Ivy Baldwin

Ivy Baldwin has been praised by Deborah Jowitt as a “hunter-gatherer sort of choreographer—foraging for provocative imagery to nourish her highly individual creative impulses.”  She is known for her vivid imagination, and her mysterious dances deconstruct and combine disparate elements to build bizarrely entrancing new realities.

Baldwin studied dance as a child before attending the North Carolina School of the Arts where she earned a B.F.A. in Contemporary Dance. She moved to New York City in 1997 and attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Upon receiving her M.F.A. in 1999, she founded Ivy Baldwin Dance, and has been a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer, and teacher since 2000.

During her Guggenheim Fellowship term, Baldwin will develop and premiere her latest evening-length dance, Oxbow. Oxbow will premiere at the American Dance Institute in October 2014, followed by the New York premiere in November 2014. She is currently a 2013 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence (2013–2015) and recently completed creative residencies at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts and Abrons Arts Center in New York City.

Baldwin received her first commission for an evening-length work from Dixon Place in 2004, Now Leaving Vanderville. This led to commissions from Dance Theater Workshop (Gone Missing, 2006, and Bear Crown, 2009), Dance New Amsterdam (It’s Only Me, 2007), Dixon Place (principal@qmul.ac.uk…, 2008), The Chocolate Factory (Here Rests Peggy, 2010), and New York Live Arts (Ambient Cowboy, 2012). Baldwin’s work has also been presented in New York City by Lincoln Center Out of Doors, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Symphony Space, CATCH in P.S.122’s COIL Festival, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and La MaMa, E.T.C.

Baldwin’s work has been seen internationally at Tanz im August in Berlin, Germany, the Dans Contemporan International Dance Festival in Bacau, Romania, and in-progress at the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy; and nationally at the Irvine Barclay Theater, REDCAT, Appel Farm Performing Arts Center, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Washington University.

Baldwin continues to develop her reputation for collaboration with artists across many genres. Since 2007, she has collaborated with celebrated Minneapolis-based composer Justin Jones. She is continually interested in working with visual artists including, most recently, with painter Anna Schuleit on 2009’s Here Rests Peggy and 2012’s Ambient Cowboy. For Oxbow, Baldwin will collaborate with installation artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen.

Since 1999, Baldwin has been recognized with various fellowships and awards, inctwo Bogliasco Foundation fellowships, including a Jerome Robbins fellowship in dance, at the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, and a New York Foundation for the Arts BUILD Award. Baldwin’s work has received funding from the Jerome Foundation, William and Karen Tell Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Lumpkin Family Foundation, and Dugas Family Foundation, among other private institutions.

Baldwin has been an artist-in-residence for ArtistNe(s)t at the George Apostu Cultural Center in Bacau, Romania, The Yard, and Sugar Salon—a program of the Williamsburg Art Nexus and Barnard College Dance Department of Columbia University. She has received creative residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, Dragon’s Egg, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

As a performer, Baldwin has often performed in her own choreographic works. She has also had the pleasure of performing in Karinne Keithley’s original play Do Not Do This Ever Again at the Ohio Theater, and in the work of choreographer Katie Workum, among others.

As an educator, Baldwin has taught and choreographed in educational institutions across the country since 2003. She has received commissions for new work for students from the Wooden Floor, Barnard College, CUNY Hunter College (2009 Harkness Foundation Choreographer-In-Residence), Tisch School of the Arts, and North Carolina School of the Arts, among others. She has served as adjunct faculty at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, Barnard College, and the New School’s Eugene Lang Liberal Arts College dance department.

Profile photograph by Nafis Azad

Ambient Cowboy (2012) Excerpt

Ambient Cowboy (2012) Excerpt

Here Rests Peggy (2010) 10 minute edited excerpt