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associate artistic director  Emily Stein Emily Stein began her dancing at the age of four, but she didn't start taking lessons until the age of eight. But then she trained with a vengeance. Her early training in Buffalo, NY, focused on classical ballet. She was also exposed to musical theater, jazz and mime. Emily attended the University of Iowa, where she earned her BA in Dance. It was at Iowa that she began teaching and first experienced modern dance. It was also at Iowa that she discovered choreography. After graduating, Emily moved to Chicago, where she worked with many companies and choreographers. She also appeared in countless Nutcrackers. In order to explore her interest in choreography and teaching, she left Chicago in 1990 to pursue her MFA at Smith College. She served as a teaching fellow at Smith College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. While at Smith, Emily's choreography was chosen to represent the college at the American College Dance Festival at Bennington College. Upon returning to Chicago in 1992, she began to produce her own choreography independently. |
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In 1993, she began dancing and choreographing for Zephyr Dance, and eventually was named Associate Artistic Director. Working with Zephyr has given her a stable atmosphere to evolve her choreography and through Zephyr Dance, her work has been presented at many Chicago venues, as well as throughout the country. Her choreography has been seen in New York City at the Mulberry Street Theater and Cunningham Studios; in Toronto at the Winchester St. Theater; at the Cleveland Public Theater, Ohio; the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, FL; the Margaret D’Houbler Theater, Madison, WI and Barking Legs Theater in Chattanooga, TN, among others. She has set her work on students at Niagara County Community College, the Dance Center of Columbia College, and the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theater. In 2002, she participated in Deborah Hay’s Solo Performance Commissioning Project, and has performed Hay’s solo, Beauty, in Chicago, Washington and Michigan. Her choreography has been nominated for a Ruth Page Award and a Chicago Dance Achievement Award, and has been seen in the Dance Chicago festival and Chicago’s NEXT Dance Festival. Teaching has also been an important aspect of Emily's dancing life since 1983, when she began teaching in the University of Iowa’s Talented and Gifted children’s program. She is currently on the faculty at the Dance Center of Columbia College, where she teaches ballet and is the Ballet Faculty Coordinator. Widely known in the Chicago area for her classes in ballet technique, she has worked with students from a wide variety of backgrounds and all levels of experience and enjoys the challenges of helping them to connect with ballet technique as a tool for their own bodies’ dancing. She served for five years on the faculty of the Barat College Conservatory of Dance teaching technique, dance composition and dance history. For the past ten years, Emily has also worked as a teaching artist in public schools in Chicago and the surrounding area. Using the Zephyr Model of arts integration to connect the art to the core curriculum, she has created unique dance experiences for students at all grade levels in a wide variety of subject areas. She has also taught professional development workshops for teaching artists, classroom teachers and college students, helping them to develop and refine their teaching practices. |