EPHRAT ASHERIE

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie (New York, NY) is a director/choreographer, performer, b-girl and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine's Inaugural Harkness Promise Award and two National Dance Project Awards. As Artistic Director of Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD) Asherie creates work with a group of dynamic and multifaceted artists. EAD is committed to educating, celebrating and bringing awareness to the history, expansiveness and vastness of street and club dance culture by creating and sharing innovative performance work and facilitating platforms for dialogue through workshops, film screenings, open rehearsals and pre/post-show Q&As. Asherie's work has been presented on stages nationally and internationally with commissions from companies including Malpaso, Philadanco! and Parsons Contemporary Dance and additional commissions from Vail Dance Festival, Fall for Dance, River to River Festival, Firatatrrega, Works & Process at the Guggenheim and the Kennedy Center. Asherie earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of street and club dances. She is honored to have been mentored by Richard Santiago (aka Break Easy) and to be a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective MAWU. Asherie is forever grateful to NYC’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.