“A gift for arresting dance imagery matched to a sophisticated sense of choreographic structure.”
Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times
Louise Reichlin, Founding Managing and Artistic Director of LA C& D, and Choreographer, began her professional career in New York performing in concert and on Broadway, has performed and choreographed throughout North America. Since 1972 she has worked extensively from her Los Angeles base, founding Los Angeles Choreographers and Dancers, the non-profit base of Louise Reichlin & Dancers, in 1979. Louise feels dance is a medium that reflects the human condition, and is interested in creating works that allow the spectator to experience feelings and relate to others with an expanded understanding and awareness of who we are, and how we all form one community. Performances with concert choreographers include Jose Limon, Helen Tamiris, Charles Weidman, and Meredith Monk. Broadway choreographers include Michael Bennett and Jerome Robbins. Besides teaching and choreographing for the Ballet Folklorico De Guatemala y Grupo de Danza Moderna, her choreography has been seen in the United States at the American Dance Festival, Dance Kaleidoscope, in 16 mainstage productions for USC Drama and Opera, for the Shakespeare Festival/LA’s production of Much Ado About Nothing, and Theatrical Arts International’s Caution, Men at Work: TAP (most recently touring China in 2011), in addition to thousands of performances and workshops by her company throughout Southern California. That year she also worked with The Amazing Race (CBS) on a Swedish Renaissance Dance for their contest and was the final performing arts judge for RAW.
Many of her concerts include audience participation works. In the 90’s, she began using her concert choreography for her company in partnerships with orchestras and theater companies, and in the contemporary rock/concert/musical form. She has also choreographed a number of stage productions targeted for children. In her concert work she has created several major works for families, the most recent being The Better to Bite You With and The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Her newest full-length works are The Baggage Project – including Mourning Light, Tap Dance Widows Club, Woman Sleeping (revised), and Remembrance (revised); The Reality Series – including The Shampoo, Los(t) Angeles,and Identity.
Awards and Honors
Some recent individual awards include one in 2022-23 from “Dance in the Districts” that commissioned a film/video that Reichlin called “Moving at the Madrid” in tribute to her work in Los Angeles Council District 3’s Madrid Theatre over the years. Another award that year was from The Changing Times Tap Initiative, a division of Changing Times Tap Dance Company, Inc. New York, NY for her development of the Alfred Desio Tap Project documented in the Special Projects area of this web site.
Going back earlier, in March 2016 Reichlin was awarded a WORD Artist Grant, the Bruce Geller Memorial Prize, which went towards the creation of “A Jewish Child’s Story”, aided in its development by a grant from DCA LA and the NEA called LA Stage Advance. In January ’16, Reichlin became a Fellow in the first Inquiry Fellowship where 19 artists were selected to meet once a month to explore Jewish ideas and traditions. In February she was selected as a finalist in the Apogee Awards for Excellence in a Dance Work by a Creator for Invasion. In June ’12, Reichlin was one of seven national artists selected by Marc Bamuthy Joseph, Director of Performing Arts at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, to present the creative impulse behind her work for the closing portion of the Dance USA annual conference called Vision 20/20. That current creative work is “Tap Dance Widows Club”, a 50′ film and live presentation from The Baggage Project, a series on how we are affected by those who are no longer with us because of the strong connection when alive. She is vetted as a US Artist 2012, received an ARC Grant from the Center For Cultural Innovation (CCI) toward new media augmentations for “The Patchwork Girl of Oz” for its first full New York performance in that year, also receiving Creative Capacity Quick Grant Awards ’11, ’12, ’16. She was a founding member of the Arts Community Partnership Network (ACPN) with master contract LAUSD, also part of the Partners for Student Success (PFSS) LAUSD, and her company has 12 vetted programs on the LA County Arts Education Directory (LAArtsEd.org) also working through a partnership grant from LA County Arts For All, partnering with Los Nietos SD ’11-12 and ICEF Charter Foundation ’12-’13. Current and recent grants for the company include the CA Arts Council/NEA through 2024, LA County Arts Commission multiple grants through 2025, LA Dept Cultural Affairs through 2025, Knabe Educational Partnership through 2016, Milestone Dance Co. Horton Award ’07, National Performance Network (NPN) Artist through ’06, Culver City Performing Arts Grants ’09/’05/’18/’19/’20, 21, 22, 23, 24 with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment, Target, and the Milken Family Foundation. Louise received the first Gary Bates Award by the Horton Awards Committee for creativity, sustained professional achievement, and service to the community 4/’02, and multiple Horton choreography nominations. She received a $14,000 Faculty Research/ Innovation Fund Grant for choreography and performance project from USC for the development of “Celtic Suite”, and an EZTV/ CyberSpace Media Access Award for Production/Collaboration for four versions of “The E-Mail Dances”. Reichlin and LRD is on the Kennedy Center Approved Artist Roster.
