About the Company The Deborah Abel Dance Company performs original works choreographed by artistic director Deborah Abel which are intended to engage the audience in a very human, soulful, and concretely emotional way, and to give them an experience of discovery and inner movement.  It is meant to remind us of a level of connection with ourselves and others that gets buried in everyday life, and which the arts are uniquely qualified to uncover.  It aims to touch the part of us that is longing:  longing to be the lover and the beloved, longing for connection with our truest selves and with others.  Through a perspective that is a meld of western psychology and eastern intentionality the dances explore the possibility of personal wholeness, and of evolving relationships in partnerships, families, and communities.   Each concert is conceived as a whole, creating a universe into which the audience is invited to enter.  The various movement textures - the movingly fluid the intensely reflective, the explosively physical - work together to evoke the viewer’s  awe of our inner wonder. The Company’s resident composer, Lee Perlman, creates original works of both live and taped music, working with a  group of talented musicians to perform live for most performances.

Deborah Abel has produced, choreographed, and danced in concerts of her own choreography since 1987. She was a finalist in the 1988 Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship Program in Choreography. Her piece, Night Song/Cool of the Day, was selected by a panel of judges to appear in the concert Boston Moves Downtown (1988) at the New England Life Hall. She choreographed and produced the concerts First Light (1988), Going Home (1989), and The Play of Consciousness (1990). In 1991, she produced an evening length work, The Perfect Relationship: A Dance Concert of Duets, in Boston and at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York. With a grant from the M.I.T. Council for the Arts, she premiered an evening length work, The Beauty Road: A Dance of Community, with guest artist singer/songwriter Carla Sciaky, at Kresge Auditorium, M.I.T., in 1992. In 1994, the Deborah Abel Dance Company presented and performed in Common Heart: A Benefit Concert for Christine O’Shea with the help of friends and other performers including singer Carol Maillard of Sweet Honey in the Rock and choreographer/dancer Dianne McIntyre. In 1996, at M.I.T.’s Kresge Auditorium, Abel premiered Eye of the Heart, an evening-length work featuring dancers, singers, musicians, and a collaboration with visual artist Pamela Shanley.

 Abel and resident composer Lee Perlman have also created and presented the Unraveling to the Source movement workshops. The workshops include Lovedancing: A Couples Movement Workshop and Creative Dance as Divine Worship. Deborah Abel received a B.A. in Dance from Connecticut College and a Certificate of Dance from the Laban School in London, England. In the 1980’s she established a school of modern dance which continues to flourish.

 After being ‘on leave’ for a few years to devote herself to being a parent (and running her school), she returned last year to her choreography with her evening length work The World is Breathing at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, with grants from the MIT Council for the Arts, and The Experimental Study Group.

 Abel’s inspiration comes from her meditation practice and her own attempts to infuse her life with the focus and surrender that meditation teaches.  Her work is about following longing to its source.

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Photos by Richard Chase, Jaye R. Phillips
Web site by Jill Baker and Infinite Artworks
Contact Deborah Abel: (978) 369-4530 deborahabel@comcast.net