Ariel Grossman

Artistic Director

Ariel Rebecca (Rivka) Grossman is a native New Yorker, who trained at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts and Joffrey Ballet School under Gerald Arpino. She earned a B.S. in Dance, with honors, and a Minor in Women’s Studies from Skidmore College, and a masters in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College. In 2008, she founded an all-female contemporary company, Ariel Rivka Dance. Ariel Grossman received a 2023 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Ariel's work has been presented worldwide, including BAM Fisher, NJPAC, The Place, London, England, Bryant Park, NYLA, Baruch Performing Arts Center, Martha Graham Studio Theater, NYU Tisch, Rutgers University, Roxbury Performing Arts Center, and in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Houston, Cleaveland, Florida, Oklahoma, Detroit, Memphis, Istanbul, TR, Paris, FR, Perigord, FR and Bari, IT. In 2024, she will be presented at Avignon, FR, Rwanda, EAC, and Morroco, MENA.

Dance Lab NY, Konverjdans, Breathing Art Company, Ballet Vero Beach, and Skidmore College have commissioned choreography by Ariel in addition to Heritage and Harmony, which featured NYCB Principal Dancer Chun Wai Chan. She has collaborated with Rioult Dance NY, Taylor 2, Heidi Latsky, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, and Sean Curran. Ariel is a past recipient of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (New) Moves Fellowship, DanceNYC, Dance New Jersey, and Jersey City Dance Artist Relief Fund by Nimbus, with support from the New Jersey Arts and Culture Recovery Fund. ARD is an awardee of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Charles & Joan Gross Family Foundation, Jersey City Council of the Arts, and New Jersey State Council on the Arts and more.

Donna Weng Friedman

Artistic Advisor

https://www.donnawengfriedman.com/

Award winning pianist Donna Weng Friedman enjoys a varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, teacher, producer, curator and app developer. In collaboration with WQXR, she created and produced Heritage and Harmony, a virtual concert series in celebration of Asian Pacific Heritage Month. She is the co-creator and co-host of HER/MUSIC;HER/STORY, a mini-series on WQXR as well as a concert series that shines a light on the stories and music of women composers, past and present. She was the guest speaker on TEDx Santa Barbara’s series Making Waves: Conversations with Influencers and Disruptors and the featured artist on the National Women’s History Museum’s series Sundays@Home, honoring women whose activism and talents serve to inspire others.

Next spring, Ms. Weng Friedman will launch a new education program in collaboration with the National Women’s History Museum, featuring leading female BIPOC role models in the arts. The virtual series is called Heritage and Harmony: Her Art, Her Choice and is dedicated to inspiring and empowering school age girls of color to find their true voice.

Ms. Weng Friedman has performed in concert halls worldwide, and appeared as soloist with major symphony orchestras throughout Europe, China, and the U.S. She is thrilled to join Ariel Rivka Dance’s creative team as Artistic Advisor, sharing her vision of bringing people together through stories, music, and dance.

Photo by Whitney Browne

Stefania De Kenessey

Composer-In-Residence

http://www.stefaniadekenessey.com/

is active in a wide variety of genres. Her opera adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel “Bonfire of the Vanities” premiered in New York City in 2015 to considerable acclaim: “melodically ingratiating…skillfully wrought…caustically witty” (Financial Times); “Stefania de Kenessey’s musical setting was, unlike a lot of contemporary opera, tuneful and grateful to the voice” (The Observer). Her instrumental and vocal music has been performed extensively in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Joe’s Pub, LaMama, and New York Live Arts. Premieres in 2018-2019 featured her (mostly) humorous cabaret songbook, The Well-Tempered Woman, for which she wrote both music and lyrics, as well as SHE, her first purely electronic score for Ariel Rivka Dance. The latter marked the beginning of an ongoing and happy collaboration with choreographer Ariel Grossman, which in 2019 led to Rhapsody in K (co-composed with David Homan) as well as Mossy – with more to come. Trained at Yale and Princeton, de Kenessey is steadfastly committed to honoring women composers and is the founding president of the International Alliance for Women in Music.

For further information, please visit her website at www.stefaniadekenessey.com

Gabrielle Corrigan

Costume Designer

Gabrielle Corrigan is a Costume Designer, Wardrobe Manager, and Dancer based in New York City. Currently, Gabrielle is the Head Costume Designer/Coordinator of Dance at Marymount Manhattan College, and also freelances as a Costumer for dance organizations across the city. Gabrielle received her degree in Dance from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program where she also studied Fashion, and began working in costuming. As a BFA student she performed works by Yoshito Sakuraba, Adam Barruch, Yusha Marie-Sorzano, and Robert Battle. At Marymount Manhattan College she has had the pleasure of designing costumes for Darshan Bhuller, Netta Yerushalmy, Jenn Freeman, Cameron Mckinney, Caleb Teicher, and others. In her freelancing Gabrielle has most recently worked with the Limon Dance Company, Thryn Saxon, Syren Dance Company, and FiveTwo Dance. Gabrielle is honored to participate in her first collaboration with Ariel Rivka Dance for (Un)Coupled.