Rite of Spring by Meredith Cabaniss Ventura, photo by Cory Cullington, 2022
Current Projects
CDEA Presenter
Meredith Cabaniss will present her movement class Dance Yourself Free: Techniques for Expanding and Expressing the Creative Impulse at CDEA’s Statewide In-Person Conference in January 2023.
The session centers the body as a fully-responsive, articulated agent of expression and will encourage participants to explore a full range of physical textures and coordinations. Participants will learn how to move through floor work safely and smoothly and to engage with dynamics of circularity to “recycle” their energy and flow through the movement. The goal of this session is to guide dancers and dance educators to discover freedom, quality, and an expanded sense of kinetic range. Most importantly, this class focuses on making movement accessible and relatable and is an all-levels class, appropriate for recreational, educational, and professional movers.
New Role at Lights Up!
I am pleased to announce that I have joined the team at Lights Up! Teen Theatre Conservatory as their Dance and Choreography Director. In winter 2022, I was the lead choreographer for LU!’s runs of Something Rotten! and Matilda, working with more than 60 students between the two casts to produce 6 shows over the course of a six-month rehearsal period.
PhD in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
In Fall 2021, I returned to my alma mater, UC Santa Barbara, to pursue graduate studies in the department of Theater and Dance. My research concerns historiography of the body in early modern dance with emphasis on the interwar period in the Weimar Republic and early expressions of Ausdruckstanz. My current work is in regards to Le Sacre du Printemps by Vaslav Nijinksy and other re-enactments of the work by Joffrey Ballet and the choreographers Maurice Béjart and Pina Bausch. I plan on creating my own re-enactment of Sacre to premiere at the Hatlen Theater at UC Santa Barbara in April 2022.