photograph by Richard M. Grabbert © 1985

Mission

Dance Projects, Inc./Beth Soll & Company: The premise of Dance Projects, Inc./Beth Soll & Company is that choreography and the performing arts at their highest levels should be expressive and thought-provoking, ensuring that the audience members’ minds are challenged even as they are entertained. Ms. Soll’s goal is to choreograph dances that evoke feelings, offer insights, and present the viewer with the familiar seen in a new light. Her work seeks to elicit a wide range of responses from audience members, allowing them to add their own memories and perceptions to the experience of the dance, and to come away with a sense of personal enrichment.

 

Bio

Beth Soll received her early training from Romanian modern dancers Iris Barbura and Vergiu Cornea. Later she continued her studies in the European style of dance at the Kurt Jooss School in Essen, the Kreutzbergschule in Bern, Switzerland, and the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a degree in modern dance. She has held teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin, the Boston Conservatory, Boston University, the Harvard Summer Dance Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Santa Barbara, Hofstra University, the New School, Manhattanville College, and many private organizations. She has performed with dance companies in the Midwest and in Boston, including the Ina Hahn Company, Dance Collective, and the Harvard Summer Dance Center Company, and she has collaborated or danced with many choreographers, such as Janet Aisawa, Frances Alenikoff, Ze'eva Cohen, Bill Evans, Martha Gray, Elizabeth Keen, Anna Nassif, Rosalind Newman, Wendy Perron, and Mel Wong. In 1977, she formed Dance Projects, Inc./ Beth Soll & Company. Her work has been presented at the Harvard Summer Dance Center, Jacob's Pillow, and in major cities including Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Hong Kong, Montreal, Paris, Edinburgh, and in Eastern Europe in Budapest, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, and Yaroslavl. In 2016, she was commissioned by the National Centre for Dance Bucharest (CNDB) to create Tribute to Iris Barbura, in honor of her childhood dance teacher. Throughout her career, Soll has also given performances and classes to young people in the public school system.

Critical and public acclaim of Soll's work has been reinforced by seven Choreography Fellowships and many Dance Company Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, awards from the Artists' Foundation, and grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Arts Lottery, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Polaroid Foundation, the Boston Globe Foundation, and the Lef 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 1993, Soll was given an Eliot Norton Award for her work as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher.

In 1999, Soll earned a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Modern Dance from the University Professors Program at Boston University. In 2002, The Edwin Mellen Press published her book, Will Modern Dance Survive? Lessons to be Learned from the Pioneers and Unsung Visionaries of Modern Dance. She is currently choreographing and performing in New York City and teaching at Manhattanville College.


photograph by Barry Hetherington


photograph by Alina Ușurelu: dreamsart.org

 

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