McIntyre and company have toured throughout the U.S. and Europe appearing in concert halls, universities, community settings and all major dance venues such as the Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Jacobs Pillow, Walker Arts Center, New York City Center. Some of the company’s signature pieces: Take-Off from a Forced Landing, Smoke and Clouds, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mississippi Talks-Ohio Walks, Deep South Suite. Sounds in Motion operated a dance school and performance space in Harlem nurturing many artists, some of whom have become leaders in the performing arts world.
In 1988 McIntyre closed the studio activities have more time to create. Some of her signature dance works since then have been A Brand New People on the Planet with Olu Dara, Love Poems to God with Hannibal, Invincible Flower with Lester Bowie and his Brass Fantasy and Lyric Fire with Paul Laurence Dunbar poetry. Another monumental work is McIntyre’s 1991 recreation of dance pioneer, Helen Tamiris’ 1937 epic How Long Brethren?
Dianne McIntyre has co-created, directed and choreographed theatre/dance pieces In Living Color: a Gullah Story and Blues Rooms for Theatre of the First Amendment and I Could Stop on a Dime and Get Ten Cents Change for TFA, Cleveland Play House and Baltimore’s CenterStage. Her dance-driven dramas Open the Door, Virginia! premiering at TFA and Peaches, Plums and Pontifications both have music by Olu Dara.
Notable among the more than 30 plays she has choreographed are Mule Bone and August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and King Hedley II on Broadway plus the original Spell #7 by Ntozake Shange, Miss Evers’ Boys, Polk County (Zora Neale Hurston) and several productions of Crowns written/directed by Regina Taylor. McIntyre directed Crowns at Cleveland Play House in 2004. Other theatres include: Arena Stage, McCarter Theatre Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Crossroads Theatre Company, Hartford Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Karamu, Goodman Theater, Negro Ensemble Company, Mark Taper Forum, New Federal Theatre, NY Public Theater, St. Louis Black Repertory Company.
For dance Ms. McIntyre has choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Dancing Wheels, GroundWorks Dance Theater, as well as college dance groups. She has been artist-in-residence in many universities over the past 35 years and has also taught at American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival and Jacobs Pillow. McIntyre has received numerous commissions and grants to support her work including the National Endowment for the Arts Three-Year Choreographers Fellowship (one of three nationwide) and the National Dance Residency Award through Pew Charitable Trust and National Choreography Grant through New England Foundation for the Arts (both, one of ten nationally). Other awards include three Bessies (New York Dance and Performance Award), AUDELCO Award (NY Black Theatre), AUDELCO Pioneer Award, Helen Hayes Award (DC theatre) and four Helen Hayes nominations, Cleveland Arts Prize, Thelma Hill Award and Woodie Award all for lifetime achievement, and numerous other awards of recognition.
In 2009 Dianne McIntyre received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from the State University of New York Purchase College and the American Dance Festival 2008 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching.
She has served on numerous arts funding panels including those of the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, at times as Chair of the panels. She is on the board of JT3Art Foundation for Young People in the Arts.
Dianne McIntyre is a member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) formerly on the Executive Board, Dramatist Guild, and ASCAP. Contact Dianne McIntyre |
