Updated: February 20, 2024
Active since: 1999
The Michele Brangwen Dance & Music Ensemble is an interdisciplinary performing ensemble of contemporary dance and music. In 22 years, every performance has included live original music and the musicians as integral parts of the visual stage imagery. We believe that the artist’s role in society is to communicate, to challenge, to open a dialogue that can both unite us and inspire meaningful change. We function like a jazz band, and along with sections of choreographed movements and written music, we use improvisation that comes out of the form, concept, and emotional life of the work.
We began our 2023-2024 Season on September 8, 2023 with the premiere of Faces Of Sun And Wind, co-presented by Ivesian Arts, at the historic James & Martha Duffy Performance Space at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn NY. We then were presented by The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, NY on September 9, 2023.
For our 2022-2023 Season, we returned to live public performances. We performed at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston (MATCH) in the Fall 2022. In the Spring 2023 we began rehearsals for Faces Of Sun & Wind, a new work with choreography by Michele Brangwen and music by Jon Irabagon. We also were presented by Ivesian Arts in concert on the rooftop of Diego Salazar Artist Studios in Long Island City, NY in September 2022.
Our dance & music films created during the pandemic were written about in Broadway World and were featured as the Video Of The Day on the All About Jazz website. To Your Constant Embrace, The Cloud Stream Sways will be featured in Houston’s’ Fame x Frame Film Fest in November 2023.
In July 2019 we premiered Dancing The Blue Hour at the MATCH, a work that explores what happens when people come together to experience the blue hour. This was one of our most unique and experimental works; the concept was to conjure the magic of a shared experience by enabling the audience to participate directly through dancing and chanting in the final movement of the work. Ivesian Arts presented Dancing The Blue Hour work at Diego Salazar Artist Studios in NY and the Jazz Loft presented the work in Stony Brook, NY. This was a typical season for us pre-pandemic; we premiere new work in Houston and then we are presented in other venues in additional cities.
The Michele Brangwen Dance & Music Ensemble has performed at the MATCH, Studio 101 Theater, Barnevelder Theater (2005-2013), MECA Theater, Stude Concert Hall, Moores Opera House and the Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston as well as site specific performances around the city. We have performed in New York at the Mark Morris Dance Center, Dance Theatre Of Harlem, Village Zendo, ShapeShifter Lab, Diego Salazar Artist Studios and The Jazz Loft.
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About the Michele Brangwen Dance Ensemble's 2020 film Orchid People:
"Healthy, attractive, dance-trained individuals in lovely costumes paying homage to a glory of forests and jungles in the midst of a metropolis under the encompassing sky. I was interested in the use of what seemed to be day-for-night in the second section, and the final gesture, a salute to the city, was poignant and welcome. There's a quality in the film that reminds me of the open-hearted modern dances made when New York jazz was taking off after WWII." - Mindy Aloff, Editor, Journalist, Essayist & Dance Critic
