Charles Moulton (born July 13, 1954) is an American choreographer and visual artist who has staged dances on Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project, The Joffrey Ballet, The

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company Lar Lubovitch Dance Company (founded in 1968) is a dance company based in New York City and founded by Lar Lubovitch in the late 1960s. They have performed at Carnegie Hall, and worldwide. In 2003–04, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company celebrated ...

, The Ohio Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, Gauthier Dance (Stuttgart), and many other companies in the US and abroad. He is a

Guggenheim Award Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

winner, a Dorothy Chandler Arts Achievement winner and a co-founding director of

Performance Space 122 Performance Space New York, formerly known as Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122, is a non-profitable arts organization founded in 1980 in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in an abandoned public school building. Origin The former eleme ...

in downtown Manhattan. He is currently co-artistic director of Garrett + Moulton Productions, a San Francisco based performing arts organization that presents live dance and music. Moulton has received numerous awards and fellowships including three Jerome Foundation awards and three Meet The Composer/Choreographer awards. He has received support from the NEA, The New York State Arts Council, the Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts, the Con Edison Foundation, The Beards Fund, Warner Communications, The National Arts Center of Canada, The Zellerbach Fund, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

Early career

Moulton began his professional career as a dancer in 1972 with Contemporary Dancers Canada in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1973 he moved to New York to join the

Merce Cunningham Dance Company Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...

where he danced from 1973-76. Moulton created his own company in 1978, which toured nationally and internationally for ten years. He created a wide variety of works in collaboration with designers Charles Atlas and Frank Moore, and composers Dick Connette, Scott Johnson, Bill Obrecht, Steve Elson and Lenny Pickett. A virtuoso tap dancer, Moulton studied under Charles “Cookie” Cook and Honi Coles. In 1975 he created a tap solo “300 300 300 / 1400” which was shown at the

Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...

and in the ''Public Arts International/Free Speech'' festival. In 1986 he created “Tapnology,” called by the New York Times “One of the Ten Best Dance Events of The Year,” in which microphones attached to his shoes transmitted signals that triggered a variety of midi sounds and noises. He toured this work extensively through the United States.

Precision Ball Passing

Moulton is best known for his work “Precision Ball Passing,” which has been heralded as a landmark in the development of post-modern dance. Originally created for three performers in 1979, additional versions have been made for nine, 18, 25, 48, 60 and 72 performers. Precision Ball Passing has been performed around the world on a wide variety of dance companies, schools.

Commercial choreography

Moulton is an active commercial choreographer. He choreographed Peter Gabriel’s “So” Tour and created a featured solo for Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton in the movie "

Teknolust ''Teknolust'' is a 2002 American film written, produced, and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson who, at the time of production, was working in the art department at University of California, Davis. The film stars Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Davies. L ...

." He choreographed over 1000 dancers for the temple/rave scene in “The Matrix Reloaded” and an advertising campaign for Peregrine Communications. He has collaborated on two large-scale projects in China with director

Daniel Flannery Daniel Flannery (born 1952) is an American artist, creative producer, theatre director, scenographer, film/television director, director of photography and lighting designer. Career Stage spectacles ''Illusion'' was a grand opera scale li ...

, “Elements”(2008) and “Illusions”(2013).

Visual art

In 2000, Moulton was a fellow at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program where he became interested in making drawings. His visual art has been shown at the Pro Arts Gallery, Oakopolis Gallery, and the Terminal Gallery, all in

Oakland, CA Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

, and at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ. His drawings served as the basis for “A Show of Hands,” created in collaboration with Janice Garrett.

Current work

Moulton lives in Oakland, CA, with his life partner and choreographic collaborator, Janice Garrett. Since 2007 they have created six full-length dance theater pieces together: Stringwreck (2008), The Illustrated Book of Invisible Stories (2009), The Experience of Flight in Dreams (2011), Angles of Enchantment (2012), A Show of Hands (2013), and The Luminous Edge (2014). Of their most recent work, “The Luminous Edge”, SF Chronicle wrote: The dance season is still very young, but it is doubtful whether we will see anything quite as exhilarating … as Garrett + Moulton Productions’ “The Luminous Edge”.

References

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