Zornitsa Stoyanova is a native of Bulgaria and holds B.A. in Dance and Sound Design from Bennington College where she studied with Dana Reitz, Eva Kartzag, Brendan McCall, Paul Matteson, Keith Thompson and Terry Creach. In 2008, she completed Headlong Performance Institute, a post graduate program in Philadelphia, where she focused on abstract character building, clowning and interactive theatrical performance. That year, she had the opportunity to study with Deborah Hay, as well as Anouk Van Dijk’s dance company. She is deeply inspired by those very different approaches and tries to incorporate Anouk’s counter technique ideas with Deborah’s performance and state quality.

Since moving to Philadelphia, Stoyanova has danced with many local dance companies and has worked professionally as a lighting designer, publisher and was even a master carpenter. Her passion and support for multidisciplinary art has led her to creating numerous dance performances, improvisations and human installations. She volunteers for Dance/USA Philadelphia and has a mission to support and create new dance in Philadelphia.

In 2007, she launched a dance company, Here [begin] Dance Co., and started producing Current: an evening of dance and art series at Mascher Space Cooperative, where she has been an artist-in-residence ever since. In 2009, she started the Dance Cinema Projects series, another program that supports Philadelphia’s dance community. That same year, she was awarded a spot in The A.W.A.R.D. Show! 2009: Philadelphia, a project of Joyce Theater Foundation presented by Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. She also completed a residency at Bennington College and is getting ready to travel and perform a series of improvisations in Europe.

While still in college, her choreographic work was shown in Bulgaria, Kontakt Budapest Festival in Hungary, and St. Marks Church in New York City. In 2010, her work will be featured at CEC New Edge Mix, as well as the Performance Mix Festival in New York City.

“Zornitsa moves like a whip, a house falling in on itself, a quickly organizing bridge of bones, a planting of the minutia of gaze, fingers and toes. Her characters are exuberantly embodied heavy creatures; physically inhabited visions of extraordinary and ordinary states.”

“She is as dedicated to the proliferation of dance as she is to the search for dramatic and meaningful experiences therein. Her work displays an inner logic that is intensely visual within the context of a complex and highly adaptive kinesthetic realm.”

~ Erin Desmond, choreographer

Photo by Scott Barrow