Rovers Traveled

Admin | February 09, 2012 | Comments Off

Rovers Traveled

Rovers Traveled

The modern dance scene in New York is a complex as it is challenging. With the burgeoning fusion of dance with film, productivity abounds, but so does competition for an audience. Rani Welch, an ambitious choreographer, has traveled a long road from Alabama through the Universities of Iowa and her home state, Alabama, to founding The Rover Soho in Manhattan. Her roots are in the experimental. At Harvard, Welch studied Choreography, Dance, and Performance with conceptual artist Joe Goode, a student of Merce Cunningham, whose work was described by Leslie Katz as a "dance-theater-word installation," and she also studied with Victoria Marks, reviewed as a "true subversive" by Lewis Segal. Rani Welch's following in New York City is likewise based on collaborative, intermedia artists.

Highly Trained Pedestrians

During her MFA studies at University of Iowa, Welch formed her own acclaimed company, Highly Trained Pedestrians, which received grants to create dance programs for children in Iowa, also toured nationally from Hong Kong to Europe and Latin America in addition to the United States. Joe Poulson, who presented his first choreographed work with Pedestrians, and later performed with David Dorfman Dance, described Rani as "ambitious, creatively bold."

From Martha Graham to Bessie Schonberg

Rani's varied associations with Jacob's Pillow and Dance Theater Workshop exposed her to the mentoring of Sarah Lawrence Professor Bessie Schonberg, the namesake of the prestigious "Bessie Awards for New York Dance and Performance." Schonberg, a German emigre, studied dance with Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, and she extended the collaboration among the performing arts to include visual elements. Rani, who also studied Graham technique at Harvard, is aligned with a tradition that includes other luminaries, such as Lucinda Childs and Meredith Monk, according to Norton Owen, writing in Dance Magazine.