About RG
Rosanna Gamson was born in Manhattan and lived as a child in Rome, Italy and the suburbs of New York City. Her father, Arnold Gamson, was an opera conductor; her mother, Annabelle Gamson, a dancer and choreographer, is most known for her virtuoso performance of the early moderns, notably Isadora Duncan.
Gamson studied composition with Hanya Holm and Bessie Shönberg, later a mentor, and writing with poets Stanley Kunitz, Charles Simic and Louise Glück. She performed nationally and internationally with Andy DeGroat & Dancers, in dances by Yvonne Rainer, with a variety of choreographers in New York City, and workshop productions of Robert Wilson. Gamson earned BFA and MFA degrees in Dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating in 1988, she participated in American Dance Festival's Young Choreographers Exchange Project in France as a guest of the French Ministry of Culture.
In New York, she started producing her own choreography, including two full length pieces: The Angels, based on Renaissance court entertainments, and Layla Means Night, inspired by The Arabian Nights and the first bombing of the World Trade Towers in Manhattan. This project and her next work, Again Not Again, which was inspired by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, took Gamson on research trips to Morocco and Eastern Europe, respectively.
Gamson's creative process became more collaborative and her dance vocabulary grew when she moved to Los Angeles in 1996 and met dancers who came to concert dance through other forms. Working with the performers, these dance theater projects include flamenco, tango, and Chinese martial arts, with text in German, Spanish, Mandarin, and Korean.
Her most recent project, Aura (2004), was a bi-lingual, bi-national collaboration with Mexican choreographer Cecilia Appleton and her company, Contradanza. Based on the Carlos Fuentes novella, Aura was developed in the US and Mexico with five performers from each company. Aura premiered in Mexico City (2004) at Teatro Raul Flores Canelo de CENART, and in Los Angeles (2005) at the Roy & Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater (REDCAT), a commissioning partner.
Since RG/WW's official incorporation as a California non-profit corporation in 1998, the repertoire has been presented by theaters, museums and festivals throughout the US, in Canada, and Mexico by venues including the J. Paul Getty Center, The Dance Center of Columbia College, Chicago, the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, PICA's TBA Festival in Portland, OR and most recently, Sala Covarruvias de UNAM in Mexico City. RG/WW won four Lester Horton Dance Awards and numerous grants including the California DanceMaker 2002 for the creation of Two Views from The James Irvine Foundation, and support for Aura from the National Dance Project.