Mission Statement

The DanceWright Project begins with a couple of principles. First, dance need not be deconstructed to be relevant — beauty matters. No matter the subject of a piece, it is possible to retain the exquisite beauty of the athletic human body. Second, beauty need not be a museum piece. Ballet, especially the classical romantic ballet, tends to create a wall between the viewer and the art — a wall made up of tutus, crowns, princes, princesses, slaves, and other symbols irrelevant (and sometimes insulting) to contemporary life.

With this in mind, The DanceWright Project is creating a new paradigm for contemporary dance movement. While retaining much of the ballet vocabulary and combining it with other movement inspirations, dance is placed in the context of natural situation. The music comes from the most enduring examples of popular culture from around the world — blues, new age, 1930s club jazz, electronica, bossa nova, and more. The costuming is “street-friendly.” With very few exceptions, nothing is worn of stage that wouldn't be appropriate on the street, in the “real world”.

The result of this approach is a fusion the draws in the non-dance fan and the casual dance watcher, while providing a great deal of substance for the dance aficionado. In making this outreach a priority, Jamie Ray Wright seeks to expand the audience for dance and its image in the general public, while continuing to do the job that the artist is meant to do — provoke conversation about the issues and images of the day.