Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela Gallo.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
After finishing my MFA in Dance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, I moved to NYC and spent a few years working as a professional dancer and choreographer. During this time, I began my dance company, Sapphire Moon Dance Company, showing my choreography throughout the city while also dancing with a few dance companies. In 2003, I was offered an Assistant Professor of Dance position at Coker College (now Coker University) in South Carolina. I have continued to work with Sapphire Moon Dance Company while in South Carolina, and with the company, I have performed in the White Wave Dance Festival, the Dance Now Downtown Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop, Williamsburg Arts Nexus (WAX), Atrium Theatre and others in NYC, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and Canada at the Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (fFIDA) and throughout the Southeast in the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Alabama Dance Festival, Charlotte Dance Festival, Dimensions Dance Festival, Sumter Opera House, Patriot Hall, CMFA Artspace, and others. I was recently an Artist in Residence at the Lake Studios in Berlin, Germany, where I created a new multi-media solo work. I still am at Coker University, only now in the role of Dean of the McCall School of Visual and Performing Arts and Professor of Dance. I also work for the Joffrey Ballet each summer, teaching in their summer program in Miami. I am currently setting choreography on Columbia Repertory Dance Company for their fall show and have recently been a guest choreographer for Columbia City Ballet and Dance Now! Miami. I have been awarded the SC Dance Association’s Advocacy Award and Honor Award. At Coker, I have received the President’s Re-defining Ready Award for innovation in the dance program.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not always been a smooth road; my biggest recent challenge was an ACL tear during a dance performance in 2017. Sapphire Moon Dance Company was performing at a location with a concrete floor. While wearing the many hats of the company director, rehearsal director, lighting designer, stage manager, and performer, I did not adequately warm up. During a solo work, I felt something strange as I took off from a jump, and when I landed, I was fine until I took another step and my knee gave out. I could ‘dance’ off stage, and the audience was unaware of what happened. I ended up having to have surgery to repair my torn ACL. The rehab from that injury was probably one of the most frustrating points of my life. I had never felt so helpless and unable to move and be in my body. It was a long road, but I can now do almost everything I did pre-surgery.
Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a dancer and choreographer, my interests lie in exploring the human condition. I use my work to bring awareness to women’s and social issues. One of my favorite and most critically acclaimed solo works has to do with the woman’s body and the male gaze; how often the women’s body is sexualized to contrast this when a woman breastfeeds in public, there is so much outrage over this, and it is one of the most basic human acts. My work as an artist also has included using technology to create multi-media dance works. In these works, the sounds or things the dancers do on stage affect video projections during the work. I have been active in the dance for film side of the field as well, and my dance films have been shown internationally at Optica Film Festival in Bolivia and France, the Braga International Dance Film Festival in Portugal, and the IMARP (Mostra Internacional de danca) Festival in Brazil.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some changes you expect to see over the next five to ten years?
As a dancer and choreographer at this point in my career, I have more interest in site-specific and dance for the camera. These have always been part of what I do, but now, more options are available in these forms than in dances on stage. I will continue to teach and mentor younger artists. At some point, I want to shift into being able to produce and support emerging and mid-career artists more. I am still working on what this would look like.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sapphiremoondance.org
- Instagram: @ang7593
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angela.gallo.520
