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Nicole Vaughan-Diaz, Kayla Farrish, Ryan Rouland Smith and Thryn Saxon in Marksman. Photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang.

About Us

Kate Weare Company charts a contemporary view of humanism by placing women at the center of the human story amidst the violence, sensuality and yearning for intimacy that mark our age. Weare’s work explores the undercurrents in relationships - both tender and stark - by drawing on our most basic urges to move and decode movement. Weare creates a communion between director and performer in order to mine the body’s instinct for truth-telling: our need for safety, our intelligence about who we are as individuals, our longing to connect, our desire to be seen.

Since 2005, Kate Weare Company has toured extensively throughout the United States to a wide range of audiences, gathering experiences and insights to help shape our process and priorities. Our mission includes creating live dance and dance film from a feeling of authenticity; a desire to explore across borders and mediums; a commitment to collaborating as a means to grow; a belief that dance can be aesthetically uncompromising, communicative and inclusive all at once. Form is meaning, but emotional content is how we connect it all.

Artistic Director Kate Weare is recognized as a preeminent American choreographer known for her startling combination of formal choreographic value and visceral, emotional interpretation. She founded Kate Weare Company in New York City in 2005 as a vehicle for her choreographic research, while creating commissions for other companies such as The Jose Limon Dance Company, The Juilliard School, Cincinnati Ballet, Scottish Dance Theatre, Union Tanguera (France), Ririe-Woodbury Dance Theater, GroundWorks Dance Theater and ODC/Dance, among many others.

Weare’s awards include The Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Award, Inaugural BAM Fisher Artist-in-Residency & Commission Award, The Joyce Theater Creative Residency Award (2016, 2014, 2011), The Aninstantia Foundation Fellowship, The Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship, NC Arts Council Fellowship, White Bird’s Barney Choreographic Prize, CalArts Inaugural Evelyn Sharp Summer Residency Award, The MANCC Fellowship Award, The Jacob’s Pillow Residency Award and The Djerassi Fellowship. Teaching includes: Princeton University, The Juilliard School, NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Marymount Manhattan, CalArts, Virginia Commonwealth Univ., among others.

Raised by a painter and a printmaker in Oakland, CA, Weare draws on visual art sources in her work along with language, poetry, contemporary music, psychology, and above all, nature. Weare earned a BFA from CalArts and subsequently danced in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Belgrade and Montreal before settling in New York City in 1998. Based now between New York and Asheville, NC, Weare has been exploring dance on film with filmmaker Jack Flame Sorokin. In 2021 Weare and Sorokin completed their first two films, “Landfall,” and “Moth,” and are in production with several more.

“Weare gets under the skin of movement with almost surgical exactness, inflames it, and then makes it glow with a strange, yet familiar light. No one else is making work quite like hers.”
~ Deborah Jowitt

Artistic Director Kate Weare by Patrick Macleod.

    Awards

  • Princess Grace Foundation, Special Projects Grant (2024)
  • Best Experimental Short Film, Paris Short Film Festival (2022)
  • Best Cinematography, Experimental Dance & Music Film Festival (2022)
  • The Aninstantia Foundation Fellowship Award (2017)
  • The DANCEworks Residency Award (2018)
  • The North Carolina Arts Council Award (2018)
  • The Bonnie Cashin Fund Award (2019)
  • New York State Council on the Arts (2011-2022)
  • National Dance Project Production Award (2011, 2017)
  • DANCEworks Santa Barbara Residency (2017)
  • New Music USA Awardee (2013, 2016)
  • National Dance Project Touring Award (2012, 2016)
  • White Bird Barney Creative Prize (2015)
  • The Joyce Theater Artist-in-Residency (2007, 2011, 2014, 2016)
  • National Dance Project Touring Award (2012, 2015)
  • BAM Professional Development Program Award (2014-15)
  • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow (2014)
  • Evelyn Sharp CalArts Choreographic Residency (2014)
  • Alpert Award in the Arts Nominee (2008, 2014, 2018)
  • BAM Fisher Inaugural Artist Residency (2013)
  • The B.U.I.L.D. Grant / NYFA (2010, 2013)
  • National Performance Network Creation Fund (2012-2014)
  • The Princess Grace Award for Choreography (2010)
  • American Music Center Project Grant (2010)
  • The O’Donnell-Green Music & Dance Grant (2008, 2009)
  • The Greenwall Foundation Grant (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)
  • Jacob’s Pillow Artist-in-Residence & Commission (2007-2008)
  • ODC Theater Residency Grant (2007, 2008, 2010)
  • Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Fellowship (2007)
  • The A.W.A.R.D. Show, First Place, NYC (2007)
  • Dance New Amsterdam Artist-in-Residence (2007)
  • Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Fdn Individual Artist Grant (2007)
  • 92nd Street Y/Harkness Center Grant (2006, 2007)
  • Djerassi Artist Fellow (2004)
  • Isadora Duncan Dance Award Nominee SF (1999)

