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Entrepreneur and choreographer, Rebecca Davis is committed to developing rising talent and transforming young dancers into performing artists. In founding The Rebecca Davis Dance Company, she has pioneered a unique pre-professional dance-theater training program that imparts literary works, historical events, and social issues to students and adult audiences alike. The Rebecca Davis Dance Company fills the market gap between training and professional employment for young dancers in the Philadelphia community.
Rebecca draws more than 13 years of professional dance training in Canada, Russia, and the U.S. She choreographed 15 works in Vancouver and implemented a creative dance program for under-served children in Toronto. Rebecca was classically trained in the Russian Vaganova method of ballet while studying under Tatiana Petrovna in Moscow and Valery Tereshkin in Siberia. She has received a degree in choreography from The Saint Petersburg Conservatory under the tutelage of Artistic Director Nikolai Boyarchikov.
Ms. Davis is more than just a dance aficionado; she is a natural entrepreneur. Rebecca came to Philadelphia in 2002 to contribute to the array of cultural delicacies that the city has to offer. Immersing herself in Philadelphia life has given birth to her vision of making this city a center of dance training on par with New York and Moscow.
Rebecca has captured this vision in her award-winning business plan recognized as the most viable small business by The 2004 Annual Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. She is a summa cum laude graduate of the Fox School of Business, where she was an official nominee for both the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, and was granted a Fulbright Scholarship. Rebecca is also the recipient of the Garfield Weston Scholarship, Canadian Merit Scholarship and is a two-time winner of the League for Entrepreneurial Women’s Essay Competition.
Ms. Davis is partnering with the community to position The Rebecca Davis Dance Company as a catalyst for improving the integration of the humanities with the physical discipline of dance. Her first two full-length modern ballets were Antigone (Kimmel Center, 2006) and Helen Keller (Prince Music Theatre, 2007). This year she choreographed Darfur (Arden Theater, 2008).
More articles by Rebecca Davis, newest first
| Russian and African dancers: A common thread |
June 14 2011 |
Russia and the West African nation of Guinea are two countries with little in common. Yet as I learned first-hand, their mutual passion for dance, and their approach to training dancers, share remarkable similarities.
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| Dancing across barriers in the Balkans |
May 16 2011 |
Can dancers accomplish what diplomats can’t— namely, erase the barriers of fear and suspicion stemming from the brutal Bosnian war of the mid-1990s? Ashley Fargnoli, a 27-year-old self-style “dance activist,” demonstrated what can be done just this year.
Three Notes. A dance project choreographed by Ashley Fargnoli. www.ashleyfargnoli.com.
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| Dancing for his life in Rwanda |
January 05 2010 |
Eighteen months ago I had the rare privilege of teaching dance to a unique group of orphans victimized by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. When I returned last month I discovered that the sponsoring group has folded, the safe house is gone, and these kids are back on the streets of Kigali. The solution to their problem is costly by African standards— and piddling by ours.
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| In Bosnia: Dance conquers fear |
August 11 2009 |
When I arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina in June for a two-month humanitarian stint as a volunteer dance teacher, the challenge seemed daunting: In this tragic country, torn apart in the ‘90s by ethnic cleansing, could Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats possibly dance together, much less live peacefully together? Within a few weeks I got my answer.
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| The dancing orphans of Rwanda |
July 20 2008 |
The contemporary Philadelphia choreographer Rebecca Davis recently spent four weeks teaching dance steps to street orphans in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, a suffering land known mostly for its 1994 genocide. To her surprise, she discovered a passion for dance that transcends anything found among American teenagers. “These kids taught me that dance has the power to change lives even in the most difficult of circumstances,” she contends.
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