What do you get when you put actors, choreographers, a playwright and a street performer in a room together? 

Something a little bit different...

Company 212 is a multi-ethnic, international group of dancers and actors specializing in new physical theatre.  Born out of artistic collaboration between the Company's core performers while in the MFA program at the University of California at Davis, Company 212 aims to subvert conventional barriers between audience and performer, dancer and actor, pathos and humor.

In response to the current climate:

Financial realities often prevent theaters and performers from taking risks,  presenting a self-defeating conundrum: it is through risk that art thrives.  Rehearsal periods are shorter than ever before, requiring designers and directors to establish fixed ideas about a piece before entering the rehearsal room, before meeting the performers.  The contribution of the performer to the creative process has increasingly narrowed.   It is easy in such a climate for artists to feel like pawns, instead of valued contributors.  How can innovation thrive without investigation? 

Learning fosters art:

It's not every day that a professional performer has the opportunity to enter a learning environment mid-career. Performers who practice together on an ongoing basis develop a shared language, shared methods of working together, manifesting in artistic expression unique to the  group.  Six artists seeking to challenge their status quo converged...resulting in Company 212.  

Company 212 has formed out of a collective desire to cross the artificial divide between disciplines, scavenge and poach from each other's artistic treasure troves.   Can narrative exist within the abstract? How may dance, movement and text illuminate each other? Embracing an inter-disciplinary approach, we strive to expose aspects of human experience.   

Who?

Taking our name from the Advanced Movement Class in which we first began this work (DRA 212) we are Company 212.