CounterPointe Dance Series returns this March

Norte Maar, a Brooklyn-based arts organization now celebrating 20 years of the creation, promotion, and presentation of collaborations in the visual, literary, and the performing arts, presents the eleventh anniversary season of Counterpointe11, March 1-3, 2024, a curated performance series of newly commissioned choreographic works by female dance artists.

Presented during Women’s History Month, CounterPointe is the longest standing performance series to exclusively feature collaborations between women dance makers, the pointe shoe, and visual artists. Returning to downtown Brooklyn’s The Mark O’Donnell Theater at Entertainment Community Fund, 7 women choreographers have been paired with 7 women visual artists to collaborate and create both a new physical and visual work by each – investigating the process of creation, inspiration, and development in live performance. 

Launched in 2012, CounterPointe has been celebrated for breaking new ground in expanding the ballet concert vocabulary, investigating new and historic territory, encouraging discussion, and creating a forum for women, who are largely underrepresented as creative leaders, to take artistic risks.

Having engaged over 100 artists across the last decade, this winter the program will show seven collaborations by choreographer/artist pairs:

Tina Bararian & Estefania Velez-Rodriguez; Chloe Sonnet Brown & Cadence Giersbach; Danielle Diniz & Carol Salmanson; Julia K. Gleich & Ellie Murphy; Minnie Lane & Jaanika Peerna; Sarah Marazzi-Sassoon & Nancy Bowen; and Nicole Speletic & Esperanza Mayobre.

A complete list of bios can be found here.

“Our program is designed to encourage and indeed push choreographers and artists towards exploring new ways of making and seeing their own art,” explains Julia Gleich, co-founder of Norte Maar and originator of the CounterPointe Series. “By creating a tight deadline, the hope is to limit the opportunities for “second-guessing” so that new works evolve spontaneously, perhaps chaotically,” she continues.

“Unwavering from our mission, we have been producing these collaborations by women choreographers and women visual artists for 11 years. The question of identity for us is important, yet incidental. We do not ascribe to the concept of a women’s art/women’s choreography. We are committed to creating a culture change in which creators and audiences consider ballet/pointe/dance in a fresh way and take women seriously. As Virginia Woolf espoused, we are providing women with space and a little time to present their creative work in dance using the pointe shoe.” 

CounterPointe11 will be performed Friday, Mar 1 at 7: 30p.m; Saturday, Mar 2 at 4:00p.m. and 7:30p.m; and Sunday, Mar 3 at 4:00p.m.

General admission tickets are $30. Students and seniors are $20. All tickets must be purchased in advance here 

Counterpointe Courtesy Norte Maar, Choreographer-Amanda Treiber, Artist-Marcy Rosenblat, Photo by Julie Lemberger