Blakeley White-McGuire
Blakeley White McGuire is an internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer, educator, and the author of The Martha Graham Dance Company: House of the Pelvic Truth. She has been a Fulbright Specialist (Mexico) and has received several career awards including the prestigious Premio Positano Massine per l'Arte della Danza. Her choreographies have been commissioned and presented by The Museum of Arts and Design, Dancing Human Rights (Oxford, U.K.), Axelrod Contemporary Ballet, Danza en Arte Pietrasanta (Movement Migration), Jacob’s Pillow’s INSIDE/ OUT Festival, Flightpath Contemporary Dance, The Ailey School, Movement Migration, and the American Dance Festival. Blakeley performed as a Principal Dancer of the Martha Graham Dance Company (2001-2017) and is currently Rehearsal for the Martha Graham Dance Company, as well as being a faculty member of The Ailey School and Hunter College.
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.
