Dragon’s Egg Presents: Melody Ruffin Ward

Every fall, Marya produces a concert in NYC that showcases a number of the artists who have been in residence at the Egg in the past year or so.  The concert this year will be on September 24th at 2 pm at Triskelion Arts.  Reservations are via Marya at her email: mybeasts@aol.com, and tickets are a mere $15.  Do join us!!

 

One of the artists we present this year is Melody Ruffin Ward.

 

Title: “Distilled Verse Viii

Melody

Choreographer and Performer: Melody Ruffin Ward

Music: “Sons & Daughters” by Allman Brown and Liz Lawrence

 

Melody Ruffin Ward’s choreography and dancing have been described by poet Tim Seibles as having “the physical capacity to articulate the delights and lyrical mysteries of being human…her work bears witness that we live in bodies, and that it is only through our vulnerable flesh that we enter and come to know the world.”   A graduate of Spelman College with a B.A. in English and Education, she graduated cum laude and went on to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she received her M.F.A. in choreography and performance, studying both the Cunningham and Limon techniques.  Ward’s work is focused on movement that is gestural and based in a love for spacious phrases that are rooted in the earth. She is interested in developing work that has an internal and personal dialogue.  She creates atmospheres where both the specialist and the non-specialist have the opportunity to experience the impact that dance and movement have on humans.  

 

Ward was a Professor of Dance for two decades and most recently completed her Masters of Divinity at Andover Newton Graduate Theological School with a focus on Pastoral Theology.  As a choreographer, she seeks spaces to bring movement as a way of integrative healing through her ongoing work with ‘The Turning House Project,’ a collective where her interest in gathering artists of different genres together feeds the artist in her and others she meets.

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