Venezuela RPCV Jane Comfort is a choreographer, writer and director whose work has been produced throughout the United States and in Europe
JANE COMFORT is a choreographer, writer and director whose work has been produced throughout the United States and in Europe. In 1998 she received a BESSIE Award for Underground River.
Recent Works
In addition to Underground River, recent works include Three Bagatelles for the Righteous, a suite of three dances to music incorporating classic sound bites of political and religious leaders like Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson, S/He, a performance review that uses gender and racial reversals to comment on social and political issues in the US, and a revival of Cliffs Notes: Macbeth, her 1988 Wall Street version of Shakespeare's tragedy. Faith Healing, her re-examination of Tennessee Williams's play, The Glass Menagerie, had an Off-Broadway run after premiering at PS 122 in 1993.
Current Work
Commissioned by The American Dance Festival through the Doris Duke Award for New Work, Asphalt is a dance/opera with direction and choreography by Jane Comfort, book and lyrics by Carl Hancock Rux, vocal score by Toshi Reagon and instrumental score by DJ Spooky. It premiered in New York at The Joyce Theater in January 2002. It is the story of a DJ, abandoned as a child and remembering nothing of his past, who embarks on a surreal and hallucinatory journey that ultimately reveals to him his history.
Jane is just beginning work on Persephone, a dance/theater piece to be performed in a setting of bamboo, metal and neon sculpture designed by Keith Sonnier, and to a score based on Javanese gamelan musical structures by composer Tigger Benford.
Biography
Jane Comfort grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and received a BA in painting at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been making interdisciplinary work since 1978. She and her company have performed throughout the United States and in Europe. Jane recently choreographed the Broadway musical Amour, with music by Michel Legrand and direction by James Lapine. She was Associate Director/Choreographer of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Broadway musical Passion, which won a Tony Award for best musical. She also choreographed the indie film musical Francesca Page, which appeared at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals and Theater Couture's off-Broadway show Tell Tale.
Awards
Jane has received 13 choreography fellowships and company grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Doris Duke Award for New Work, and support from Creative Capital, the Rockefeller Foundation, Philip Morris, NPN New Creation Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Mary Flagler Cary Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation and others.
Recent Commissions and Teaching
Recent commissions include The Joyce Theater, the American Dance Festival, Jacob's Pillow, Jeanne Ruddy Dance, the Estonia National Ballet and two mini-musicals for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She taught at NYU's Tisch summer residency program and at Bates Dance Festival this past summer.
