Dance Carousel 2024
20+ artists will come together at the Ground Floor Theatre, November 6-9, for a lively event guaranteed to surprise and delight Austin audiences. Dance Carousel – 40 dances in 40 minutes – follows its triumphant 2023 return from an 11-year hiatus with a brand-new mix of choreographers for the 2024 performances.
Dance Carousel is officially back! In 2023, the fun show format reopened to sold-out and raucous audiences at the Ground Floor Theatre. This uniquely formatted production of new contemporary dance and dance-based performance art was founded in 2004 by Ellen Bartel. Productions of the past integrated hundreds of choreographers, dancers, and dancegoers in a distinctly Austin (that is, weirdly wonderful…) event. The return of Dance Carousel has given a new life to an old tradition, cross-pollinating and enlivening the local community with a sweet mix of nostalgia and forward-looking innovation.
Two different programs, Carousel A on Wednesday, November 6th and Friday, November 8th and Carousel B on Thursday, November 7th and Saturday, November 9th will each showcase the work of ten different choreographers. Each choreographer will create 4 one-minute dances that will be shown in a round, amounting to 40 minutes of dance.
The 2024 iteration is helmed by Austin dance producers Emily Rushing, Lisa Kobdish, Rosalyn Nasky, Alexa Capareda (who have collectively garnered multiple Best Dancer/Choreographer awards, nominations, and accolades), and founder Ellen Bartel, named “Best Dance Mobilizer” in 2008 for her tireless work of bringing people together.
Named Best Original Dance Event by the Austin Chronicle and beloved by the Austin dance community for more than a decade, Dance Carousel will blend established and emerging Austin creators for a revitalized iteration where creativity flourishes and nearly anything can happen within a minute. Barry Pineo of the Austin Chronicle proclaimed in 2006 that Dance Carousel is “one of the most pleasurable, thought-provoking, eclectic hours you will ever spend in a theatre” and that “Ellen Bartel’s idea of having 10 choreographers create four dances each and then present them in a kind of round is not just a neat, quirky idea, but a brilliantly entertaining one.”
This year, the Dance Carousel producers left the lineup partly to chance – pulling choreographers’ names out of a hat, hearkening back to the original random method to select artists for the program. The reason for this was to promote healthy and non-competitive creative growth within the Austin dance community, to shake up artistic stagnation, and to provide an opportunity for new or marginalized artists to have a platform to create.
The lineup hopes to ensure diverse styles and dynamic range. The choreographers include Jessica Boone, Ricky Dashner, Ty Graynor, Lisa Anne Kobdish, Christy Mitchell, Elizabeth Placencio, Aida Reyes, Emily Rushing, Melissa Sanderson, Caroline Sutton in Carousel A, and Anna Bauer, Emily Brunken, Alexa Capareda, Kelly Goetz, Lisa Nicks, Kelsey Oliver, Pearl, Tikiri Shapiro, Matthew Sommers, and Morgan Teel in Carousel B.
Tickets are sold on a sliding scale of $20-$35. Visit dancecarouselaustin.com to purchase.
Dance Carousel, Photo by Dennis Fagan