Meet the Companies
Thomas/Ortiz Dance
Founded in 2005 and led by Artistic and Executive Director Frances Ortiz and Ted Thomas, Thomas/Ortiz Dance is a contemporary dance company known for blending technical excellence with bold artistic innovation. Combining his urban athleticism with her Latin sensuality, the husband-and-wife team creates emotionally compelling works that fuse classical ballet, modern, and contemporary dance into a dynamic and distinctive style.
With a diverse ensemble of 10 dancers and more than 30 original works to its name, Thomas/Ortiz Dance continues to push creative boundaries through performances rooted in passion, grace, and human connection. The company’s contributions to the arts have been recognized through support from organizations including the Connecticut Office of the Arts, Fairfield County Community Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, CT Humanities, and the Connecticut Artist Fellowship. Learn more at thomasortizdance.org
East Coast Contemporary Ballet
Founded in 2019 by Claire Mazza and Alejandro Ulloa, East Coast Contemporary Ballet (ECCB) is a Connecticut-based nonprofit dance company dedicated to creating original contemporary ballets that blend the athleticism and tradition of classical ballet with innovative, boundary-pushing choreography. Now celebrating its fifth season, ECCB performs throughout Connecticut and New York, presenting works that connect with diverse audiences through music, storytelling, and abstract exploration.
Committed to collaboration and community engagement, ECCB co-founded the Fairfield County Dance Festival in partnership with Thomas Ortiz Dance, bringing free summer performances to audiences across Fairfield County. The company has also performed at the Newport Dance Festival, Stamford Dances Downtown, and Stamford Block Party, and has collaborated with organizations including the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, MoCA Westport, and the Fairfield Museum and History Center, as well as artists such as Latin Grammy Award winner Pedro Giraudo. Learn more at eccballet.org
Neville Dance Theatre
Hailed as “compelling,” “imaginative,” and a “pure delight,” Neville Dance Theatre, led by Founder and Artistic Director/Choreographer Brenda Neville, is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization that brings theatrical and thematic innovation to dance through works ranging from classical to contemporary ballet. Featuring eclectic and universally themed pieces that celebrate the human spirit and our shared world, this vibrant company creates colorful tapestries of movement that inspire and delight audiences, allowing spectators of all ages and backgrounds to experience the joy and artistry of dance. Now celebrating its 20th year, the company prides itself on fostering an exchange of styles, perspectives, and attitudes among its artists and audience, offering opportunities for involvement in the dance arts and promoting a deeper appreciation of dance as a powerful form of expression, communication, and artistry.
Amy Marshall Dance Company
Choreographer Amy Marshall and Executive Director Chad Levy co-founded the Amy Marshall Dance Company in 2000 in order to realize a vision of dance theater as a visual metaphor for the human spirit. Ms. Marshall’s choreography pays tribute to both the beauty and tribulations of life’s experiences through dramatic movement. The work’s emotional structure explodes across the stage with dramatic confrontation and then suddenly resolves itself into a poignancy of classical dimensions. The virtuosic performance of the dancers leaves audiences awed and delighted. To learn more about the company, visit: https://www.amymarshall.com/.
Lydia Johnson Dance
Founded in 1999, Lydia Johnson Dance has been consistently praised for its distinctive choreography, which uses components of ballet woven seamlessly into a contemporary dance vocabulary. The New York Times, The New Yorker, Backstage Magazine, Dance View Times and Oberon’s Grove have critically acclaimed the company for its annual New York Season. LJD’s 2019 New York Season was chosen by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to be filmed by their videographer and is available for viewing at the library.
LJD has performed at many venues including Live Arts, The Ailey Citigroup Theater, and in the 92nd St Y’s Moving Forward: Women Ballet Choreographers East and West series, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Inside/Out, the Great Friends Dance Festival in Rhode island and the Downtown Dance Festival in NYC. LJD was in residence at Kaatsbaan in March of 2022 developing new work. To learn more about the company, visit https://www.lydiajohnsondance.org/.
Newport Contemporary Ballet
Newport Contemporary Ballet (NCB) is a non-profit, professional, contemporary ballet company with a long history of enriching the cultural fabric of communities throughout Rhode Island, the region, and the world. The company creates and presents, relevant, visceral, and engaging dance works by a diverse group of the world’s leading choreographers and collaborating artists. In addition to works created for traditional stages, NCB is widely known for its unique approach to experiential and site- specific performances. NCB also runs The Academy at Newport Contemporary Ballet, a pre-professional school offering adult, youth and core ballet programs, and provides an arts-integrated, in-school learning program called Dancing Through Boundaries serving 4,500 kids across Newport County annually. To learn more about the company visit: https://newportcontemporaryballet.org
New England Ballet Theatre
TAKE DANCE
Takehiro Ueyama is a Tokyo-born choreographer and founder of TAKE Dance. After moving to the United States in 1991 to study at The Juilliard School, he joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company and toured internationally for 8 years.
