Emily Coates
Dancer/writer/performance-maker/filmmaker Emily Coates has performed internationally with New York City Ballet, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, Twyla Tharp, and Yvonne Rainer. Highlights of her thirty-year career in dance include performing three duets with Baryshnikov, in works by Erick Hawkins, Mark Morris, and Karole Armitage; principal roles in ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins—with whom she worked closely in the last six years of his life; Lucinda Childs’ seminal solo Carnation; and the span of Rainer’s work, from 1961 to the present.
Her choreographic work has been commissioned and presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center, Carnegie Hall, Danspace Project (NYT Critics Pick 2017 & 2018), Works & Process at the Guggenheim, University of Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery, Wadsworth Atheneum, Performa (NYT Best Dance of 2019), Quick Center for the Arts, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, among others. She is one of five transmitters of Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A (1966), which she has taught for the past fifteen years, and reconstructed with Rainer her 1965 dance Parts of Some Sextets for Performa 19. Her collaborators have included Charlie Burnham, Taylor Ho Bynum, Lacina Coulibaly, Sarah Demers, Liz Diamond, Ain Gordon, Derek Lucci, Josiah McElheny, Will Orzo, Emmanuèle Phuon, and Yvonne Rainer.
Awards and fellowships include the School of American Ballet’s Mae L. Wein Award for Outstanding Promise; Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Martha Duffy Memorial Fellowship; Yale’s Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics, and a National Endowment for the Arts presentation grant. She was a 2016 Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts and a 2019 Dance Research Fellow at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
With physicist Sarah Demers, she is co-author of Physics and Dance (Yale University Press 2019). Her essays have appeared in TDR, PAJ, Theater, programs and an exhibition catalogue for the Paris Opera Ballet, and the Oxford Handbook for Contemporary Ballet (2021).
She is Professor in the Practice and Director of Dance Studies in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at Yale University. Since 2006, she has directed the development of a dance studies curriculum at Yale, which has grown into a flourishing program of eight full- and part-time faculty and offerings that are widely cross-listed with other departments in the arts, humanities, and science. In 2010, she founded the Yale Dance Lab. She holds a secondary appointment in the Directing Program at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She earned her BA in English ‘06 and an MA and MPhil in American Studies from Yale and is currently completing a PhD in American Studies. She has been a member of the arts faculty at Yale since 2006.
Email: emily.coates@yale.edu
Performance
La Stravaganza, 1996
Choreography by Angelin Preljocaj
A group piece commissioned by New York City Ballet for the Diamond Project. The image depicts the final duet, with Emily Coates and Benjamin Millepied.

The Argument, 1999
Choreography by Mark Morris.
Duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, 2000. Mark Morris originally created the piece for six dancers. He later restaged the choreography as a duet.


Photo by Steven Caras.
The Last Lap, 1999
Choreography by Karole Armitage.
Duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, 1999. A new work created by Karole Armitage for White Oak Dance Project, which premiered in New York at the New Victory Theater in August 1999.

Pictured in Baryshnikov in Black and White. New York: Bloomsbury, 2002.



Pictured in Baryshnikov in Black and White. New York: Bloomsbury, 2002.
MacGuffin or How Meanings Get Lost (revisited), 1999
Choreography by Neil Greenberg.
Restaged for White Oak Dance Project, 1999. Pictured (from left to right): Emmauèle Phuon, Susan Shields, Emily Coates, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Pictured in Baryshnikov in Black and White. New York: Bloomsbury, 2002.
See-Through Knot, 2000
Choreography by John Jasperse.
Ensemble piece created for White Oak Dance Project, 2000. Pictured (from left to right): Michael Lomeka, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Emmauèle Phuon, Emily Coates, and Raquel Aedo.

Pictured in Baryshnikov in Black and White. New York: Bloomsbury, 2002.
AG Indexical, 2006
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
The pas de deux, with Emily Coates, Sally Silvers, and Pat Catterson (out of frame).

