Dance
North Carolina Dance Festival
North Carolina enjoys an international reputation in the field of dance. Growing out of the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the NC Dance Theatre in Charlotte was founded in 1975 and was named the nation's highest-rated touring company by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982. Our state has been headquarters for one of the nation's most distinguished performing and teaching events, the American Dance Festival, which has brought hundreds of young dancers, international companies and choreographers and appreciative audiences to the campus of Duke University each summer since 1978. Since then, a number of nationally-known companies and choreographers have spent significant periods of time working across the state.
They include Carlota Santana who leads her New York and North Carolina-based dance company Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana as well as choreographer and composer Laura Dean, both of whom live in Bahama. Raleigh native Chuck Davis brought his dance company from New York to perform at ADF in 1980. Four years later, Durham became the birthplace of his world-renowned African American Dance Ensemble, which led Davis to receive the National Governors Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts in 2002.
African American Dance Ensemble
Carolina Ballet was founded in 1984 as a performance outlet for students at the Raleigh Dance Theatre. Growing in stature, it became a professional company in 1997 under the direction of Robert Weiss, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and today serves the growing Triangle community.
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