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IMPRESSIONS: Ellen Robbins Presents Dances by Very Young Choreographers
By Miranda Stuck
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Published on February 14, 2025
Photo: Eric Bandiero
Director: Ellen Robbins
Lighting Designer: Serena Wong
Production Manager: Tricia Navigato
Lighting Manager: Leo Janks
Audio & Video Manager: James Bennett
Producing Director: Kyle Maude
Producer: Hannah Emerson
Director of Production: Chanel Pinnock
Assistant to Ellen Robbins: Krista Jansen
Title Announcer: Evan Werner
Choreography by: Alexandra Scully, Oona Pennock, Maeve Baldwin, Romy Kim, Isaac Seferidis, June Magro, Ruby Lewis, Dashiell Gardner, Hazel Ryan, Georgia Ryan, Eden Black, Maisy Rosen, Colette Levy, Agenes Khoury, Annika Maduraperuma, Nora McCarthy, & cast
Support by Arnhold Foundation Inc., Joan T. Racho-Jansen, Nancy Stevens, Tracey Sydel
Date: January 25, 26 2025
“How many people know the song ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’?” asks director Ellen Robbins, standing onstage at New York Live Arts. Some children squirm with excitement, raising their hands abruptly, while others remain reserved, shyly holding their parents’ hand. “The structure [of the song] is A-A-B-A, and the requirements are to repeat part A, be different in part B, and return to the A,” says Robbins, explaining a lesson about dance composition to the audience.
Robbins’ question occurs midway through the annual concert she directs, Dances by Very Young Choreographers. The show, originally produced at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2001, is specifically curated to feature choreographers between ages 8 to 18, showcasing the ideas, curiosity, and playfulness of young creative minds.
While the show is fully produced with lighting, sound, and box office, Robbins shares from the beginning that she doesn’t want to focus on the concert. To her, educating young dancers about music and composition is more important than the act of being onstage itself. “These kids feel their bodies and know where they’re going, but it grows slower because they only come [into class] once a week,” says Robbins. “I’m learning how to get them to practice and be interested in the technical aspect.”
Her class structure is simple without causing the children to overthink their choices. “I use a lot of humor,” says Robbins. “I say things that are absurd sometimes to make them remember; rhymes and things like ‘a plie is a dancer’s best friend.’” Robbins’ warmup is a ‘creation’ as she describes it- wiggling, pushing the floor, and listening to new music tracks the children can choose themselves. She then teaches improvisation and composition structures. For Robbins, the power of a dancer connecting to music is invaluable, and she allows every young performer to choose the soundtrack for their solo. “The dancer is the musician, you have to sing,” says Robbins. “You have [to] marry the music.”
Hand selected by Robbins, every dancer in Dances by Very Young Choreographers brings their own vision to the stage in terms of narrative, idea, costuming, and soundtrack. The music ranges from recognizable tunes like George Bruns’ Sleeping Beauty to voiceover speech or K-Pop. “Our dancers in the program are selected to show every type of dance that modern dance can be,” says Robbins.
Certain dancers take a comedic approach such as embodying the act of opening a jar of candy and physicalizing a sugar high, or creeping across the stage like a bandit stealing a diamond and getting caught by the police. Other dancers take a narrative, pantomime approach, by setting a bird free from a cage or showing the joy a tourist feels visiting New York City for the first time. “Today, I’m going to show you how to make an angel food cake,” says the soundtrack for 11-year-old Maisy Rosen’s solo You Can Tell It’s Homemade as she overexaggerates the motions of mixing and pouring batter. The audience smiles along with Rosen, whose playful and humorous nature is naturally contagious.
Growing up, Robbins shares her own spark of interest in dance and dance making during her youth. She and her sister played music and improvised in their living room pretending the dining room entrance was the wings of their stage. “That was our sense of play,” says Robbins.
Through her decades of teaching culminating in the directorship of Dances by Very Young Choreographers Robbins continues to magnify the capacity of children to be uninhibited and innately creative.
