Nina Haft & Company is an Oakland-based contemporary dance group.  Taking a ‘live cinema’ approach to performance, Artistic Director Nina Haft integrates movement, sound, light and space into evocative works that foster a deeper understanding of place.

 

Nina’s work has been profiled in Dance Magazine and received support from the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Margaret Jenkins’ CHIME Program, the Conney Project on Jewish Arts (UW-Madison) and the Purdue University (IN) Klatch Family Artist Residency program.  Major works include King Tide; This.placed; To Begin With the Ending; T:HERE; Debris/flows; SKIN: One Becomes Two; 36 Jewish Gestures; mountain views: still life with dancing; Mit a Bing, Mit a Boom! A Klezmer Dance, Geographies of Memory: A Dance Vessel.

 

Nina Haft & Company is also known for the Dance in Unexpected Places Series, which has presented cultural commentary and site-specific performances in dockyards, synagogues, parking lots, libraries, train stations, bars, government buildings, historic Mountain View Cemetery and other liminal spaces.  Nina has presented her work throughout the Bay Area and abroad, including performances in West Wave Dance Festival, Bare Bones, 8x8x8, ODC’s 24 Views, the Bay Area Dance Series, Festival at the Lake and at numerous other venues.

 

Nina’s work has been supported by the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Clorox Company Foundation, the CA$H Fund of Theatre Bay Area, the Alameda County Arts Commission, the City of Oakland and numerous generous individuals.  She has been honored as a recipient of the City of Oakland Creative Artist Choreographer’s Fellowship, and has served as Artist in Residence for the California Arts Council, the City of Oakland Artists in the Libraries program, and at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, where she was awarded the John D. and Susan P. Diekman Fellowship and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellowship.  Nina was an artist in residence in 2014 at the Margaret Jenkins Dance Lab, while being mentored by Margaret Jenkins in the culminating year of CHIME.

 

A former core member of AXIS Dance Company, Nina’s choreography has been presented in Boston (Dance Umbrella), Minneapolis (Walker Art Center), New York City (Central Park Summerstage and Gowanus Arts Center), Portland (Conduit), San Diego (SUSHI) and Novosibirsk, Siberia, as well as on public television as part of the PBS People in Motion Series.  Nina Haft & Company recently completed their first tour of the Middle East, performing as invited guests of the Amman Contemporary Dance Festival, the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, and at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

​