Ephrat Asherie Dance
Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD) is a dance company rooted in street and social dance. Dedicated to revealing the inherent complexities of these forms, EAD explores the expansive narrative qualities of various street and club styles including breaking, hip hop, house and vogue as means to tell stories, develop innovative imagery and find new modes of expression. EAD’s first evening-length work, A Single Ride, earned two Bessie nominations in 2013 for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and Outstanding Sound Design by Marty Beller. The company has presented work at The Apollo Theater, Columbia College, Dixon Place, FiraTarrega, Guggenheim Works & Process, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, La MaMa, River to River Festival, New York Live Arts, Summerstage and The Yard, among others. For more information, please visit ephratasheriedance.com or follow EAD on Instagram @ephratasheriedance.
Company dancers appearing in these performances at the Annenberg Center are Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, Manon Bal, Teena Marie Custer, Valerie “Ms. Vee” Ho, Matthew “Megawatt” West, and Omari Wiles. Musicians appearing are Ehud Asherie, Eduardo Belo, Sergio Krakowski, and Ranjan Ramchandani.
Full bios and program notes can be accessed here.
Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie (Artistic Director/Choreographer/Dancer)
Ephrat Asherie is a New York City-based b-girl, dancer and choreographer and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine’s Inaugural Harkness Promise Award, a Jacob’s Pillow Fellowship at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts and a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study grant. In 2017, she received a National Dance Project award to support the development and touring of her most recent work, Odeon. Asherie is a 2019 NYFA Fellow and a 2018-2019 City Center Choreography Fellow. Her new work UnderScored was awarded a 2019 Creation and Development Award from the National Performance Network and will premiere in the fall of 2020. She is honored to have worked and collaborated with Dorrance Dance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, David Parsons, Gus Solomons Jr. and Buddha Stretch, among others. Asherie has created work for various university dance programs, including those at Lehman College, Smith College, SUNY Brockport and the University of California Santa Barbara. She earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of contemporary street and club dances. Asherie is a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective MAWU and is forever grateful to New York City’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.
Ernesto Júlio de Nazareth (Composer)
Ernesto Júlio de Nazareth was a Brazilian composer and pianist. He published his first composition, Você Bem Sabe (1877), at age 14. At this time, he began his professional career playing at cafes, balls, society parties and in the waiting rooms of movie theaters in Rio de Janeiro. Known for creatively combining musical influences from Brazil, Africa and Europe, Nazareth straddled the genres of popular and classical music, often blurring the boundary between the two worlds. Although greatly influenced by Chopin, Nazareth was also noted for his singular maxixe and choro compositions, and he composed over 210 waltzes, sambas, polkas and quadrilles during his lifetime (1863-1934). His work is now included as part of teaching programs for both classical and popular styles all over the world.
Ehud Asherie (Musical Director/Pianist)
Ehud Asherie, “a master of swing and stride,” (The New Yorker) is a jazz pianist who integrates the venerable New York piano tradition into his inventive style. Largely self-taught, or rather, “old-schooled,” Asherie learned the ropes at Smalls, spending the wee small hours of his early teens becoming a fixture of the late-night jam sessions. Mentored by the late Frank Hewitt, Asherie began to develop “his virtuosity and his ear for clean, crisp lines” (The Star-Ledger). From Smalls to the Rainbow Room, from Lincoln Center to The Village Vanguard, Asherie has since worked with a broad range of musicians including Eric Alexander, Roy Ayers, Peter Bernstein, Jesse Davis, Bobby Durham, Vince Giordano, Wycliffe Gordon, Scott Hamilton, Catherine Russell, Ken Peplowski and Clark Terry. Asherie has toured clubs and festivals around the world, including in South America, Europe and Asia. His playing can be heard on countless recordings, including the 2010 Grammy® Award-winning soundtrack of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Acclaimed album releases under Ehud Asherie’s leadership have included Shuffle Along which reinterpreted the music of Eubie Blake; Organic, which finds Asherie on organ; Upper West Side and Lower East Side, duet projects featuring the saxophonist Harry Allen; and his trio recording Music Makes Me. Asherie’s most recent trio recording is Wild Man Blues on the Capri Label. ehudpiano.com
Photographs for Ephrat Asherie are available here.