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
RoS Indexical, 2008
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
Performed by Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, and Sally Silvers.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
Spiraling Down, 2009
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
“Sara Bernhardt,” with (left to right) Sally Silvers, Emily Coates, and Pat Catterson.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
Assisted Living: Good Sports 2, 2011
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
Performed by Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, Emmanuèle Phuon, Keith Sabado, Sally Silvers, and Yvonne Rainer.


Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
Assisted Living: Do You Have Any Money?, 2012
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
Performed by Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, Emmanuèle Phuon, Keith Sabado, and Yvonne Rainer.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
Heartbeat with the Persuasions, 2009 / 2012
Conceived and composed by Christopher Janney. Choreography by Sara Rudner.
Solo performer in a piece designed by Christopher Janney with choreography by Sara Rudner, featuring an amplified heart monitor. The piece was originally created for Rudner, then staged for Mikhail Baryshnikov. I performed a version with The Persuasions.
Video by Christopher Janney

The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project—Altered Annually, 2012
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
Performed by Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, Emmanuèle Phuon, Keith Sabado, Yvonne Rainer, and David Thomson.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
Three Satie Spoons, 1961 / 2018
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer.
Rainer’s first solo. Reconstructed in 2005 and subsequently performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, including at MOMA’s exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done (2018).

Photo by Stephen Sherrill.
Choreography
We (Atmospheric Pressures), 2022
A juxtaposition of works by Emmanuèle Phuon and Emily Coates, We is a multi-artist, hybrid performance/lecture utilizing text, video, installation and the body. The work is ultimately about human and artistic struggles to represent and connect with our natural world.
The artists each created an indoor and an outdoor section that are then intertwined.
More info on Emmanuèle Phuon’s sections here.
In Emily Coates’s We (Atmospheric Pressures), dance collides with scientific discovery and the stars, restoring the inherent physicality in human understanding of the universe. Through surprising sources—19th c. weather journals, galactic 1930s choreography, reimagined ancient astronomical rites, an astronaut’s 20th c. space walk—cosmic dances drift across the centuries, bodying forth the cosmos in love and science. Conceived and choreographed by Emily Coates. Directed by Ain Gordon. Performed by Emily Coates, Derek Lucci, and Emmanuèle Phuon with music by Taylor Ho Bynum. Costume design for the blue dress by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartleme. Lighting by Kelly Martin.






Special guests Elizabeth Newton and Devin Walker, Department of Astronomy and Physics at Dartmouth (seated)




Photos by Ben DeFlorio
Invisible Universe, 2022
Directed by Emily Coates
Invisible Universe is a feature-length experimental documentary and dance film by Emily Coates that chronicles spontaneous collaborations between leading dance artists and scientists encountering each other for the first time within Wright Laboratory. Part performance, part cinematic essay, the film frames the intimate, sometimes awkward process of dialoguing across differences, staging choreographic investigation inside a physics laboratory tasked with studying unseen phenomena. Featuring paired interactions between acclaimed choreographers Annie-B Parson, Ni’Ja Whitson, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Reiner, and renowned scientists Richard Prum, David Moore, and Reina Maruyama, with a cameo by research and development technician Frank Lopez, Invisible Universe considers the poetic confrontation between the methods of the dance-maker and the metrics of the scientist. D: Emily Coates, US, 1h20m
Director of Photography and Editor: John Lucas
Sound Designer: Evdoxia Ragkou


Parts of Some Sextets, 1965/2019
Choreography by Yvonne Rainer. Reconstructed for Performa 19 by Yvonne Rainer and Emily Coates.
A full reconstruction and reimagining of Rainer’s 1965 dance Parts of Some Sextets, in which we drew on archival research in the Yvonne Rainer Papers at the Getty Research Institute and Rainer’s own memory of the work. Performed a mere five times in 1965—at the Wadsworth Atheneum and Judson Church—the dance had never been restaged until 2019.
Best Dance of 2019, The New York Times.
Best of 2019, Artforum.
Performed by Rachel Bernsen, Emily Coates, Brittany Engel-Adams, Patrick Gallagher, Shayla Vie-Jenkins, Jon Kinzel, Liz Magic Laser, Nick Mauss, Mary Kate Sheehan, David Thomson, and Timothy Ward.



