established the $50,000 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in modern dance. Recipients of the Scripps/ADF Award include: Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, Erick Hawkins, Twyla Tharp, Anna Sokolow, Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty, Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, Anna Halprin, Fayard & Harold Nicholas, Pina Bausch, Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Garth Fagan, Maguy Marin, Eiko & Koma, Bill T. Jones, Murray Louis, Mark Morris, Laura Dean, Ohad Naharin, Martha Clarke, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, William Forsythe, and posthumously in honor of Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, José Limón, Pearl Primus, and Helen Tamiris.

• For distinguished teachers, the ADF has established the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching. Recipients of the Chair include: Pearl Primus, Daniel Nagrin, Betty Jones, Bella Lewitzky, Ethel Butler, Anna Halprin, Donald McKayle & Bessie Schönberg, Matt Mattox & Pauline Koner, Viola Farber, Mary Anthony, Walter Nicks, Jane Dudley & Sophie Maslow], Pearl Lang, Martha Myers, Carmen de Lavallade, Gus Solomons jr, Gerri Houlihan, Dr. Charles “Chuck” Davis, Linda Tarnay & Douglas Nielsen, Dianne McIntyre, Carolyn Adams, Ruth Andrien & Sharon Kinney, Yang Meiqi, Donna Faye Burchfield, and Ana Marie Forsythe.

NATIONAL  AND  INTERNATIONAL  PROFESSIONAL  PROGRAMS

Designed for dancers, choreographers, and audience education. Programming includes the following special conferences, workshops and projects:

• Since 1984, through the International Choreographers Commissioning Program and the International Choreographers Residency program, the ADF has brought 456 choreographers from 88 countries on 6 continents to the ADF to share, exchange, and experience the work and ideas of people from cultures around the world. 
• The 2012 International Choreographers Residency Program brought 13 choreographers to the ADF.
• Institutional Linkages Program including mini-ADFs in Korea, Russia, India, Japan, China, and Argentina and teaching residencies in 30 countries.
• The ADF has initiated and helped develop modern dance in countries including China, Russia, and Mongolia.
• The ADF introduced French, English, Russian, and Chinese modern dance and Japanese Butoh to U.S. audiences.
• ADF’s Audience Memory Program, directed by Cognitive Scientist in Residence Dr. Ruth Day, is conducting groundbreaking research on the way audiences and dancers perceive and remember movement.  The project has successfully engaged audiences in more active perception, increased audience interest and appreciation, and made dance more accessible to more people.
• International Screendance Festival (celebrated 17years in 2012), which features juried and curated dance works created specifically for the camera, and boasts over 300 past screenings.
• At the 2006 Festival, ADF held Screendance: The State of the Art, a four-day conference on the current state of the Screendance around the globe. A second conference followed in 2008.
• In 2010, the first-ever scholarly journal, The International Journal of Screendance, dedicated to the inter-disciplinary practice of Screendance was launched at the ADF.
• NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism for working journalists (2003-2010)

COMMUNITY  OUTREACH  AND  EDUCATION 

Programs that offer the breadth of the Festival’s resources to the community. Programs and activities include:

• ADF Project Dance – a free, year-round program that introduces youth to dance and to the many non-performance career paths available in the performing arts through creative movement workshops (in 2011, ADF offered 130 creative movement classes at 14 different locations) and complimentary tickets (in 2011, ADF partnered with the City of Durham and local non-profits to distribute over 500 free tickets to children and families).
• Panel Discussions that feature choreographers and dancers performing as part of the ADF season.
• Festival Tours that provide free, guided tours of ADF School, giving community members an opportunity to go behind the scenes and see dance in the making.

HUMANITIES  AND  MEDIA  PROJECTS 

Illustrating how modern dance serves as a special window on American history and culture.

• In conjunction with its 75^th anniversary season, the ADF published a book on dance history by
• Philosopher-in-Residence, Dr. Gerald E. Myers, titled Who’s Not Afraid of Martha Graham?
• Dancing in the Light, which includes six historic works by African American choreographers, filmed by the ADF to preserve and celebrate the black tradition in modern dance, was created in 2007. Originally recorded for ADF’s 2001 Emmy Award-winning documentary series Free to Dance, the works appeared in the series only as brief excerpts.
• Emmy Award-winning PBS television series — Free to Dance: The African American Presence in Modern Dance —produced by the ADF, looks at dance as a window on our culture.
• Black Traditions in American Modern Dance (BTAMD) project was created in 1987 to preserve, celebrate, and create access to classic dance works by African American choreographers. To date, 23 works have been reconstructed on leading U.S. repertory companies and recorded.
• The ADF has issued a series of humanities publications including but not limited to The Aesthetic and Cultural Significance of Modern Dance (1984), The Black Tradition in American Modern Dance (1988), and its sequel, African American Genius In Modern Dance (1993).
• Speaking of Dance: Conversations with the Masters – a collaborative video series that offers profiles of preeminent figures in American modern dance.
• The ADF’s Archival Preservation/Access Project serves to document, preserve, and create greater access to the ADF’s multi-format archival collection that dates back to the 1930s.
• Workshops, lectures, and discussions are held with Duke University faculty from the medical, history, psychology, and philosophy departments.
• Since 2009, the ADF Video Blog, May We Have This CyberDance?, has highlighted the diversity of events taking place during the Festival through daily online coverage of classes, rehearsals, performances, as well as interviews with choreographers, faculty, scholars, and much more.
• ADF’s newest video project, Inside Insights, gave viewers the inside scoop on companies before purchasing tickets. In collaboration with dance writer and critic, Nancy Wozny and filmmaker Steve Milligan, these online videos provided a fun glimpse of the 2012 performing companies and choreographers, including who the companies are, what they were performing, how each company fits into the modern dance world, and why they were a must see at ADF.