Faculty

2024 Flashpoint

This year’s biennial dance concert, States of Mind, presented three new dances choreographed by dance faculty Amy O’Brien, Aimee Rials, and Daniel Gwirtzman. The program, featuring three fantastic casts, previewed December 3, premiered on the 5th, and ran for four more performances through December 8 with two matinees at IC’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance’s 535-seat proscenium Hoerner Theatre. Production design meetings began in the Spring Term 2024 with student collaborators (costume and lighting design, dramaturgy) and staff collaborators (sound and set design). The devised work was developed in August 2024 at the American Dance Festival during a week-plus long residency with Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company. Six company dancers were part of the workshopping of this dance. DGDC company dancer Vanessa Martínez de Baños came to IC to assist with the rehearsal process.

2023 Newsies

Production meetings began in the spring of 2023 for the fall season which enjoyed seven sold-out performances including a preview in the Hoerner Theatre, October 25-November 1. The Ithaca Times reviewed: “Daniel Gwirtzman’s choreography is thrilling –– this has to be one of the most athletic troupes of dancers to hit the Hoerner stage.”

2022 Guests Only

In 2022, conceived, directed, and choreographed Guests Only, a devised 40-minute theater dance work which premiered November 30-December 4, 2022 at the Hoerner Theatre. The production, a collaboration with the Ithaca College School of Music, Theatre and Dance’s Jazz Ensemble, a cast of fifteen musicians and nine dancers, is a vibrant, theatrical dance scored to classic jazz music, and was performed live. Celebratory and upbeat, the dance presents a voyeuristic view into the intimate confines of a private gathering devoted to the merging of music and dance. Finding inspiration from the great canon of jazz artists, the choreography blends vernacular and virtuosic movement into an energetic, exuberant mix, highlighting a range of emotions and a rigorous exploration of speed. The dance, living at the intersection of concert dance and theater, follows a clear narrative with consistent characters.

2021 RENT

Choreographed the musical for the College’s proscenium Hoerner Theatre which The Ithaca Times reviewed: “All the action (Daniel Gwirtzman, choreography) is unforgettably rendered in a succession of striking stage pictures, of couples, trios, or the entire ensemble.” The run was cut short due to Covid, as reported in The Ithacan: “It is always a tremendous disappointment when a show has to be canceled, for all involved, and for all who would have seen it,” Gwirtzman said via email. “In the theater we are in the business of making magic, an inherently optimistic act. I continue to keep the faith … We had four wonderful performances last week of RENT and will hopefully be able to continue. Safety is the most important thing always.”

2020 Blowout

A twenty-five minute film created in the fall, the first dance concert I was on campus for, the early height of the pandemic. Dance concerts, part of The School of Music, Theatre and Dance’s mainstage programming, are produced every two years. The concert, made with two other dance colleagues, was titled Shifting Spaces. Each one of us made a dance film, Blowout with a cast of eight. Everyone was living the life they were portraying, isolated, home-bound, anxious. The resulting footage was lit and shot by the dancers, which I edited. Jeff Story (1966-2022) commissioned by the College to compose the score, attended each Zoom rehearsal with the cast and stage management and was part of their processes in forming the narratives and characters. He visited for a Q and A to discuss the collaboration.

2019 Pippin

This was the first choreographic work for Ithaca College after joining the faculty. Just before performances were to begin, the work was left in technical rehearsals before a spring break of a term from which one never came back in person. The pandemic started in March 2020 and the work never had an opportunity to be seen. Hours of rehearsal footage documenting the entire process from auditions, pre-rehearsing with student Assistant Choreographer Lydia Kelly, music rehearsals, up through run-throughs was edited and shared with the cast and crew for a Virtual Night Celebration on what would have been the Closing night run.