Freespace Dance

Art Form(s):

Dance & Movement

Artist Statement

Freespace Dance maintains that an arts education is essential to a young person’s academic development because it engages students visually, aurally, and physically. Our assembly program is designed to teach students about dance as an art form while keeping with the NJ Content Standards in Dance.

Our company members engage young audiences through interaction, getting young movers on their feet, and posing questions that stimulate the imagination. Basic composition/choreographic skills are introduced for the youngest of audiences, and explored in a more in-depth manner with older grades. Students are thus encouraged to find their own inspiration and create dances and dance ideas that could be later further explored in the classroom and leave with a greater understanding and appreciation of dance as an art form.

Artist Bio

Freespace Dance is a contemporary modern dance company renowned for creating emotionally driven work with a bold, athletic, signature style. Comprising exceptionally strong and seasoned performers, this vibrant company continues to create humanistic works. Donna Scro Samori’s work is athletic, bold, fearless, and connects to the human experience. Combining her athletic nature and her humanistic connection, Donna’s work is accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. Freespace Dance is a company that makes a strong connection both physically and emotionally with the audience, believes in the spirit of inclusion, and leaves all with a positive dance experience. The company strives to teach the love of dance to children and adults with the philosophy that if one can move, think, and feel, one can dance. Whether bodies fly through the air in full company works or women slowly circle one another in duet, critics have noted, “In all of Donna Scro Samori’s pieces, a recognizable human element surfaces wordlessly and goes straight to the heart.”

Freespace Dance is at the forefront of modern dance education in New Jersey, conducting lecture-demonstrations and residencies throughout the state via its own Dance Inspirations program, and through Young Audiences NJ & Eastern PA and the Arts Council for the Morris Area. The company has worked directly with students in communities as varied as Bloomfield, Montclair, Verona, Glen Rock, Maplewood, Summit, Sparta, Short Hills, Wayne, Springfield, Paterson, Glen Ridge, Warren, Toms River, Point Pleasant, Morristown, Morris Plains, Butler, Rockaway, Jersey City, Livingston, Newark, Plainfield, Flemington and Riverdale. Freespace was one of two companies chosen to pilot the Dodge Foundation Dance to Learn initiative in 2010, reaching over 4,000 students in the past 8 years.

Freespace regularly sets company works on aspiring dancers and creates original works for them at schools, including Montclair High School, Morris Academy for the Performing Arts, Hudson County Technical School, Glenfield Middle School, and Raritan Valley Community College. The company hosts a popular annual Summer Festival for high school and college dancers, featuring classes in modern, jazz, ballet, and repertory.

Freespace has received grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Hyde and Watson Foundation, the New Jersey Cultural Trust and the American Music Center/New Music USA. Artistic Director Donna Scro Samori is the recipient of a 2008 Fellowship from New Jersey State Council on the Arts, for excellence in choreography.