Dance UbuWebCharles Moulton
Nine Person Precision Ball Passing (1985)Charles Moulton began his professional career as a dancer in 1972 with Contemporary Dancers Canada in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Moving to New York in 1973, he joined the Merce Cunningham Company, remaining three years, 1973-1976. An outstanding athlete in high school, Moulton looked to sports and games as the inspiration for his first work. Premiered in 1979, ”Three Person Precision Ball Passing“ immediately established him as a leader of the post-modern movement.
Moulton founded his own company in 1978 and for the next ten years performed in New York at the Kitchen, DTW, The Joyce Theater, and Alice Tully Hall as well as touring extensively in the US and Europe. In 1988 Moulton disbanded his company to pursue a project-oriented creative model. Moulton has created and set works on Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Project, The Joffrey Ballet, The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, The Ohio Ballet, Bat Sheva (Israel), North Carolina Dance Theater, Concert Dance Company (Boston), The Path Dance Company, Le Ballet Theatre du Silence (La Rochelle), The Joyce Trisler Dance Company, The Cloud Gate Dance Theater (Taiwan), Ballet Omaha, The Milwaukee Ballet and The Oregon Ballet Theater.
A 1983 Guggenheim Award winner, Moulton is a co-founding director of Performance Space 122. He is also the recipient of the 1989 Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Award, three Jerome Foundation awards and three Meet The Composer/Choreographer awards. He has received support from the NEA, The New York State Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts, the Con Edison Foundation, The Beards Fund, Warner Communications, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Zellerbach Fund.
Moulton has directed several works for television. His work, ”Hazardous Hootenanny“ was part of the 1988 WGBH ”New Television“ series. His collaboration with John Sanborn and Mary Perillo, ”Visual Shuffle/Fractured Variations“ won the 1987 Los Angeles Film Festival Blue Ribbon. After over 20 years in New York Moulton relocated to Northern California where he recently completed the choreography for the movie Matrix II Reloaded.