Palm Dance Collective

Palm Dance Collective (PDCLA) is raising funds to be able to make dance accessible to everyone by bringing dance to those in hospitals, nursing homes and to foster children. They are needing funding to compensate professional dancers, rehearse in an appropriate sized dance studio, build costumes, take dance to new cities and new audiences and pay application fees for festivals. They have plans to go to New York City as early as this fall and are planning to submit to Jacob’s Pillow and other such festivals. PDC has a big vision of having an open dance studio for anyone to come and be apart of the creative and rehearsal process of performances.

Artist Bio:

Carisa Carroll, a Santa Barbara, CA native, began her training with Montectio School of Ballet at the age of 7. She started her professional dance career with Carrie Diamond in a collaborative production with Peninsula Ballet Theater. As a trainee with State Street Ballet, she performed in every work in the companies repertoire during the 2012-13 season, including the touring season. She was in the original cast of William Soleau’s “American Tango” and in fall 2014, appeared as a guest artist with the company and accompanied them on tour to Washington, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Florida. In January 2015 she was invited by Christopher Pilafian to perform with Santa Barbara Dance Theater where she performed and collaborated in the original performance of Common Ground by Edgar Zendejas. While with SBDT she had the pleasure of working with international choreographer, Joshua Beamish, in his new work, ‘Salt’. In 2015/2016 she trained at UC Santa Barbara with former Alvin Ailey dancer, Christina Sanchez, studying Horton as well as furthered her ballet training with Valarie Huston. Carroll has also trained in the Jennifer Muller technique, 2012-2016 with Tracy Kofford and also with SBDT’s director, Christopher Pilafian.  Carisa has performed in 2 films by Robin Bisio Films as well as a site specific performance on the beach by Bisio summer/fall of 2015. She was also apart of artist Colleen Kelly’s “Naked Underneath”- a gallery collaboration between Kelly’s art work and choreographed dance solos. Carroll performed 3 variations of her self choreographed solo at 3 galleries throughout southern California with Kelly. Her choreographic work has been performed at Santa Barbara City College Dance Collective 2015 and 2016, Nebula HH11 Dance Festival 2016/2017, and Voices of LA by Brockus Project Studios December 2016. She designed and created the costumes for her work in both HH11 and Collective. Summer of 2016 she attended ODC of San Francisco’s summer intensive. September 2016 she performed in a music video directed by Jeffery Prosser, choreographed by Mackenzie Ellis. Fall 2016 she helped restage Tracy Kofford’s “Intersecting Fuge” which won second place at the McCallum festival 2016 and is continuing to tour the piece throughout the 2016/17 season. In January 2017 she attended Bodytraffic’s winter workshop as well as performed in a music video choreographed by Erin Murray. Carisa has had the pleasure of working with international and national choreographers such as Edgar Zendejas, Joshua Beamish, Rodney Gustafson, Gary Mackenzie, William Soleau, Autumn Eckman, Jerry Pearson, Christopher Pilafian, Delila Moseley, Tracy Kofford, and Brooke Hughes Melton. Currently, she has decided to turn her choreographic passion into a collaborative company in Los Angeles where she can not only choreograph but continue to perform if desired.

Company Bio:

PDCLA is a collective dance company based in Los Angeles, CA. They strive to create works that let dancers not just be a dancer but have a space to share their creative voice within the process of creating dance works. By collaborating, all involved artists have the chance to see their ideas take shape within the pieces created. In their first year, Palm has already performed at the Orange County Dance Festival, Dance on the Edge, Los Angeles Dance Festival, Red Rock Dance Festival in Utah where they won judges choice and are headed to Las Vegas the end of July.

Videos:
https://youtu.be/FWwDho8vWF0
https://vimeo.com/220832146