About the Company
In 2000, after a decade of making dances, evening-length dance-theater pieces with his own music, two full-length solos, and numerous scores for other choreographers and directors, Christopher Caines got together a pianist, two singers, and six of his dancer friends, and made ARIAS, a suite of dances set to vocal music ranging from Italian Baroque arias to songs by Faur?, Schoenberg, and Gershwin. Despite the small venue (the Construction Company in New York City), the piece attracted unusual critical attention, with a featured review in The Village Voice and an extended essay in The New Republic. The company dates its founding to this concert.
While the company has grown since then — to ten dancers, with a repertory of about twenty works — its mission has not changed: to explore, experiment with, and celebrate great music through dancing. CCDC has appeared exclusively with live music since its debut, played and sung by a growing family of outstanding instrumentalists and singers, with an emphasis on vocal, choral, and chamber music ranging from masterpieces of late Medieval and Renaissance polyphony to new commissions by American composers. Critics have called the company's musicians "superb" and the dancers "radiant."
The company and Caines's earlier project groups have been produced annually in New York by the Construction Company since 1996, and at many other NYC venues. CCDC's largest-scale work to date is Tenebrae, presented through DANCE: Access at Danspace Project, a dance set to choral music by Thomas Tallis including the famed "Spem in alium," with a 40-voice choir under the direction of conductor Kristina Boerger, for the composer's 500th birthday.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Mindy Aloff, Adjunct Associate Professor of Dance, Barnard College
Beth Genne, Associate Professor of Dance, University of Michigan
Elena M. Paul, Esq., Executive Director, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
Nancy Reynolds, Director of Research, The George Balanchine Foundation