The 14-member UCSB Dance Company will perform a varied concert of contemporary dance March 11-13 on campus at the Hatlen Theater.
Six months in the making, the diverse program, titled “Convergence: into the center,” features premieres by four guest choreographers, one faculty member, and an emerging choreographer.
This concert is being created to tour to Europe in April as the senior dance majors in the Department of Theater and Dance reach the peak of their four years at UCSB.
The company will take the program to Istanbul, Turkey; Cologne, Germany; Poland; and Prague, Czech Republic, April 13-29. The residencies include workshops, master classes, and performances in each city.
The UCSB Dance Company, a pre-professional dance company under the artistic direction of Delila Moseley, offers a broad spectrum of contemporary dance in the concert.
Premieres by Seda Aybay, Ashley Lindsey, Monique Meunier, and Meredith Ventura take the stage alongside re-staging of choreography by Joshua Manculich, Sophie Berls and Annalise Evans. Lighting design is by Michael Klaers.
“The evening draws the audience into the radiant, resonant, virtuosic center of dance,” the dance company said.
Meunier, associate professor at UCSB, opens the concert with “Aura,” an exploration of the essence of balletic and contemporary forms.
Choreographed for five dancers en pointe, “Aura” traces the evolution of a person from tentative beginnings to embodied strength and self-possession.
It begins with de-constructed movement, reflecting the process of learning to stand on one’s own, physically and emotionally.
As the dancers come together, the choreography shows how power grows through community, shared rhythm, and support.
The work ends with a return to individuality, as each dancer emerges with distinct movement qualities that honor personal beauty, autonomy and significance shaped by collective experience, the company said.
Meunier was born in Hollywood, California. As a young girl in Los Angeles, she earned spots in commercials, music videos, sitcoms, and short films.
At age 15, she received a full scholarship to attend the School of American Ballet in NYC, and a year later was asked to join the New York City Ballet.
In 1996, she was promoted to soloist and reached the rank of principal dancer in 1997. There she performed roles by Balanchine, Robbins, Martins, Wheeldon and Forsythe, as well as Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake.”
In 2002, Meunier joined American Ballet Theater. In 2007, she joined Complexions Contemporary Ballet under the direction of Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson.
“The Rate in Which I Am,” by Joshua Manculich, explores the velocity of modern life and its impact on human connection.
Inspired by a loved one who passed suddenly, the work asks audience members to pause and realize where they are in the moment.
Originally commissioned by DanceWorks Chicago, “The Rate in Which I Am” won second place (of 150 works) at Palm Desert Choreography Festival.
The solo “Focus,” also by Manculich, leans on the idea that whatever a person focuses on will expand. It was designed to highlight the tension between a recurring and relentless focal point.
These re-stagings of Manculich’s work mark his second residency with the UCSB Dance Company.
Ventura’s “Cadavre Exquis,” performed to songs by Edith Piaf, reimagines the surrealist game of collective creation as a feminist ideal – an act of assembling fragmented bodies, memories, and voices into a shared, living text, according to the dance company.
“The work explores the struggle for power and the fragile act of truly seeing another, tracing how shared traumas bind and distort human connection,” the company said.
“Rooted in my research on the grotesque and the female body, ‘Cadavre Exquis’ transforms surrealist disjunction into a choreographic language of feminist reconstruction: where brokenness becomes a site of agency, and the act of assembling becomes an act of resistance,” Ventura said.
Ventura is a choreographer, educator and scholar whose work bridges concert dance, theater and performance studies. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UCSB, where she also earned her M.A. and B.F.A. in dance (cum laude).
Ventura is the artistic director of Selah Dance Collective and Novus Contemporary Ballet, two Santa Barbara-based companies. Ventura teaches throughout the Santa Barbara area.
“Shedding,” a new full company piece by Lindsey, explores the quiet power of release, the tension between holding on, letting go, and breaking free; between identity and transformation, the company said.