Founded in 2005, TAKE Dance is recognized for its athletic movement style and fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Drawing on his Japanese heritage, Take creates works that explore beauty, resilience, compassion, and the complexities of the human experience.His choreography has been presented at venues and festivals including The Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Central Park SummerStage, and National Cherry Blossom Festival. His works have been commissioned by organizations such as Ballet X, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, The Juilliard School, The Ailey School, and SMU Meadows School of the Arts. Among his honors are the 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, the 2023 Danse Mirage Foundation Choreography Grant, and the 2025 Gross Family Prize. In summer 2026, he is creating new works for the Vail Dance Festival, Houston Contemporary Dance Company, and Pegasus Contemporary Ballet.
AVID DANCE
Founded by Artistic Director Emily Speed, Artistic Ventures in Dance (AVID) is a Colorado-based dance company that brings together world-class artists from across the nation. While rooted in Colorado, AVID does not call any one place home; instead, it embraces a collaborative model that allows artists to unite for creative projects in diverse communities.
AVID cultivates collaboration, meaningful connection, and artistic exchange through performances and projects that celebrate life and what it means to be fully alive. The company’s work reflects a commitment to innovation, community, and the transformative power of dance.
PARSONS DANCE
Parsons Dance is an internationally renowned contemporary American dance company celebrated for its energized, athletic ensemble work. Founded in 1985 by Artistic Director David Parsons and Tony Award-winning lighting designer Howell Binkley, the company has performed in more than 445 cities across 30 countries and 5 continents, appearing at prestigious venues including The Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House, and Teatro La Fenice.
Under the artistic vision of David Parsons, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the great movers of modern dance”, the company presents a dynamic repertory of over 75 works alongside pieces by guest choreographers and emerging artists. Committed to broad community engagement, Parsons Dance also offers extensive education and outreach programs, including workshops, open rehearsals, and inclusive initiatives such as its Autism-Friendly Programs, bringing the transformative power of dance to audiences of all ages and abilities.
KONVERJDANS
konverjdans (converge/dance) is a Brooklyn-based, women-led contemporary ballet company co-founded in 2016 by artistic directors Amy Saunder, Jordan Miller, and Tiffany Mangulabnan, three dancers, choreographers, and creators who hail from Zimbabwe, the US, and the Philippines, respectively, and who come together (converge) in the name of creating art in New York City.
konverjdans converges dance with other art forms, collaborating and producing work across disciplines. We create, perform, and present new and original work that reflects the voices within our community, a diverse group of artistic collaborators in dance, music, film, visual art, literature, and design. Since 2016, konverjdans has collaborated with over 60 different artists and created and produced close to 30 original works in dance.
TOM GOLD DANCE
Former New York City Ballet soloist Tom Gold founded Tom Gold Dance in 2008 to bring the past, present, and future of traditional classical dance to audiences around the world. Through annual self-produced programs in New York and other engagements both domestically and internationally, Tom Gold Dance aspires to the highest level of artistry, including in more than two dozen original works by Gold, set directly on Company dancers.
Tom Gold Dance has developed site-specific programs for, among others, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Morgan Library & Museum in New York; Fondazione Burri in Città di Castello, Italy; Guggenheim Bilbao; Turn Park Art Space in West Stockbridge, MA; and Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, NY. A two-time CUNY Dance Initiative award recipient, Tom Gold Dance regularly conducts residencies in the Berkshires and has appeared in the Battery Dance, Newport Dance, and Little Island (Hudson River Park) festivals.
DOUBLE TAKE DANCE
DoubleTake Dance, in its 16th year, has been featured in shows such as NYC SummerStage, Battery Dance, Carnival, Baltimore Invitational, Webster Hall, New York Fashion Week, Fuse TV, The NY Jazz Choreography Project, NYC Half Marathon, as well as several films, music videos, commercials and industrials. We have received choreographic commissions from Dancing Wheels company (Cleveland, OH) , Montclair Performing Arts Program (NJ), HT Chen’s Newsteps (NY ), JPAC, Next Stage, and have been featured in Dance Informa Magazine. We have been produced many times to perform full-length shows and also dedicate a substantial amount of time to performing for charities and benefits.
LaHa Dance Group
Founded by choreographer Laura Halzack, LaHa Dance Group is dedicated to creating community through dance and sharing innovative work with broad, diverse audiences. Through new commissions, re-stagings, workshops, classes, and annual performances in and around New York City and at universities across the country, Ms. Halzack and her company strive to bring people together through meaningful dance experiences.
LaHa Dance Group’s work has been presented at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage (2016), the Asbury Park Dance Festival (2022), the Paul Taylor Studios in New York City (2023, 2024, 2025), and the Shirley Project Space (2025). Ms. Halzack has also received commissions from Alma College (2023), The George Washington University (2012, 2016, 2021), and Towson University (2024).
SundanceX
SundanceX was formed in 2013 to explore classically based choreography. It is a journey that understands the wonders, joy, and beauty of ballet as well as its transformative power.SUNDANCEX is a member of Boston Dance Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit tax-exempt organization. Contributions in support of SundanceX are greatly appreciated, and may be made to Boston Dance Alliance, Inc. (click link), earmarked for "BDA artist approved project named SundanceX".