Rehearsal at the Gelsey Kirkland Center for Classical Ballet, fall 2019. Photos by Paula Court.

Emily Coates and Yvonne Rainer (Mary-Kate Sheehan, far right), Baryshnikov Arts Center, summer 2019. Photo by Simon Gerard.
Schlemmer Loops, 2019
Choreography by Emily Coates.
An homage and reimagining of Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus dances. With costumes designed by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, performed by Miguel Anaya, Reid Bartelme, Brittany Engel-Adams, and Megan Wright.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.
A History of Light, 2018
Created by Emily Coates and Josiah McElheny.
Concept by Emily Coates and Josiah McElheny. Choreography and text by Emily Coates. Performed by Emily Coates, Sarah Demers, and Josiah McElheny. The mirrored sculpture is McElheny’s “Walking Mirror I” (2012), wood, mirror, nylon webbing, metal hardware. Commissioned by Danspace Project, 2018.

Photo by Paula Lobo.

Photo by Paula Lobo.
Incarnations, 2017
Choreography by Emily Coates.
An evening-length meditation on the shift from classical to modern physics through a reworking of Balanchine’s 1928 ballet Apollo.


Emily Coates and Sarah Demers, “Apollo Physics-Casting”.

Emily Coates, Lacina Coulibaly, Jon Kinzel, Iréne Hultman, “The Universe”.

Lacina Coulibaly and Jon Kinzel, “Apollo and Isaac Newton”.

Iréne Hultman, Emily Coates, Sarah Demers, Yvonne Rainer, “Sun Dial”.
The Soldier’s Tale, 2014
Choreography by Emily Coates.
Music by Igor Stravinsky, text by C.F. Ramuz. Music direction by David Shifrin, stage direction and translation by Liz Diamond. Featuring Michael Cerveris, Tom Pecinka, James Cusati-Moyer, and Mariko Parker. Produced by the Yale School of Music and Yale School of Drama, presented at Sprague Hall, Yale University and Carnegie Hall, New York, NY.





Three Views of the Higgs and Dance, 2013
Directed by Emily Coates and Sarah Demers.
Drawing on interviews with physicists whose research is based at CERN, we composed this science-art video to educate the general public about the discovery of the Higgs boson—and in the process, educate the public about dance, too.

Photo by Kike Calvo
Empty Is Also, 2009
Sculptural design by Tamar Ettun, choreography by Tamar Ettun and and Emily Coates.
An intermedia, durational performance piece created for the X Initiative gallery, commissioned by Performa 2009. Performed by Emily Coates, Tamar Ettun, and Jane Ira Bloom.

Photo by David Barreda.

Photo by David Barreda.
Ici Ou Ailleurs, 2009
Choreography by Emily Coates and Lacina Coulibaly.
Duet created in studios and sites in New York and Ouagadougou, 2007-2009. Performed in theaters (Baryshnikov Arts Center, St. Mark’s Church/Movement Research Fall Festival, Yale Center for British Art, Brown, Cornell, Harvard), as well as excerpted site specific performances in Grand Central Station and on the High Line, New York, NY.





