ERYN RENEE YOUNG
Eryn Renee Young is a New York City-based choreographer and the founding artistic director of XAOC Contemporary Ballet, a chamber-sized neoclassical ballet company founded in 2010. Her choreography, which has been described as “dynamic... pulsing... [with] a fine sense of exploring space and a knack for visual polyphony,” has been showcased and commissioned across the NYC metro area. The name XAOC (pronounced zay-ock) is derived from the Greek ‘χαος,’ which means ‘chaos’ and implies explosive creation. It is meant to portray the spirit of the company as they move ballet into the future, while maintaining strong ties to classical form. XAOC operates under the belief that there is room for ballet to evolve into the 21st century and beyond, led by women with a vision of inclusivity, generosity, inventiveness, spirit, humanity, and love.
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In the 2023-2024 season, she was a winning choreographer of the Joffrey Ballet Concert Group’s Creative Movers Choreographic Initiative. She is an inaugural fellow of the Jacob’s Pillow Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellows Program through which she received mentorship from New York City Ballet choreographer Lauren Lovette, and she is a 2018 resident choreographer of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Institute under the direction of Susan Jaffe with choreographic mentorship from acclaimed choreographer Helen Pickett.
She has been commissioned annually since 2012 by Norte Maar for their CounterPointe series celebrating women making work on pointe and since 2016 has created collaborative works with female visual artists for this program. Her collaborators include artists Amanda Browder (2016 “The Edge of Sunset Gems” and 2023 “Unraveled Rhythms”), Leslie Kerby (2017 “The Container Series”), Jeri Coppola (2018 “Land Earth Sea Cloud Sky”), Niki Lederer (2020 “Tempest Salvage”), and Elizabeth Riley (2022, “Origin Forward”). Her commissioned work “Voyager I” for the Columbia Ballet Collaborative premiered in November 2018 in New York City alongside works by NYCB’s Silas Farley and ABT’s Zhongjing Fang, and was restaged for XAOC Contemporary Ballet in Spring 2019. She was commissioned by them again in 2023 to create her work “The Unsung Songs.” Her 2019 commission from Eryc Taylor Dance for their “EARTH” presentation featured an original commissioned score by composer Stephanie Ann Boyd.
Her choreographic work has been showcased at the Battery Dance Festival, The Ailey Citigroup Theater, NYC Summer Streets Dance Festival, the Young Choreographer’s Festival at Symphony Space, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival at the Paramount Theater, the White Wave Dumbo Dance Festival at the Jay Street Theater and the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, Dance at Socrates, Mark Morris Dance Center, the Martha Graham Studio Theater, the CounterPointe Series
with Norte Maar and the Brooklyn Ballet at the Actor’s Fund Arts Center, the Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition, the Brooklyn Dance Festival, Brooklyn Ballet’s First Look, the Pushing Progress Series, Hatch, the Choreographer’s Canvas at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center, NYC10: an initiative for NYC Dance Week at Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, Triskelion Arts Center, Steps on Broadway, the Moving Beauty Series, the Algonquin Arts Center, Peridance Capezio Center, the Boston Conservatory, the Bart Leukede Theater at Rider University, the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem, the Agnes DeMille Theater at U. North Carolina School of the Arts, and New York University, including her first solo choreography show entitled “A New Era: Elements of Dance” in 2009 and a second evening in the Gallatin Arts Festival in 2012.
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Additional accomplishments include selection as a 2017 Resident Artist for Dance at Socrates at Socrates Sculpture Park, selection as one of five finalists of the 2015 Edward Villella Choreographers Competition at Rider University, the 2014 Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreography Grant, selection for the 2013 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training, selection as a choreographer for the 2013 Women in Dance Series, a space grant in 2016 from the Joffrey Dance Center, and a 2015 Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant for her ballet outreach program “Project Ignite.”
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Ms. Young self-produced three full evenings of work: Choreography Up Close and Choreography Up Close: Volume II in 2017 and 2019 respectively at New York City Center Studios, as well as Project Ignite, the company’s 5th anniversary gala at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in 2015. She launched the outreach program Project Ignite also in 2015, partnering with charity Headbands of Hope, to present a fundraising benefit gala featuring the company in a full evening of repertory with special guests Buglisi Dance Theatre and Marlena Wolfe (of Battleworks Dance Company and Camille A. Brown & Dancers), as well as performance events in children’s hospitals and repertory workshops for professional dancers.
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She has provided choreographic consulting on projects including the 2012 MashRome Festival’s production of Medea under the direction of Jimmy Ferguson. She works at the award-winning Ellison Ballet and has served as first Production Coordinator then Assistant Stage Manager for Buglisi Dance Theatre’s annual Table of Silence Project 9/11 at Lincoln Center from 2012-2023.
She holds a degree in Contemporary Ballet Choreography and Fine Art from New York University, where she was mentored by acclaimed choreographer Kathryn Posin. She is also grateful to count among her mentors such luminaries as Lauren Lovette, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Helen Pickett, Risa Steinberg, Dianne McIntyre, and Molissa Fenley, as well as teachers Liza Kovacs, Stuart Loungway, and Peter Brandenhoff. She began choreographing in 2007.