The 2021 Virtual Dumbo Dance Festival – A Four-Day Spectacular presenting 60 Companies from New York and Around the World

WHITE WAVE Dance is proud to celebrate our 20th Anniversary season of the DUMBO Dance Festival VIRTUALLY! WHITE WAVE scours the globe in search of today’s most innovative dancemakers, both emerging and established, and brings them VIRTUALLY together for one extended weekend, all the while paying extra attention to the new, emerging, and experimental. Dance lovers will experience a veritable cornucopia of the best of contemporary dance. 2021 VDDF attracts the very best by providing artists access to our global audiences to experience, first-hand, the incomparable vitality of the NY & around-the-world Dance scene. https://www.whitewavedance.org/.

2021 VDDF features 60 contemporary dance troupes combining over 350 artists who will present solo, chamber, and full-scale works. Dancers from across the United States, and internationally, from Mexico, Hungary, China, and Korea will join the New York’s active dance community to offer the full range of new directions in Dance in the 21st century.

June 10 – 7pm VDDF VIRTUAL GALA
June 11 – June 13 – Festival Performances
June 13– Family Friendly Program

“This is a festival about opportunities,” says Young Soon Kim, Artistic Director and founder of White Wave Dance. “The DUMBO Dance Festival, (now VIRTUAL) provides an opportunity for over 350 performing artists to showcase their work. Further, it offers New York and global audiences the chance to experience one of the most diverse displays of leading-edge choreography and excellence at an affordable price.”

Among our roster group, VDDF welcome Daegu City Dance Company, the first national public modern dance organization in South Korea; Batsheva Dance Company’s Sean Howe performs to Mozart’s Sonata no.11; Mary Verdi-Fletcher, praised by Dance/USA for Dancing Wheels, is a “visionary who paved the way for generations of dancers with disabilities”; emerging Choreographer Olivia Passarelli recently won 1st place in the Shape Choreography Festival; TalCual is a NY collective by Latinx artists Katherine Garcia and Joan Rodriguez, both WHITE WAVE Dance members, present their wistful new dance-film Formerly Intangible; ShawnBibleDanceCo. presents his latest solo “Ash” set on dancer Ashley Menestrina in a contorted introspection into her psyche; RivelDuet, female duo, Jessica Smith and Chelsea Ainsworth, present Rabbithole, a work that “examines humanity’s relationship to technology”; DDF 2019 awardee Jesse Obremski/ObremskiWorks hailed by Dance Magazine as “a dancer on the rise,”, Jesse is a Juilliard grad, and member of Gibney and WHITE WAVE; collective A: Jinyeob Cha was Choreographer for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics Opening & Closing Ceremony and non-resident choreographer at Random Collision in Nederland; LeeTaeSang has won Best Choreographer at the 8th Dance Festival for the Critic’s Choice of Artistsand 2014 UN Achievement Award; Kwak Young-eun (Meta Dance Project) received Grand Prize at the 2020 National Dance Festival in Seoul; Won Kim was an exchange professor at several institutions such as Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, the University Paris VIII(France) and Kinki University (Japan), and currently, she is a Member of TanztheatreOnes and a Board Member at Contemporary Dance Association of Korea; Yongchul KiM, Artistic director of SEOP Dance Company, is Adjunct Professor of Korea National University of Arts; Choi Sung-Ok has received Best Dance and Acting Awards in the National Dance Festival (1999), and Choreography Award (2015) in Korea.

2021 VIRTUAL GALA Opening Night: June 10, 2021 at 7PM
The 2021 VDDF will kick off with WHITE WAVE’s Opening Night GALA Celebration on Thursday, June 10th at 7PM. 

The evening will be hosted by distinguished guests keynote speakers will include: philanthropist and our Patron Gerald Appelstein; Dance Curator at SummerStage NYC Danni Gee; Jennifer Muller/The Works Artistic Director Jennifer Muller; former WHITE WAVE Board Member & Angel Ludo Scheffer; former WHITE WAVE Board Chair Thera Marshall, our longtime supporter and selection panel member Pascal Rekoert; along with Company Board members and our Artistic Director Young Soon Kim.

Their opening remarks will be to intersperse through-out the show by six sensational contemporary dance troupes: Jennifer Muller|The Works, Obremski/Works, three of the most eclectic companies from South Korea: DAEGU CITY DANCE COMPANY, collective A|Jinyeob Cha & Theatre Mucheon|Ara Kim, and host WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company.

Special Performance Opportunities:
This year at the 2021 VDDF, WHITE WAVE Dance will select TWO outstanding companies to have the opportunity to perform at the 2021 New Dance Festival in Korea; and at the 2021 Detroit City Dance Festival. Both of these highly regarded festivals will provide companies with another fantastic opportunity for further exposure, promotion, and performances. All participating VDDF companies will be carefully considered and will be notified after the GRAND FINALE PERFORMANCE!

In our commitment to presenting dance for all, the 20th Annual DUMBO Dance Festival is proud to announce the following events in our exciting 2021 program:

Family-Friendly Program: Sunday, June 13th 12 noon-3pm
Celebrating the next generation of dancers… and their parents (!) WHITE WAVE’s Kids Can Dance education program will lead by a Company member, Katie Garcia with Hip Hop/B-boy and Modern Dance classes through Zoom Session for kids of all ages. Following the class, seven companies will take to the stage in a fun, exciting, and educational program featuring the best, family-friendly performances of the 2021 festival.

Grand Finale: Sunday, June 13th 8pm 
For the VDDF Grand Finale, eight companies will present works. Their names will be announced shortly!

