Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie is a New York City-based choreographer, performer, and b-girl and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine’s Inaugural Harkness Promise Award and two National Dance Project Awards. In 2019 she was the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.
As Artistic Director of Ephrat Asherie Dance, Asherie’s work has been presented nationally and internationally with commissions from companies including Malpaso and Parsons Contemporary Dance and additional commissions from Vail Dance Festival, Fall for Dance, River to River, Firatatrrega, and Works & Process at the Guggenheim. Her latest work, UNDERSCORED—awarded a 2019 Creation and Development Award from the National Performance Network and a 2022 National Dance Project—premiered in November 2022 at Works & Process at the Guggenheim.
Asherie is honored to have been mentored by Richard Santiago (a.k.a. Break Easy) and to have worked and collaborated with Michelle Dorrance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, Gus Solomons, Jr. and Buddha Stretch, among others. Asherie earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of contemporary street and club dances. She is a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective MAWU and is forever grateful to NYC’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.
* Tickets to CVPA and UCLS events are sold exclusively through our box office locations and ETix website, and nowhere else. Tickets purchased through third-party vendors cannot be honored.
In addition to public presentations, artists in the UCLS series have important interactions with UNCG students, such as holding masterclasses, talkback sessions, and seminars, often just hours before performing on stage. Thanks to a grant from The Cemala Foundation, some of these artists also work with K-12 students in the Guilford County Schools.