    Teaching Residencies

  • Gibney Dance Center (NY) Summer Intensive (2015, 2016, 2017)
  • Hobart and William Smith Colleges (NY) Residency (2010, 2017)
  • New York University/Tisch School (NYC) Residency (2011, 2016)
  • ODC Dance (San Francisco) Summer Intensive (2014)
  • Marymount Manhattan College (NYC) Residency and Commission (2010)
  • Dance New Amsterdam (NYC) Guest Artist Series (1998-2006)
  • Long Island University (Brooklyn) Artist Residency (2007, 2008)
  • Princeton (NJ) Visiting Faculty in Atelier Program (2012)
  • Peridance (NYC) Intensive Workshop w/ Monica Bill Barnes (2011)
  • Bates Dance Festival (ME) Guest Artist Residency (2010, 2012)
  • SUNY Brockport (NY) Company Residency (2010)
  • Roger Williams University (RI) Artist Residency (2008)
  • Keene State College (NH) Company Residency (2009)
  • Cinema Reks, Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1998)

    Commissions

  • American Dance Festival, Footprints Program (2024)
  • New Victory Dance, NYC (2020)
  • NC Arts Council Fellowship, NC (2019)
  • ODC Dance, CA (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020)
  • Cincinnati Ballet, OH (2018)
  • Union Tanguera, Lyon France (2017-19)
  • Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company (2017)
  • José Limon Dance Company, NYC (2016)
  • The Joyce Theater Foundation, NY (2007, 2011, 2014, 2016)
  • Music Moves Festival, ODC, SF (2014)
  • Groundworks, OH (2013, 2015)
  • The Juilliard School of Dance, NYC (2014)
  • Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), NYC (2013, 2015)
  • Company E, DC (2013)
  • Princeton University Atelier Opera by Barbara White (2012)
  • Danspace Project @ St. Mark’s Church, NY (2009)
  • Axis Dance Company, CA (2007)
  • CityDance Ensemble, DC (2007, 2008)
  • Dance Theater Workshop, NY (2004, 2006)
  • WestWave Dance Festival, CA (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007)
  • New York University, Tisch Dance, NY (2011-2012)
  • Scottish Dance Theatre, Dundee, Scotland (2011)
  • Australia’s Buzz Dance Theatre, Perth, Australia (2011)
  • PARADIGM, Princess Grace Com. Award, NY (2010)
  • Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, MA (2008)

    Film Festivals

  • Paris Short Film Festival (2022)
  • Experimental Dance & Music Film Festival (2022)
  • Austin Dance on Film Festival (2022)
  • Jacksonville Dance Film Festival (2022)
  • Maryland Film Festival (2022)
  • Montreal Independent Film Festival (2022)
  • Fastnet Film Festival (2022)

Nicole Vaughan-Diaz, Kayla Farrish, Ryan Rouland Smith and Thryn Saxon in Marksman. Photo by Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang.