Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker

Brazil's Deborah Colker is a force unto herself. Her choreography is impossibly muscular yet sensual, thrilling and cathartic. Whether the dancers are impossibly balanced on a giant wall or slithering among fragile vases, their danger is theatrical but your rush is palpable.

Colker set her dancers spinning on a hamster's wheel in Rota (Route, 1997), sent them gliding through a thicket of large ceramic vases in 4 por 4 (4-by-4, 2002) tangled them in ropes in Nó (Knot, 2005) and hung them precipitously on a climing wall in Velox (1995) and Mix (2010). Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker was born in the dancehalls of a club in Rio de Janeiro in 1993 and became world-famous for its physicality and use of huge props. Her work is shot-through with the sensuality of Brazil but she credits her Russian Jewish nature for the energy and resourcefulness that have brought her to this point in her career.

She is the first woman to create, direct and choreograph a Cirque du Soleil show. Colker's Ovo (Egg, 2009) brought her signature flavors--temerarious precision and arthouse chic--to an all-acrobat circus production about insects. They wanted a show about the environment; she proposed taking on the world of insects, with acrobats as bugs.

Her October, 2010 presentation of Mix at the Kennedy Center was described by the Washington Post as one of the most exciting evenings of dance in recent memory. What Mix and Ovo have in common is a stage-wide climbing wall that was first seen in Velox (1995). Colker is a former competitive volleyball player and in Velox, had a sports-as-dance concept that included ball play. The sensibility was turned vertical in a succession of later works, with dancers abandoning the flat playing space, undulating on a large wall like coordinated rock climbers.

Toothsome and confident, she exhibits crossover appeal and wide-open assurance. A long-time musician, she is apt to perform at the piano in her dance concerts.

Her company works out of a converted factory in Rio de Janeiro where it operates a movement center, offering courses in theater, philosophy, anatomy and dance history as well as visual arts exhibitions, readings and music recitals integrated to dance in an effort to expand students' perspectives.

Colker worked ten years as a movement director in theater before moving irreversibly into choreography. In 1995, her dance Company earned an exclusive official sponsorship from the Brazil state oil company Petrobras, which has enabled her to take off on soaring flights of creation and advance her brand in the world of dance. She has won several awards, including one of the most distinguished in Brazil- Prêmio Ministério da Cultura and the Laurence Olivier Award 2001 for her choreography of Mix.

Colker's next project will be an adaptation of Eugene Onegin, the novel by Alexander Pushkin, set to classical music and live orchestra. The novel was a favorite of her grandfather, it is reported. A narrative piece like this would signify an auspicious departure from the abstractionism of massive props and climbing walls, but it'll probably keep us tuned to her evolution as a creative force long into the future.