American Ballet Theatre Studio Company & Stefanie Batten Bland

For two weeks in January 2019, contemporary dance-theater choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland hunkered down in the Rubenstein Arts Center’s airy state-of-the-art “Dance Cube” studio with the American Ballet Theatre’s (ABT’s) Studio Company, the organization’s pre-professional program made up of twelve young adult dancers. Commissioned to create a three-part ballet for the company as part of ABT’s Women’s Movement initiative, Batten Bland guided the dancers through improvisational prompts to build a short work exploring the literal and theoretical realms of monuments: how they are constructed, deactivated, and repurposed, within and outside ballet.

Local audiences had opportunities to observe Batten Bland’s work-in-progress, monuMEnts, at the Rubenstein Arts Center on January 27, 2019, January 26, 2020, and most recently, February 15 & 16, 2020. These public showings are the first two parts of the Studio Company’s three-part residency that will culminate in a half-evening-length ballet, scheduled to have its world premiere at Duke in March 2021.