Introduction:
The Public is Invited to Dance: David Dorfman's underground

Born in 1956, David Dorfman was raised in a working-class Jewish suburb of Chicago. He was an athlete (he played baseball and football) in high school. In college, he studied business. After he graduated, he began dancing seriously, receiving a Master’s of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) from Connecticut College where he now teaches. Often, his short program biography humorously alludes to this unexpected shift in careers. “He would like to thank long-time mentors Martha Meyers and Daniel Nagrin for taking a chance and rescuing him from counting leisure suits in St. Louis.”

David Dorfman’s choreographic work ranges from his solos works about memory and loss such as Sleep Story or Dayenu, to duets with performer Dan Froot which humorously spoof on the conventions of masculinity in American culture, to a variety of dances for his company of professional dancers. Another important aspect of Dorfman’s repertoire is his series of group works on topics connected to his community outreach programs. Because they explore issues from both a personal and a social perspective, these works provide useful foundation for understanding his new choreography underground.

On his company’s website, Dorfman discusses the motivation behind one of these projects entitled, Out of Season (The Athlete’s Project).

I am an athlete turned dancer and choreographer who combines risky athletic movement with a more delicate gestural vocabulary. Combining humor and drama, I attempt to create an atmosphere of passionate theatricality. Out of Season is a project in which David Dorfman Dance, our six-person company, rehearses over a two-week period with a group of volunteer athletes selected from the communities to which we tour, and performs the finished piece along with other work from the company's repertory at the end of the residency.

Most of the athletes, who range widely in age, training, and social makeup, have never been on stage before and when performance time comes, the level of personal expression and physical expertise is breathtaking. . .The project is not strictly about athletics. It is more about a dialogue between any two groups of people that share a common language of some sort. The ability--or inability--of people from different cultures or social roles to integrate and assimilate provides a potent starting point for much of our exploration of the human spirit. The project is about encouraging people that have never been on stage before to use their bodies and voices in potent ways. We are interested in telling stories, uncovering aspects of athletics, dance, and life that are not often dealt with in a theatrical context. Issues of intimacy in athletics and winning or losing in dance are of key concern to us. Aspects of competition (personal and societal), media views of events and personas, and definitions of worth and value also fit prominently into our investigation.

This term “investigation” is crucial for understanding Dorfman’s new work, for underground is essentially an investigation of the questions: What is my role as a citizen in today’s world? In a violent world, do we fight for peace?