Photos by David Barreda.
Writing
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Books
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Reimagining a Dance: Parts of Some Sextets, 1965-2019. Edited by Yvonne Rainer and Emily Coates, with art direction by Nick Mauss. Lenz Press, forthcoming winter 2023.
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Coates, Emily. “Weaving Apollo: Neoclassical Ballet and Female Authorship.” In The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel and Jill Nunes Jensen, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
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Coates, Emily and Sarah Demers, Physics and Dance. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT: 2019.
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Select Essays and Other Writing
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Coates, Emily. “Sculpting Time: Sara Rudner in Her Studio.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Volume 44, Number 3, September 2022 (PAJ 132), pp. 37-54.
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—-. “Yvonne Rainer’s Archive.” TDR 65:4 (T252) December 2021.
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—-. “Breathing the Lens.” Peak Journal, 2019-2020 Season. Edited by Claudia La Rocco. Montclair, NJ: Montclair State University, September 2019.
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—. Script for A History of Light, an intermedia performance project created by Emily Coates and Josiah McElheny, commissioned and presented by Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church, New York, NY, November 2018.
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—. “The Poetics of Physics in Dance.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Vol. 39, No. 2, May 2017 (PAJ 116): 7-21.
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—. “Neoclassical Ballet in the Twenty-First Century.” Opéra national de Paris program essay, July 2016.
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—. “What is an American Dance?: Origins, Innovations, Translations.” American Choreographers at the Paris Opera: From Balanchine to Forsythe. Edited by Benoît Cailmail, Guillaume Ladrange, Jérôme Maurel, and Inès Piovesan. Paris: Opéra national de Paris and Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2016. Published in relation to the exhibition American Choreographers at the Paris Opera: From Balanchine to Forsythe at the Bibliothèque-musée of the Opéra national de Paris, June 16-September 25, 2016.
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—. “Spectral Ballerinas: on a pedestal, written out of history.” Huffington Post, February 2, 2014.
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—. “Engagement Féminin: L’Équilibre and Contemporary Dance in West Africa.” Theater 2014, 44 (1), 36-55.
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—. “Pina… are you there?” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Vol. 35, No. 2, May 2013 (PAJ 104), 63–68.
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—. “Moving Between, Among, In the Midst: Intercultural Kinesis.” Theater 42:1 (2012): 10 – 19.
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—. “Souleymane Badolo in New York City.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Vol. 33, No. 1, January 2011 (PAJ 97): 39 – 50.
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—. “Beyond the Visible: the Legacies of Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Vol. 32, No. 2, May 2010 (PAJ 95): 1–7.
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—-. “Points of Contact in International Dance at Yale,” Theater 40: 1 (2010).
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Coates, Emily and Joseph Roach, guest eds. Theater on Postglobal Dance. Theater Magazine 40: 1 (2010).
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Coates, Emily. “The New Kids at the New Yorker.” Yale Daily News Magazine, March 4, 2005.
Press
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Performance and Choreography Reviews
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Gia Kourlas, “Best Dance of 2019.” The New York Times, December 6, 2019.
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Wendy Perron, “Yvonne Rainer’s Mattress Dance that “Went Nowhere” Is Now Getting Somewhere,” Dance Magazine, November 13, 2019.
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Gia Kourlas, “Yvonne Rainer Revives Her Mattress Monster Dance,” The New York Times, November 12, 2019.
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Gia Kourlas, “Five Dance Performances to See in NYC this Weekend,” The New York Times, January 10, 2019.
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Marina Harss, “Emily Coates/Emmanuèle Phuon,” Goings on About Town. The New Yorker, November 5-11, 2018.
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Gia Kourlas, “39 Dance Performances to See This Fall.” The New York Times, September 12, 2018.
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Nicole Robertson, “Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon,” Eye on Dance, November 2018.
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Alastair Macaulay, “The Humanity of Yvonne Rainer’s Natural and Peculiar Dances,” The New York Times, September 18, 2018.
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Deborah Jowitt, “Apollo Meets the Higgs Boson.” Dance Beat, March 24, 2017.
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Gia Kourlas. “Emily Coates: Incarnations collides dance and physics–and a little Yvonne Rainer.” 4Columns, posted March 24, 2017.
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Martha Sherman. “E=mc Squared Dance.” danceview times, posted March 22, 2017.
