ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Choreographer, dancer and director Patricia Noworol grew up in the communist Poland. Having moved to Germany as a teenager, she experienced European cultural conflicts that to this day are a foundation of her artistic motivation. During her dance training, she has been exposed to the variety of innovative approaches: Tanztheater, Rudolf Laban, Kurt Jooss, as well as her compatriot Jerzy Grotowski. She completed her formal training at the Folkwang University in Germany (BFA, Dance Performance on Stage; MFA, Dance Education) before attending the New York University Tisch School of the Arts on scholarship for her second MFA in Dance and Choreography. Since moving to New York City in 2003, she also studied postmodern performing arts techniques at The Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation and The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Filtering these influences through her own sensibility and personal experiences, she emerged as an uncompromising, virtuosic dancemaker strongly focused on the issues of individuality, identity, politics and otherness.
As a dancer, Patricia had the privilege of working with some of the world’s most important dance personalities, such as Pina Bausch and core members of Tanztheater Wuppertal (Malou Airaudo, Dominique Mercy, Lutz Forster), Merce Cunningham and Gus Solomons Jr.
Patricia founded her company Patricia Noworol Dance Theater (PNDT) in 2008 as a vehicle for producing original works in which dance, theater, and multimedia serve to express life, passion, and physicality. Close collaboration with dancers, designers, and musicians has been and remains at the core of PNDT work. In the studio process, everything from discussion to personal anecdotes has the potential of becoming source material. Though each new work is cast according to its content, many artists have worked with Patricia on more than one production.
PNDT’s work has been presented at foremost American venues such as New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, 92 Street Y, The Ailey Citigroup Theatre and at many festivals, including La MaMa Moves!, Dance NOW!, American Dance Guild Festival. Noworol’s production of Circuits was the winner of the 2009 Excellence Award for Outstanding Choreography at the NYC Fringe Festival. Patricia was a resident artist at Bessie Alumni Workshop in NYC, POTTPORUS (Herne, Germany) and Edith Stein House (Breslau, Poland,) and was the recipient of The Young Artist Award from the Ministry of Arts and Culture in North Rhine-Westphalia/Germany in 2002. Her productions received institutional funding from the RUHR 2010 European Capital of Culture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.