Commissions
One of the commissions Louise had the most fun with was from the Los Angeles Zoo, where she was invited to write, produce, and choreograph special programs combining animals, sports, and dance for the summer of Olympics, 1984, when the company was in residence for 22 performances.
About the same time kinetic artist Elfi Chester asked Reichlin to do an experimental work for an 11 foot high monofilament kinetic sculpture and dancers that illustrated angular momentum. It was first performed at the Laguna Beach Arts In Motion Festival.
In August 2003, Reichlin was commissioned for a second time to create new dances for performance with the Pasadena Pops Orchestra at Descanso Gardens. Using her company, this included an hour of new modern pieces to music by Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Milhaud, as well as a Tango Suite to Astor Piazolla, a suite from Grease, and a ballet to Tchaikovsky.
2003 was also a year for increased national and international touring of “Dream Scapes”, multi-media work written and composed by Steve Reid, Bamboo Forest. With a first version created for a video shoot in Los Angeles, the work which also includes 5 Cirque du Soleil performers along with Reid’s band and 4-6 members of Reichlin’s company was first performed in Orlando FL in 2000 and revised in July 2002 at El Portal Theatre in CA. Dances include Come Fly Away, The Fire of the Heart, Secrets of the Himalayas, The Web of Life, Cyber Cafe, Dream Scapes, Flowers in the Snow, and Rhythm Alley.
More recently, in 2015 performance artist Linda J. Albertano commissioned Louise to create four dances for her new poetry performance work Several Self-Gestapos, and the resulting suite of dances has been named Call From the Afterlife.
Choreography
"Unique...cinematic montages"
"Mythically transporting...Probes ancient mystery...provocative"
Louise has created over 100 works for her company, and most recently include Metro Transformation (2024, a collaboration with company members Jill Collins and Mcknnly Moren), Gotta Get Ready (2023), Reboot! Reboot! (2021), the reimagining of Urban and Tribal Dances (2020-2023), Alone 2020, A Jewish Child’s Story, Part I: The Roses on My Wallaper, Part II: Yellow Star (2016-2017), Invasion (2015-2016), Call From the Afterlife (2015), Continuum (2014), Al’s House (2013- site specific), The Baggage Project – including Mourning Light, Tap Dance Widows Club, Woman Sleeping (revised), and Remembrance (revised) (2012, dance/multimedia), The Better to Bite You With (dance/theatre/multimedia)(’09), The Reality Series – including The Shampoo, Los(t) Angeles,and Identity (’07-’08), Dance at the Stone House (site specific interactive work (’07), The Patchwork Girl of Oz (dance/theatre/multimedia) (’01-’02 with major revisions 2016), Dream Scapes (’00-’02), The Lion and the Mermaid (’99), The Five Sisters (’99), The E-Mail Dances (dance/theatre/multimedia) (5 versions ’96-’98), The Woman With One Head (’97/’99), Dances of Assimilation (’95), Easy and Uneasy Pieces (94), Turkish Delights (’93), Urban and Tribal Dances (6 dances choreographed between 1990 and 1992), Communal Dream (’92), Metamorphosis (’91), Gaelic Scrawl (’90, a new dance for Celtic Suite created in 1983 and ’84), dis-located (’89), as well as The Tenderland (opera ’90), Midsummer Night’s Dream (opera ’96), and A Special House, Charlie, and Frankenbean and the Monster Carrots, 3 original musicals for the LA Children’s Museum in 1996 and 1997. Frankenbean toured nationally, closing at the Smithsonian in the fall of 1997.