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Siobhan Burke. “Reviews: Colliding Particles…” New York Times, posted March 21, 2017.
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Deborah Jowitt. “Review: Emily Coates and Yves Laris Cohen, A Dialogue of Choreographers.” New York Times, posted March 25, 2015.
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Sarah Kaufman. “Drowning out the noise to appreciate the beauty in Assisted Living: Good Sports 2.” Washington Post, posted April 26, 2014.
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Meche Kroop. “A Tale Told by Geniuses.” Voce di Meche, posted April 9, 2014.
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Anthony Tommasini, “If the Devil Taps You, Pretend You Didn’t Feel It.” New York Times, posted April 8, 2014.
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Mindy Aloff, “Yale School of Music, Yale School of Drama, and Yale in New York: Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale.” Exploredance.com, posted April 7, 2014.
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Book, Other Reviews, and Interviews
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“Q & A with Emily Coates on her Upcoming Film” by Jessica Sun Li in The Dartmouth, July 23, 2021
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“Bookshelf: Physics and Dance.” Notices of the American Mathematical Association, 67:4, April 2020, 543.
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Debra Cash, “Book Review: Physics and Dance: The Intelligence of Movement.” The Arts Fuse, January 11, 2019.
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Interview with Sonja Shechet for Sloan Science and Film, January 2019
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Mika McKinnon. “Yale Offers a Course That is Cross-Listed Between Physics and Theater Arts.” Space io9.com. Posted 29 June 2014.
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Amanda Solliday, “The Physics of Dance.” Symmetry Magazine, April 2014.
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Emily Coates, Profile #44 on My Life as a Dancer, Blog by Jill Randall, October 2013
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Interview with Finis Jung, Fall 2003
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Dance at Yale
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Natalie Kainz, “Yale Introduces New Dance Lab,” Yale Daily News, December 4, 2019.
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Matthew Woodard, “Students Will Dance in a New Creative Research Initiative,” YaleNews, November 25, 2019.
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“Ten years since Its founding, dance studies has growing momentum.” YaleNews, posted November 16, 2016.
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“Junior Faculty Honored for Interdisciplinary Teaching.” Yale News, posted November 11, 2014.
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“Small in size but large in scope: Dance Studies at Yale.” Yale News, posted April 11, 2014.
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Eric Xiao. “Dance Initiatives Expanded.” Yale Daily News, posted October 11, 2013.
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Siobhan Burke. “Dance in the Ivy League.” Dance Magazine, August 2013.
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McHenry, Jackson. “Hitting Her Marks.” Yale Daily News, posted March 29, 2013.
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Elaine Stuart. “Making It Happen: Theory Meets Practice at Yale,” Dance Magazine, April 2012.
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Fromson, Daniel. “The Fight of a Dancing Thinker.” Yale Daily News Magazine, posted on December 7, 2007.
Events
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Upcoming
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January 27-29, 2023 Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Yvonne Rainer’s “HELLZAPOPPIN’: What About the Bees?”
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February 9 & 10, 2023 Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, Yvonne Rainer’s “HELLZAPOPPIN’: What About the Bees?”
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February 18, 2023 Le Sacre du Printemps, choreographed by Emily Coates and Lacina Coulibaly for the Yale Dance Lab, with Yale Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Boughton. Presented in partnership with the Yale Schwarzman Center.
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April 2-9, 2023 Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase, Hard Return: a group exhibition on performance, featured artist
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April 13 & 14, 2023 We, by Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon, Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University
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June 16 & 17, 2023 We by Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Tivoli, NY
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Recent
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October 5 - 8, 2022 Premiere of Yvonne Rainer’s “HELLZAPOPPIN’: What About the Bees?” at New York Live Arts, New York, NY
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July 29 - 30, 2022 Premiere of We at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH
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March 18, 2022 Guest on State of the ARTS, WPKN
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March 19-25, 2022 Artist residency, Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University
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Archived
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Click here to view archived events.