“Ephrat Asherie creates a world I want to live in.”
— Berkshire Eagle
Ephrat Asherie Dance Company
Founded in 2012 by Choreographer, Performer and B-girl Ephrat Asherie, New York City based Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD), is made up of a dynamic group of multi-faceted street and club dance artists. A dance company dedicated to honoring the ethos of the underground club community, EAD is rooted in Black and Latine vernacular dance, including breaking, Hip Hop, house, waacking and the New York style hustle. A two-time National Dance Project awardee, EAD has presented work at 92NY, Apollo Theater, ChangMu International Festival (Korea), El Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), FiraTàrrega (Spain), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Joyce Theater, Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, La MaMa, La Mercé Festival (Spain), River to River Festival, New York City Center, New Victory Theater, New York Live Arts, Spoleto Festival USA, Vail Dance Festival, White Bird, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, and The Yard, among others. EAD is committed to celebrating and bringing awareness to the history, expansiveness and vastness of street and club dance culture by creating and sharing innovative performance works, teaching workshops and classes, and creating platforms for dialogue across the field.
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie (pronounced: eh-fraht a-SHAIR-ee) is a NYC-based Choreographer, Performer and B-girl. A Bessie Award winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance, Asherie creates work for the dynamic group of dancers in her company, Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD). Dedicated to honoring the ethos of NYC’s underground club community, EAD explores the inherently complex and dynamic qualities of various Black and Latine vernacular forms, including breaking, Hip Hop, house, and waacking. Asherie’s singular way of creating “compact bursts of choreography with rapid-fire changes in rhythm and gestural articulation” (The New York Times) brings forth work that is aesthetically innovative, physically rigorous and unceasingly curious. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine’s inaugural Harkness Promise Award, a Jerome Artist Fellowship and two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Asherie’s work has been presented on stages nationally and internationally with additional commissions from Vail Dance Festival, Fall for Dance, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, PHILADANCO!, Parsons Dance and Malpaso. Asherie is honored to have been mentored by Richard “Break Easy” Santiago and to have collaborated with Michelle Dorrance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, Gus Solomons Jr. and Buddha Stretch, among others. Asherie earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of street and club dance. She is a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective, MAWU, and is forever grateful to NYC’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.