News
Bolles Dance Hosts another Guest Artist
The Bolles Repertory Dance Theatre welcomes the second guest artist of the 2008-09 school year as Steve Rooks will visit the San Jose Campus November 15-16. Rooks will join the Bolles dancers from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on November 15 and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on November 16 in Lynch Theatre. The rehearsals are open to anyone who would like to observe. Rooks will be setting a modern dance piece for the Bolles Repertory Dance Theatre, Dance Company.
Rooks is currently resident choreographer and associate professor of dance at Vassar College, and was a founding faculty member of the Dance Degree Program at Howard University. He is also a guest instructor at the Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham Schools of Dance. He was a 2001 artist-in-residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and has been a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance.
Rooks has taught internationally at several dance festivals and as a guest instructor for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Martha Graham Dance Company, Dallas Black Dance Theater, Florida Dance Masters, the Masterworks Festival, Ballet Nacional de Mexico, the American Academy of Ballet, the Houston Ballet, and the Symposium on Dance at Yale University.
Steve Rooks began his dance training in Washington D.C. with Jan Van Dyke and Greg Reynolds, after graduating with honors from Dartmouth College. He continued his training in New York City as a scholarship student at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Rooks has danced and toured with the Greg Reynolds Dance Quintet, the Mary Anthony Dance Theater, Peter Sparling, Dancer’s Eye, and the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, where he performed classic works by Ailey, Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty, and Ulysses Dove. He joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in the summer of 1981, and was a principal dancer with the company until 1991.
Rooks has appeared in the Metropolitan Opera House presentation of Martha Graham’s Diversion of Angels televised for “Celebrate! 100 Years of the Lively Arts at the Met”. He has appeared in television commercials, and as a featured dancer on the television special, “The Martha Graham Company in Japan”. In October 1989, Rooks’ solo, “Outside”, was selected to be presented in the New Choreographers series during the Graham Company’s fall season at the City Center Theater in New York. One of his works, “Cool River”, became a part of that company’s 1996-97 repertory after its world premiere at Lincoln Center in August 1996.