Colin Connor is a choreographer whose over forty commissions span the worlds of contemporary, ballet and flamenco companies. Mr. Connor has had his work presented at numerous venues across the Americas and Europe, including the Momment’Homme Festival in Montreal, The Holland Festival in Den Hague, the Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporanea in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and the Joyce Theater in New York. His Full Sail (In Praise of Storms) won Sarasota Ballet’s International Choreography Competition and he was also a winner of the Charleston Ballet Theatre’s Fountainhead Choreography Competition. He was twice a guest choreographer at both The Yard and The Carlisle Project. His work focuses on drawing from a large range of influences, musical, literary, social and scientific, all used to bring attention back to the communicative power of the human body.

Mr. Connor has created works for such companies as Pennsylvania Dance Theater, Atlanta Ballet, Finland’s Damaru Dance Company, Hartford Ballet, Pick of the Crop, LA’s American Repertory Dance Company, Dayton Ballet, the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, Ballet Pacifica, Risa Steinberg solos, Ballet Theatre of Maryland, the Eisenhower Dance Ensemble, and the ABT Studio Company among others. He has created four works each for the Island Moving Company and the Richmond Ballet. Most of these commissions have been retained in the company’s repertory for subsequent seasons. He has had three works commissioned by The Juilliard School and has also choreographed for numerous other training centers including the Rotterdamse Dansacademie, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Boston Conservatory, and NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. His New York based Salvage Company performed for six years to enthusiastic critical and audience response, and he currently continues to develop work with the duet company Connor/Noble Dance.

Major collaborations include Solea and the Winds, a radical Contemporary/Flamenco evening which toured to critical acclaim for three years across Europe, Secondhand Sofa with bluegrass band The Biscuit Boys for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, What The Waitress Saw, a deconstruction of a diner (with Emmy award winning theater designer, Charles Schoonmaker) for the Boston Conservatory’s Copland Celebration with orchestra performing his Clarinet Concerto, and Near Ruins, a duet evening which prompted Jennifer Dunning to write in the New York Times: “It comes as something of a relief these days to see movement treated as a sufficiently expressive medium”.

At the center of Mr. Connor’s performing career were his eight years as a soloist with the Limon Dance Company. Born in London, England, he began dancing in Canada, and he also danced with the Mary Anthony Dance Theater, performed in his own work and was a guest with many other companies.

As an educator, Mr. Connor has been on the faculties of The Juilliard School, New York University (where he also worked as a choreographer and movement teacher for the Theater Dept’s Classical Studio,) and the City College of New York (where he was also Choreographer in Residence.) He has been a guest teacher at many of the finest training centers in the world including The Place in London, the Rotterdamse Dansacademie, Jacob’s Pillow, Dresden’s Palucca Schule, the Joffrey Summer Workshop, The Dance Studio in Novosibirsk, Russia, and the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. He has been full-time faculty at the California Institute of the Arts for six years.

This year, Mr. Connor created Hold Fast co-commissioned by the Island Moving Company and Simon Fraser University in Canada. He was also a core teacher initiating a new summer Limon workshop for southern California, and remounted his Terra for Richmond Ballet. This winter, he will be in residence at MANCC beginning a new creative process with the Limon Dance Company.