Our Story
Emerging from the roaring halls of Hunter College's dance department, Danse Sauvage began when a few students banded together to create a community of added support during an advanced choreography class. Holding space where the challenges of individual work could be further discussed in an amalgamation of feedback, collaboration and tireless practice.
Danse Sauvage goes beyond movement and recognizes the weight of partnerships that emerge from creating together. Where support means problem-solving late-nights that leave you energized, full of joy and inspired. We recognize the significance of community thanks to our origins. We take on the responsibility of learning and unlearning and vie to work towards using art to heal. Through the emotional struggles of these incredibly challenging times and the awareness of doubt’s place in creation, this community of friends and lovers is here and present and ready to take on these practices. Because it has never been so dire and needed. It screams to be born from deep inside the earth, inside our very selves. So we invite all to embrace the wisdom of imagination yearning to be created and shared. Staying attuned to the beautiful and terrifying unknown, and to all the work still to be done.
Team
Vienna Isabelle Rose Cohn
Artistic Director
Valentina Bache Rodriguez
Artistic Director
Janifer Joel
Executive Consultant
Vienna Isabelle Rose Cohn (She/her) was raised in Europe, the Caribbean and New York, and began her formal training with the Geneva Dance Center at the age of five. As her family moved about the globe and access to studios varied, she supplemented her training studying gymnastics, ice skating, and the circus arts wherever she landed. Even when formal technique was not available to her, she always pursued it as an extracurricular, making her stage on many a field and fine table. She has now graduated the CUNY Baccalaureate program, in which she designed her major in choreography and creative writing. She hopes to open a dance school in Rincon, Puerto Rico, the place that served as a hometown to her so she can give back to the communities that nourished and molded her, and to open her own international company, ultimately pursuing all the ways she can bring her worldly experiences and her artistic pursuits together.
Team
Vienna Isabelle Rose Cohn
Artistic Director
Vienna Isabelle Rose Cohn (She/her) was raised in Europe, the Caribbean and New York, and began her formal training with the Geneva Dance Center at the age of five. As her family moved about the globe and access to studios varied, she supplemented her training studying gymnastics, ice skating, and the circus arts wherever she landed. Even when formal technique was not available to her, she always pursued it as an extracurricular, making her stage on many a field and fine table. She is now a senior in the CUNY Baccalaureate program, designing her major in choreography and creative writing. She hopes to open a dance school in Rincon, Puerto Rico, the place that served as a hometown to her so she can give back to the communities that nourished and molded her, and to open her own international company, ultimately pursuing all the ways she can bring her worldly experiences and her artistic pursuits together.
Valentina Bache Rodriguez
Artistic Director
Valentina Bache Rodriguez was born and raised in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. At 15 years old, they skipped high school and moved to Massachusetts to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock, where he obtained her Associates Degree in Biology and Dance at the age of 17. Then, they moved to NYC to attend Hunter College for a BA in Dance graduating spring 2020. She has learned from Yeniv Abraham, Shamel Pitts, Alberto de la Saz, Nina Goldman, Blakeley White-Mcguire, Maura Donahue, Zina Zinchenko, Nikolas Ventura, among many others. And has performed works by Kyle Abraham, Yael Levitan, Alwin Nikolai, among others. Their current works operate as introspective movement diaries in which personal and societal absurdities are explored. Through the spatio-emotional investigation of the unmapped qualities of human experience, Valentina hopes to innovate motion as an endless expressive realm of possibilities for themselves and those involved in the process.
Janifer Joel
Executive Consultant
Janifer Joel is an international business woman spanning the globe with a long and vast history of experience. She has lived and worked in New York, (18 years) paris, (3Years) Monaco (11 years )Geneva, (6 years )and India 11 years. She has cultivated two successful businesses (in health and nutrition and in close protection services) and is now returning to her first love, dance by participating in the founding of Danse Sauvage. From a very quiet origin Janifer is bringing her long history and love for dance to the exciting adventure of opening A school and company dedicated to the expression of our shared human endeavors.
