Her Stories

Amy Seiwert serves as the Artistic Director of the San Francisco contemporary ballet company, Imagery. She enjoyed a nineteen-year performing career with Smuin, LA Chamber, and Sacramento Ballets. As a dancer with Smuin Contemporary Ballet she was mentored under the wing of the late Michael Smuin and was the company’s Choreographer in Residence from 2008-2018. Named one of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine, SF Chronicle called her first full evening of choreography a “Top 10” dance event (2007.) Other awards include an IZZIE Award for Outstanding Choreography and a “Goldie” from the Bay Guardian.  Her ballets have been supported by the NEA, The Rainin Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Joyce Theater in New York City. Additionally, her ballets are in the repertory of Ballet Austin, Washington, Atlanta, Oakland, Colorado, Louisville, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, and American Repertory Ballets as well as Imagery and AXIS Dance. Seiwert served as Artistic Director of Sacramento Ballet from 2018-2020.

JENNIFER ARCHIBALD is the founder and Artistic Director of the Arch Dance Company and Program Director of ArchCore40 Dance Intensives.   Archibald has choreographed for the Atlanta Ballet, Ailey II, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Kansas City Ballet, Tulsa Ballet,Grand Rapids Ballet, Ballet West, Sacramento Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet and worked commercially for Tommy Hilfiger, NIKE and MAC Cosmetics as well as chart-listed artists.

She was appointed as the first female Resident Choreographer in Cincinnati Ballet’s 40-year history. This season she will create new works for Richmond Ballet, Ballare Carmel, Boston Conservatory, and The Governor’s School. Ms.Archibald was the acting Movement Director for Michael Kahn’s The Oresteia at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. As a director she premiered WeAIghT a film featuring current Ailey Company member James Gilmer and was selected for Best Choreography and Best Male Lead for Mountain View Film Festival. WeAIghT is an official selection for the San Francsico Film Festival, Light Moves Festival in Ireland has officially been selected for the 50th Annual Dance on Camera Festival co-presented by Dance Films Association and Film at Lincoln Center. Ms. Archibald was commissioned to create Breakin’Bricks a new work for the 100th Centennial of the 1921 Massacre which was a multimedia full length ballet presented by the Tulsa Ballet Company.

Archibald’s works have been performed at venues including New York’s City Center, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Aaron Davis Hall, Jacob’s Pillow Inside|Out Stage and Central Park’s Summerstage Mainstage. Jennifer was awarded a Choreographic Fellow for Ailey’s New Directions Choreography Lab under the direction of Robert Battle.  She is a Choreographic Winnings recipient by the Joffrey Ballet.  Jennifer choreographed “Seven”, a biographical work about Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee, which was commissioned by St. Louis based MADCO Dance Company. Arch Dance Company‘s “Chasing Shadows” was remounted for Dallas Black Dance Theater for their 2018/19 season. She was also the 2018-19 recipient’s for the CUNY Dance Initiative Residency.

Jennifer is currently an Acting Lecturer at the Yale School of Drama and was appointed as Guest Faculty Lecturer to develop the Hip Hop dance curriculum at Columbia/Barnard College. Jennifer is also a guest artist at several universities including Fordham/Ailey, Purchase College, Princeton, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of South Florida, Goucher College, Columbia College Chicago, Miami New World School of the Arts, South Carolina’s Governor’s School of the Arts, Ailey Fordham, Boston Conservatory, and Point Park.

Hailed as a choreographer “with an imagination so exuberant that one could not be sure how one movement led to the next” and “not only inventive but heart-rending,” Jennifer Hart has been commissioned by Ballet Austin, Ballet Austin ll, Ballet Nouveau Colorado (now Wonderbound), James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, The Walker Art Center’s Momentum Series, The McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, Metropolitan Ballet Project, University of Kansas, University of Massachusetts, Lawrence Ballet Theatre, Halcyon Dance Project in San Francisco, University of Texas’ Butler School of Music, Conspirare, and Merick Strategies for its production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” and “Icons of Broadway Holiday Spectacular.”

In 2011, Hart was awarded a New York City Ballet Fellowship and won third place at the Saint-Sauveur International Choreography Competition. She received second place at Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s choreography competition, and was one of three winners of the University of Kansas’ competitive choreography competition. She was chosen three times to present work at Ballet Builders, New Choreographer’s on Point in NYC. She was commissioned by University of Massachusetts in the fall of 2013; the work was chosen for the National College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center, June 2014.

In 2014, she formed Performa/Dance with Ballet Austin dancer Edward Carr. Performa/Dance launched its inaugural show. Ignite: Three Works, in June, 2014. Her work for Performa/Dance was awarded four Austin Critic’s Table awards for Best Short Work (“On Truth and Love”and “Camille: A Story of Art and Love”), Best Choreographer  (“Fellow Travelers” and “Murmuration”), and Best Dance Concert (Ignite: Three Works). Along with her work in concert dance, she has choreographed and performed cabaret shorts for nightclubs and television. She recently choreographed and co-directed the epic Bernstein’s Mass, a work involving 300 performers.

She trained at Minnesota Dance Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. Her performing career includes Minnesota Dance Theater, Ballet of the Dolls, and L.A Chamber Ballet, as well as independent choreographers. She choreographs yearly for Ballet Austin’s apprentices and Fellowship recipients, teaches full-time in the academy and apprentice program, and serves as Curriculum Director for the lower levels of the school where she sets syllabus and leads training for academy teachers for levels 1-5.

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON!

Known for his innovative and collaborative choreographic projects, Stephen Mills has works in the repertoires of dance companies across the United States and worldwide.

His international career began in 1998 after being chosen Prix d’Auteur at les Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris.  In his inaugural season as Artistic Director of Ballet Austin in 2000, Mills attracted national attention with Hamlet, hailed by Dance Magazine as “…sleek and sophisticated.”

Mills’ works showcased at The Kennedy Center include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and performances at the Ballet Across America Festival in collaboration with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet.

In 2005 Mills developed a community-wide human rights collaborative dialogue culminating in his signature work Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project, for which he received the Audrey and Raymond Maislin Humanitarian Award from The Anti-Defamation League. Mills contributed a podcast about Light to the Voices on Anti-Semitism series at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and was invited to speak about the work at The United Nations in 2014.  Light has been performed in five U.S. cities, in three cities in Israel, and was recently featured in an Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary, Sharing Light.

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