From June 2 – 22, 2019, Skidmore College will offer an intensive workshop for pre-professional and professional dancers led by STREB Extreme Action. Students will have the unique opportunity to train and perform under the guidance of Elizabeth Streb and her company while enjoying Skidmore’s facilities and the Saratoga Springs community in upstate New York.
For more than three decades, STREB has performed in theaters large and small and served as artists-in-residence at the world’s top art museums. At the same time, STREB has taken its work into the streets and sports stadiums: at Grand Central Station; in front of the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island’s fairground; under the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage; as part of V-Day at Madison Square Garden; during halftime at a Seattle Sonics basketball game; at the Minneapolis Metrodome; on the mall outside the Smithsonian Institution and descending the façade of Bergdorf Goodman. The company’s extensive touring calendar has included presentations at the Lincoln Center Festival, the Fall for Dance Festival at the Delacorte Theater, the Wolf Trap Foundation, the Walker Art Center, Los Angeles MOCA, the Wexner Center, Spoleto USA, the River-to-River Festival, the Barbican Center, the Theatre de la Ville, at both the Brisbane and Melbourne Festivals and in Chile, Singapore and Taiwan. Other company highlights: in 2004 Cirque du Soleil celebrated their 20th anniversary and invited STREB to perform with them in front of 250,000 people on the streets of Montreal; in 2010, STREB was featured at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics; in 2011, the company performed ten sold-out shows at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City and was commissioned to create a new work for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s groundbreaking; in 2012, STREB was commissioned by the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Mayor of London to participate in the London 2012 Festival. On “One Extraordinary Day” (July 15, 2012), from dawn to midnight, STREB dancers performed 7 action events across major London landmarks including the Millennium Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The London Eye. During summer 2015, STREB was featured at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Pan Am Games Arts Festival in Toronto. STREB EXTREME ACTION was most recently seen in Greece at the Summer Nostos Festival at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, CityLab 2018 Paris, and at the opening of Bloomberg's new corporate headquarters in London.
In January 2003, STREB moved into a vacant former loading facility and transformed 51 North 1st Street into the STREB LAB FOR ACTION MECHANICS (SLAM). In 2007, STREB purchased SLAM with unprecedented support for building acquisition from the New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, City Council, Mayor’s Office and Brooklyn Borough President’s Office ensuring its future as the home of STREB EXTREME ACTION, the STREB PopAction School and the Espana/STREB Trapeze Academy.
As a performance and presenting venue and an open access education and rehearsal space, SLAM creates community through interaction and experimentation. Currently, over the course of a year, nearly 10,000 people come to SLAM: 5,000 audience members at nearly 40 shows; 800 students weekly at over 59 weekly classes; 3,000 city school children and community organization constituents; 200 artists who rent SLAM to create and present work, teach and take class; 600 tweens and teens who attend monthly SLAM ACTIONCLUBs; and 250 children who attend SLAM summer camps.
Connect with STREB Extreme Action:
: https://www.facebook.com/STREBSLAM
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/strebslam
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/strebslam/
This residency is sponsored, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts Dance Program. Previous resident companies have included: Jose Limón Dance Company, Twyla Tharp, Dan Wagoner and Dancers, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Taylor 2/Paul Taylor, Martha Graham Dance Company, Garth Fagan Dance, Parsons Dance Company, Ballet Hispanico, Doug Varone and Dancers, Ronald K. Brown\Evidence, Gallim Dance, Take Dance, Susan Marshall & Company and Stephen Petronio Company.