It reflects a universal process of uncovering what is raw, real and uncertain beneath the surface.
At its core, “Shedding” is a meditation on emotional release — both personal and collective — and the strength that arises when we surrender to vulnerability, allowing what is essential to remain once everything else has fallen away.
A Los Angeles-based choreographer, Lindsey created the piece during a three-day residency with the UCSB Dance Company in November.
His career spans some two decades across concert dance, film, television, fashion, and branded content.
He performed with Jose Limon and Lar Lubovitch, dance companies. He has directed and produced dance films and has shaped the technical and artistic development of dancers across university, conservatory, pre-professional, and professional training programs. and appeared in numerous film, television, and commercial projects.
Known for his versatility as a creator, Lindsey crafts bold, innovative, and visually compelling movement-driven work across film, TV, fashion editorials, branded campaigns, concert dance, and live performance.
Lindsey’s choreography has been commissioned by Charlotte Ballet II, Limón II, Chapman University, UC Santa Barbara Dance Company, Orange County School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Flight Path Dance Project.
His theatrical credits include choreography and movement direction for “Porgy and Bess” with Greensboro Opera, featuring Grammy Award–winner Rhiannon Giddens.
Aybay, guest choreographer from Los Angeles, will create a significant new work on the UCSB Dance Company during a residency in January.
Aybay is founder/artistic director/choreographer of Kybele Dance Theater. Since emigrating from Istanbul/Türkiye, her choreography garnered recognition including the 2019 Cultural Ambassador of LA by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs.
Aybay was the choreographer for John Woo’s movie “The Killer,” produced by Universal Pictures and Peacock.
Her work has received awards including New Century Choreography, McCallum Choreography Festival, Front and Main Dance Festival, Dance Under the Stars Festival.
She was artist in resident at USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Santa Monica College, Marcus Residency at Washington University/St. Louis and Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center.
Aybay created works for Chapman University, LMU Fall Concert, Synapse Dance Theater, and Windward School.
“Call For” is a quartet by Sophie Berls, exploring the performance of self across multiple geographies, whether online or face-to-face.
It examines the interwoven system of knots one ties to others, alongside the simultaneous tidying of oneself into a bow.
It is about being in close kinship, the vulnerability closeness requires, and its antithesis posturing, bluffing, presenting composure.
The dancers try to untangle the knots, not realizing they are stronger together.
Berls is restaging “Call 4” on UCSB Dance Company, having created the piece last year for Kinetic Lab in collaboration with dancers Charlotte Brier, Ava Taylor, Avery Trask, and Lara van Digglen.
Berls is a senior at UCSB, an apprentice with Santa Barbara Dance Theater, and member of UCSB Dance company.
Curious about the often erased intersections of language, meaning and movement, Berls is earning a BA in global studies alongside a BFA in dance and minor in French.
UCSB alumna Annalise Evans has returned to restage her work “We Were Light” on the company.
An LA-based dance artist and choreographer, Evans graduated in June 2025 from UCSB with a BFA in dance and BS in psychological and brain sciences.
At UCSB, she was in several student choreography productions, and was an apprentice for Santa Barbara Dance Theater, performing in the 2024 production “A Place For Us.”
Formerly a member of UCSB Dance Company herself, Evans said she is excited to restage her senior capstone choreography piece on this year’s company.
“We Were Light” sets out to explore playfulness, the innocence and naïveté that shape how we play as children.
“This sense of wonder is changed as we grow older and come to understand the world,” the company said.
Evans and the dancers sought to rediscover that feeling of joy and unfiltered fun, emerging into a world so marked by hatred and sadness.
Now in its 34th year, UCSB Dance Company offers graduating senior dance majors the opportunity to perform and travel as a pre-professional dance company.
The company performs at the university, in downtown Santa Barbara, on tour in California and other western states, and has frequently toured internationally.
The UCSB Dance Company presents lecture-demonstrations in elementary school, high schools, and community colleges, as well as repertory concerts in theatrical venues.