photograph by Alina Ușurelu: dreamsart.org

Dance Projects, Inc./Beth Soll & Company was incorporated in 1979 in Boston, Massachusetts, where the company was centered until the late 1990s. Since 2000 the company has been based in New York City. Under the auspices of Dance Projects, Inc., Beth Soll and her company members have performed in many United States locations, including Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Jacob’s Pillow, Providence, New Haven, and numerous universities, schools, and small towns. Both alone and with company members, Soll has also performed and presented work in Canada, France, Russia, Hong Kong, Hungary, and Romania. These performances have been supported by performance fees, personal donations, and by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Artists' Foundation, the Boston Arts Lottery, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Polaroid Foundation, the Boston Globe Foundation, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Land Grant/Commission for Artists-in-Residence, the Lef Foundation, and the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation. The Company has won awards for outstanding achievement from Boston Magazine, The Boston Herald, and the Association of Performing Arts, including a “Ten Best of 1992” Award from The Boston Globe for The Beautiful Season. In 1992, Artistic Director, Beth Soll received a Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize, and in 1993, she was given an Eliot Norton Award for her work as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. In 1997, she received a Dance Belt Award, and in 1998, she was awarded a Djerassi Fellowship.

Dance Projects, Inc. has presented the work of choreographers Bill Evans, Fiona Marcotty, Wendy Perron, and Pamela Raff (tap dance), and, under the aegis of Dance Projects, Inc., Beth Soll has collaborated with choreographers Janet Aisawa, Ruth Birnberg, Dawn Kramer, Rosalind Newman, and Wendy Perron. In addition, she has worked with composers Robert Aldridge, Marian Cîţu (Alias Rufi), Richard Cornell, Paul Earls, Dewey Emadoo, John Funkhouser, the Klezmotones, Carolyn Lord, Dennis Miller, David Moss, Jeff Platz, Stan Strickland, David Stringham, Philip Tabane and his group Malombo, Patricia Van Ness, and Elizabeth Vercoe; and with visual artists Ed Andrews (video), Liese Bronfenbrenner (costumes and puppets), Mira Cantor (costumes and sets), Elisa Decker (photography), Katherine Finkelpearl (visual artist), J.C. Hotchkiss (photography), Bryan Hayes (video), Nancy Hotchkiss (costumes), and Cristi Marin (costumes).

In 1977, after coordinating the Dance Program at Boston University for five years, Soll began teaching at MIT, where she was the Director of the Dance Program until 1997, and where, for a time, Beth Soll Company was in residence. In 1997, Beth Soll was offered an Assistant Professorship in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance at the University of California in Santa Barbara. After leaving MIT, Soll continued to choreograph for herself and for her UCSB students and the Santa Barbara Dance Theater. In the spring of 2000, Soll moved to New York City, where, in addition to working with Beth Soll & Company, she has been involved in numerous independent choreographic and performance projects. Since 2001, under the auspices of Dance Projects, Inc., every year, Soll and her company have presented a concert of new dances, including Lake, Imaginary Dreams of Russia (2002), Adaptation (2004), Running/Mourning (2005), Mortal Angels (2006) [in collaboration with video artist Bryan Hayes], Black Flower (2007), Mode (2008), Lament, Kvetch… and Romp! (2009), Restless Geometry (2008), Scrimmage (2012), Diagram (2012), A Kind of Grammar (2014), Spring Together (2015), in collaboration with Janet Aisawa, Liminal Surrender (2016), and A Tribute to Iris Barbura (2016) in honor of Soll’s childhood dance teacher. (Premiered in Bucharest, Romania.) Soll has also continued to be a soloist: in recent years, she has performed After (2001) and Troubled Midnight, Small Actions and Experimental Gestures for Difficult Times (2003), Black Flower Solo (2007), Red Révérence (2008), Tribute (2010), Disclosure (2010), Adventure (2012), The Way Back (2015), and Twilight Strategies (2016).