Saudade


David Rousseve

Artist Bio

Saudade is a dance-theater work combining storytelling, video imagery and Portuguese Fado music. Written, directed and choreographed by David Rousseve, the piece uses African American history as a lens through which to explore “bittersweetness” as a single moment when the greatest of joy and agony are experienced simultaneously. As a way of embodying conversations on global cooperation and American isolationism, Saudade is performed by “postmodernists” as well as practitioners of world dance forms including Indonesian, Bharata Natyam and West African.


Discipline
Dance, Theater
Award Year
2006
Status

Completed

David Rousseve

David Rousseve

Sherman Oaks, CA

David Rousseve’s projects include the dance-for camera Bittersweet which screened at the Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center, and a collaboration with Ilkhom Theater Company in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Since 1989 Rousseve has been artistic director for the interdisciplinary dance/theater company Reality. Commissioned three times by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, Reality has also performed at Serious Fun at Lincoln Center, London’s South Bank Center, the Festival Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, the Carlton Festival in Brazil, and the Internationales Sommer Theater Festival in Hamburg. Rousseve’s grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bessie Award, an L.A. Horton Award, two Irvine Fellowships, the Alpert Award in the Arts, and seven fellowships from the NEA. Rousseve is the former chair of UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures Department where he is professor of choreography.