2021 DUMBO DANCE FESTIVAL Performance Schedule:
Thursday, June 10 at 7pm – Virtual GALA Opening Night
Friday, June 11 at 7pm & 9pm
Saturday, June 12 at 2pm, 4pm, 6pm & 8pm
Sunday, June 13 at 12-1pm – Kids Can Dance (Open Free Class)
Sunday, June 13 at 1:30-3pm – Family Friendly Program
Sunday, June 13 at 4pm & 6pm – GRAND FINALE

The full performance schedule, please visit www.whitewavedance.org.

ABOUT WHITE WAVE
Formed in 1988, WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company (WHITE WAVE) strives to inspire audiences through multi-dimensional dance productions reflecting themes and philosophies both modern and timeless. Our mission is to be a potent stimulus for change and expansion of the dance/arts world through the production of dance concerts, classes, residencies, and education. Artistic Director Young Soon Kim’s vision is expansive, challenging the threshold of dance, music, theater and visual art, surging forward to create new possibilities. Ms. Kim creates works of vision and movement language in reverence and awe of novelty that challenge and broaden the boundaries of dance. We provide both emerging and established choreographers/companies with a NYC venue where they can congregate, create, rehearse and present new dance works through our festivals. 
www.whitewavedance.org.

Mission and a brief history of WHITE WAVE
Founded by Korean-born Young Soon Kim in 1988, the WHITE WAVE Young Soon Kim Dance Company is dedicated to inspiring audiences through multi-dimensional dance productions reflecting themes and philosophies both modern and timeless. We constantly strive to be a potent stimulus for progress and evolution within the dance/arts world. By producing dance concerts, festivals, and educational activities, WHITE WAVE Dance provides both nascent and seasoned choreographers/companies with an encouraging environment where they can create, collaborate, and present new works in the undisputed capital of world dance, New York City.

WHITE WAVE created DDF in 2001 in response to the dance community’s need for performance opportunities that would not only present, but also produce, the work of rising choreographers at minimal expense for the artist. The festival is now recognized as New York’s most prestigious gathering of pioneering choreography, encouraging experimentation, creativity, and originality. WHITE WAVE Dance has proudly presented over 2,800 choreographers/dance companies and over 18,500 performers to a total of more than 82,500 audience members.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Young Soon Kim, Artistic Director of WHITE WAVE Dance, is a nationally and internationally acclaimed choreographer, whose work has been hailed for its exhilarating, visually stunning, and emotionally rich phrases and textures. 

In addition to her role as a performer and Artistic Director, Ms. Kim created a series of dance festivals soon after inaugurating the WHITE WAVE John Ryan Theater in DUMBO, Brooklyn, in 2001. 
She has since become one of the most recognized producers/curators in New York City. Ms. Kim has also served as a juror for New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in 2006 and for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2014.

After the World première at the 2017 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, WHITE WAVE Dance’s Canadian première of “iyouuswe” (read as I-You-Us-We-two) at the 2018 Vancouver International Dance Festival was a resounding success! WHITE WAVE presented “Eternal NOW” at our enormously successful 2019 tour to Korea and China. In Gwanju, Korea, we performed at a special event at the Asian Cultural Center, one of the most prestigious arts complexes in all of Asia. There we participated at the Opening Celebration of the 2019 FINA World Championship Masters’ Games, a sporting event that rivals the Olympics. Following that, we flew to China to perform at the Ningbo Cultural Plaza, as part of a China-US Cultural Exchange program. Dazzled sold-out audiences greeted us at every performance! 

Young Soon Kim’s latest creation “iyouuswe II” a Dance Film was included as Official Selection at the Experimental, Dance, Music Film Festival in Canada, Espoo Digi-Dance Int. Film Festival in Finland and Vancouver Independent Film Festival (British Coloumbia, Canada).

“There are people who simply have a lot of energy, and the Korean-born choreographer Young Soon Kim is clearly one of them.” – Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times

Please visit www.whitewavedance.org for more information about the
VIRTUAL GALA and DUMBO Dance Festival.

Click HERE to download photos of 2021 DUMBO Dance Festival
Page 1: Photo Credit from Left to Right: Theatre Mucheon by Jongjin Lim | Daegu City Dance Company by Hawng Inmo | Theatre Mucheon by Jongjin Lim | Alessandra Corona Performing Works by Natalia Bougadellis | SEOP DANCE COMPANY by Ha Jiyeong | collective A by collective A | LeeTaeSang Project by Lee Tae Sang | WHITE WAVE Dance by Alexander Sargent | Dancing Wheels Company by Dancing Wheels Company | Alison Cook Beatty Dance by Alison Cook-Beatty and Michael Feigenbaum | JANOS FELEDI-FELEDI PROJECT by Courtesy Photo | L Squared Dance Theatre by Lisa D. Long | Stephanie Avila by Alice Mersereau | shawnbibledanceco. by Stephen Delas | collective A by collective A

Page 2: Photo Credit from Left to Right: Kit Modus by Daley Kappenman | TheCo (Tec Dance Company) by Berenice Jaramillo | BIODANCE by Claire Harte | Alex Mitchell Choreography by Pierre Marais | shawnbibledanceco.by Stephen Delas | Elizabeth Shea Dance by Freddie Kelvin | Spark Movement Collective by Howard Sherman | So Young Park by David Gonsier | UB Theater and Dance by Allison Mersereau | Obremski_Works by BYU Contemporary Dance Theater | Marlene Skog Dance by Maureen Janson Heintz | SEOP DANCE COMPANY by Ha Jiyeong | Dual Rivet by Art Davison | Autumn Eckman by Andre Yew | Anthony Alterio by Anthony Alterio

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
WHITE WAVE’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Fund for the City of New York, The New York Community Trust’s NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund, Dance/NYC’s Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, JOHN RYAN COMPANY, and Individual Arts Supporters like you.