A special interest of the company has been producing the work of other Los Angeles based choreographers, and Louise produced the works of 22 in her New Works Dance Festivals. Since concentrating on presenting only her own and Alfred Desio’s works since 1989 on her company, Louise also produced the “Dance At Brand” series for the city of Glendale, which allowed her to continue providing opportunities for more than a dozen companies to have their work presented. She has been curating the TriArt Festival for many years, in 2012 taking over the producing as well, with 16 professional and 6 pre-professional dance companies performing in the free outside festival. Along the way, the title changed to the San Pedro ♥ Festival of the Arts. In 2020 during the Pandemic, unable to have performances with audiences in real locations, and with LA County cancelling their grants for summer music programs, the Dept of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, encouraged Reichlin to produce the first virtual festival as all dance featuring 17 companies. In 2021 an additional federal grant helped Reichlin produce 28 dance companies in one program just streamed, one program live at Alvas Showroom (inside), and one program at Anderson Park live (outside). Both the live programs were streamed free for several weeks. The Tennis Dances remains Louise’s most acclaimed work, with performances at outdoor festivals and major theaters for audiences of thousands, to small galleries and elementary school stages. In 2020, again because the Pandemic shut down all dance rehearsal spaces and theaters, her most recent works are virtual, with Alone 2020 first seen at the San Pedro Festival, and then at the Los Angeles Dance Festival in coordination with Luckman Theater, also virtual this year.Beside choreographing for her company, Reichlin has created additional choreography for Caution: Men At Work, TAP, choreography for the Turkish Radio Television’s network logo, for the television series The Amazing Race, and collaborated with Alfred Desio for multiple industrials for Schick Wilkinsen, Alliance Funding, and Ford Automotive.
Education
For 30 years Louise taught both Stage Movement For Actors for the USC School of Theatre, and Movement Training for Musicians classes for the USC Thornton School of Music, in addition to her work with the company. Louise has also been a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, and at Loyola Marymount University, in addition to teaching special workshops and creating projects for the LAUSD, Pasadena Citywide Arts, and at many schools and colleges. Locally, she and her company have been creating residencies for arts training of teachers and students in many of the schools in Los Angeles. This is in collaboration with the Arts Prototype Programs and the Partners For Student Success of the LAUSD. She served on the advisory committee for the ACPN constituency for the LA Unified Wallace Planning Grant and on the Advisory Board for the LA County Arts Commission’s Educational Roundtable. She was also an active member of the Steering Committee for the Los Angeles Arts Consortium, a group of 62 professional artists, arts organizations, and cultural institutions with the mission of ensuring that the creative vitality of professional arts resources in Los Angeles is utilized for maximum impact to support learning in and through the arts for all students.
Her family programs are..."very imaginative and delightfully inventive. ...fun for the whole family!"
Touring and Other Activities
Louise Reichlin & Dancers has toured Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Mexico. In 2002 The Patchwork Girl of Oz was premiered as part of an NPN residency. The following year Dream Scapes took the company to Mexico. Louise has created a radio series on Myth and Dance, and has often been interviewed on television, as well as having her works broadcast. She is a biographee in Who’s Who in the West, and Who’s Who in Entertainment, a former Board member of the Hollywood Arts Council and the Dance Resource Center, and a member of Dance USA, the Western Arts Alliance, The International Performing Arts for Youth, APAP, AEA, AGMA, and SAG. Since 1995, she has created and published a web site for her company as well as compiled and published a web site for the Southern California Dance and Directory, which now hosts 699 professional companies. Louise has served on a number of panels for Los Angeles City and County. Her degrees include a BA from Bennington College, and an MFA from UC Irvine. She also has a Professional Designation in Arts Education for the California State Standards.