Roxey Ballet Company
Roxey Ballet Company is all about the unexpected. From day-to-day rehearsals to performances onstage, no one, not even its founder and artistic director, Mark Roxey, knows what will happen and what challenges the 11-year-old company will face.
The New Jersey–based company has evolved tremendously since Roxey and his wife, Melissa, opened a small dance school in Stockton, NJ, and created the Hunterdon County Youth Ballet with the school’s young dancers. Today, RB has 12 paid professional members, performs all over the state and region and is dedicated to uncovering new possibilities in the art form.
“Roxey Ballet is redefining ballet. It’s about taking ballet and using it as a vocabulary to create something that’s really unique and speaks to the audience,” says Roxey, a former street dancer who trained and performed with The Joffrey Ballet before joining American Repertory Ballet and Dayton Ballet. “We are a contemporary dance theater company [dedicated to] new work.”
In fact, Roxey choreographs 80 percent of the company’s eclectic repertoire, using his own diverse dance background to create a fusion of dance styles—dances on pointe and barefoot, from neoclassical to postmodern movement.
The soundtrack and messages of RB’s ballets are just as expansive as the dance styles. Roxey’s The Veil looks at women’s oppression, Write Between the Lines is set to the Beastie Boys, and other works are inspired by such events as the Holocaust and 9/11.
“I bring a lot of urban life to my work,” says Roxey, who grew up in a rough NYC neighborhood. “I bring a lot of political and social issues and topics to the forefront without necessarily jamming down the audience’s throats what they should be thinking.”
The company’s repertoire, most of it thematic, is created in-house. To do this, RB has annual showcases for emerging choreographers and has produced full-lengths like Dracula, Pied Piper, Carnival of the Animals and the upcoming Othello.
Perhaps it is this voyage into uncharted territories that has attracted many of RB’s dancers, who come from all over the globe. “The repertory gives you the opportunity to express yourself,” says four-year member Sharon Rudda. “You can be creative and explore yourself artistically.”
One of RB’s most recent projects, Wheels and Bodies in Motion, integrates disabled and non-disabled dancers. Scheduled to be performed at the Joyce Soho in 2006, this concert doesn’t focus on physical disabilities, but rather on different ways to express the art of dance. “Working with the disabled makes us more sensitive,” says company member Giovanni Ravelo, a native of Colombia. “They really dance with their hearts, and it makes us more grateful for our bodies.”
The next step for RB is to tour more and to continue to experiment. “I’m always thinking about what my dancers would look best doing and how I can bring them and their talent out,” says Roxey. “I also want to challenge them and push them into new ways of moving that they didn’t think they could do before.”
Laura Di Orio is a student at Fordham University.
