Artist Statement
I make dances to celebrate how we live in our bodies—revealing the vitality of every self.
I make dances to respond to our world at this moment, pursuing dance as an ever-evolving expression of body and culture.
I make dances from places of vulnerability—neither denying nor transcending our humanness.
I move in this body, in this moment, in this place, with these people, treating physical presence as essential, sacred, and irreplaceable, and valuing dance as critical to our evolution.
Mission
Founded in 2001, Paufve Dance is a contemporary dance organization that honors choreography, teaching, and community.
Through its programs, Paufve Dance creates spaces for rigorous choreographic craft, a poetic process in which every movement is intentional and unassailable, where meanings and emotional truths proliferate.
Paufve Dance invites dancers and audiences to inhabit rich internal landscapes – places of vulnerability, intimacy, conflicting views, and irresolvable differences; the choreography reveals intricate portraits of humanity that do not attempt to transcend or deny our complexity.
Paufve Dance believes that movement has its own intelligence, a wisdom we know through feeling, and that all bodies, whether trained or everyday, possess this deep knowing.
Above > Dancer: Randee Paufve. Photographer: Stephen Texeira.
Randee Paufve dances on a deserted dirt road on a hillside in California.
Photographer: Stephen Texeira
Randee Paufve
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
(2002-present)
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Artistic Director Randee Paufve is a 2019-2020 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar Award grantee. Paufve, a featured artist on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, was named one of five dance artists in San Francisco Magazine’s 2017 “100 Artists Putting the East Bay On The Map.” Paufve received the 2015 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Outstanding Individual Performance; previous works have received 7 nominations total, in multiple categories. Paufve was awarded the inaugural Della Davidson Prize for Innovations in Dance-Theater and has been nominated for the Theatre Bay Area Choreography award for her work with San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater. A two-time recipient of the E.E. Ford award for dance research in Europe, Paufve’s choreography has also been supported by residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California, Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, and Red Cinder Creativity Center in Hawaii. From 2010-2020 Paufve Dance was Company-In-Residence at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley.
Paufve’s choreography has been commissioned and produced by (select list) San Francisco’s ODC Theater, SummerfestDance and The West Wave Dance Festival, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, University of San Francisco, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Joyce SoHo Theater/Manhattan, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, On The Boards/Seattle, Max10 in Los Angeles, Dance Complex in Boston, Phantom Theater in Vermont, the Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival, Madurai Art Fest 2020, Madurai, Tamilnadu, India, and the Fulbright South and Southeast Asian Conference, Kochi, Kerala, India.
Paufve graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Elmira College, with a degree in Cross-Cultural Performing Arts. She spent her junior year in Madurai, Tamil Nadu through the University of Wisconsin’s College Year in India program. She holds an MA in Dance from the State University of New York, Brockport, and an MFA in Dramatic Arts from the University of California Davis where she was supported by a full scholarship and the UC Davis Humanities Graduate Research Award.
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ADVISORY BOARD
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Jyoti Argade is an educator, producer, and Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging practitioner. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and was formerly a professor of dance at the University of East London, UK. Trained in the classical Indian dance form of bharata natyam, she stays connected to dance via the studio and as an advisor to dance companies and emerging choreographers. Currently, she is a Culture, Diversity and Belonging Manager at Autodesk. Dr. Argade is also the proud mother to a 6 year old boy and 9 year old girl.
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Josh Kaufman is a communications and group engagement consultant. As a partner and owner of Covision he has served corporate, non-profit, and NGO clients across the globe at events ranging from small group gatherings to the opening session at the World Economic Forum. Josh has been an enthusiastic patron of Paufve Dance for the past 25 years, was MC for one of the first 8x8x8 performances, and is excited to bring his mix of business acumen and love for the arts to the board. In his spare time, Josh loves to run, ski, climb, play at improv, strum the guitar, and travel. Josh lived abroad in Spain for several years but is now settled in Berkeley with his wife Ana and their dog Blai.
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Maya Woodson Turman is a finance professional, a modern dancer and a yoga instructor. She lives in Kensington with her husband, her two kids and her dog, Obi. She is as passionate about dance and the arts as she is a great excel spreadsheet. She has danced with Paufve Dance in the past and continues to study with Randee each Sunday morning. She is excited to be able to combine her passions by serving on the Paufve Dance advisory board as a supporter of dance and the arts and as a finance professional.
Photographer: Crystal Liepa
Julia Davidson
MANAGING DIRECTOR
(2015-present)
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Julia is based in Minneapolis, MN. She received her B.A. in Performance Studies from Macalester College and M.A. in Dance from Mills College. As a grant-writer and arts administrator, Julia has helped secure funding from Fulbright Scholar Program, California Arts Council, the Zellerbach and Rainin Foundations, Dancer's Group CA$H grant, Sam Mazza Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board and Minnesota Regional Arts Council. As a teacher, Julia does her best to keep up with the brilliant toddlers, elementary school children and grown-ups at Young Dance and Northfield Dance Academy. As a mover, Julia trains in a grab-bag of physical disciplines including ballet, capoeira, somatics, modern, house, and other public art practices. In addition to Paufve Dance, Julia currently works with inkBoat theater and dance company and Deborah Jinza Thayer | Movement Architecture.
Photo by Sophie Leininger / courtesy of ODC
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Sima Belmar earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from TDPS in 2015, and holds an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her scholarly writing has been published in The Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, Performance Matters, L'avventura, and the Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies (2016). Sima was a dance critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian from 1997-2003. Currently, she is the creator and host of the ODC podcast Dance Cast. She has taught dance on film and television, dance history, performance theory, modern dance technique, and college writing at several institutions including UC Berkeley, St. Mary's College of California, Sonoma State University, Mills College, Austin Peay State University, Shawl Anderson Dance Center, Berkeley Ballet Theater, and IALS (Roma). Her research foci include the relationship between dance, talk, and gesture in North American concert dance, Dance in Popular Film and Television, Somatic Theory/Practice/Pedagogy, Performance and Phenomenology, and embodied research methods.
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I’m delighted to be part of Paufve Dance’s Advisory Board. Randee opened up a whole world of movement to me, as well as encouraged me to explore my interests in feminism and its related spirituality. After many years of not being in touch it was social media that reconnected us. In that time I’d gotten my BA at Smith College, lived in Los Angeles for several years, gone to Golden Gate University School of Law for a JD, gotten married and had two kids, and embarked on my career as an attorney. Being part of Paufve Dance is allowing me to revisit my interest in the Arts by helping to get Randee’s work out into the world. It is truly a joy.