Blakeley White-McGuire
Blakeley, critically acclaimed as a Principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company (2001-2017), has performed iconic dances including Lamentation, Chronicle, Appalachian Spring, Errand Into the Maze,and Night Journey. She earned her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, Vermont and currently serves on the faculties of Hunter College, the Ailey School, the Taylor School and the American Dance Festival.
Blakeley is anofficial régisseur for the Martha Graham Center staging repertory internationally; most recently for Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, Semperoper, Ballet Vlaanderen, and Juilliard. Through her embodied research, Blakeley has materially contributed to three historical re-imaginings: Ardent Song, Imperial Gesture,and Notes on a Voyage. Her writing on dance has been published by The Dance Enthusiast, Huffington Post, Dance Magazine, Performance Research Journal, U.K., and A Life in Dance: A Practical Guide.
This August BWM began research into a piece on dance ecology and cultivation which was shown at Norte Maar’s Dance at Socrates festival in New York City. The dance was performed to music by Arvo Part and poetry by Wendell Berry. Here is a blurb about my current process:
I am improvising now. Mostly solo work in intentional landscapes but at times, with other movers as well. Improvisation sounds simple. “Just make it up!”, right? But the action of improvisation that I aspire to, comprises less of making it up and more of listening to the movement urges coming from my charged, expressive body. After forty years of intentional cultivation through repertory, my physical form, musicality, and spatial sense are all poised to conduct improvisation, to mine the moment and discover action through relational choices that my body-mind, mind-body is making.- BWM
This research/process will continue in another work for The Outlet Project on October 7, 2018 at The Grounds for Sculpture where I will direct a contact improvisation-based moving sculpture in response the “Damascus Gate” by Visual Artist, Walter Dusenbery.
I am continuing my teaching practice with the Modern Dance faculties of Purchase and Hunter Colleges in New York and also the American Dance Festival based in Durham, NC. Additionally, this fall I will travel to Dresden, Germany to direct stagings of Martha Graham’s masterpiece Errand Into the Maze to be performed by the Semperopper Ballett and assist dance artist Terese Capucili in restaging of Graham’s Rite of Spring for the Juilliard conservatory in New York City.
