Isabel von Rittberg is in the midst of defining an art form and all the vocabulary therein. She has, in fact, created a choreographerโs dream.
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With AscenDance Project, founder and artistic director Isabel von Rittberg gives birth to a new genre of dance that fuses rock climbing, music and choreography performed on a vertical wall. Without ropes or suspension, dancers use sheer strength to overcome gravity with grace, beauty and artistic prowess. AscenDance Project has given numerous performances across the nation and received international recognition in 2010 when the company reached the semifinals of NBCโs America's Got Talent. Since then, AscenDance Project has performed in venues across the globe. In 2017, they performed at the Macky Auditorium for the 2017 TEDxBoulder.
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Boulder-local Isabel von Rittberg is both a dancer and a rock climber, and she remembers the precise moment, during a drive to Montana to visit her Grandmother, that she first thought of combining the two disciplines. โI was driving through the Virgin River Gorge in Utah, listening to music and looking at the towering rock walls, and I had a vision so clear and so strong that there was no way I could have ignored it,โ she says. โI told my Grandma, โIโm going to build a climbing wall and dance on it.โโ
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Ascendance Project was thrilled to perform at TEDxBoulder this year! Working from the eventโs theme of โClimate & Change,โ this piece is choreographed to highlight our countryโs modern divisions, and demonstrate how love is the key to understanding and union. Donโt build walls. Dance on them.
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By Natalie Berry
A video has been doing the rounds on social media recently - receiving over 26,000 views so far - featuring a troupe of dancers using a climbing wall as an apparatus upon which to choreograph a dance routine. Isabel Rittberg is the founder, artistic director and a dancer within the group AscenDance - based in Boulder, Colorado in the United States.
Combining climbing moves, dance elements and music, Isabel has created a new art form which focusses on the more graceful and gymnastic aspects of climbing - there's no grunting or powerscreaming here!
I asked Isabel a few questions about her project...