New York Theatre Ballet was founded in 1978 by its artistic director, Diana Byer. It is the most widely seen chamber ballet company in the United States. “New York Theatre ballet confirms its status as an invaluable company,” says Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times.NYTB has earned national acclaim for its restoration and revival of small masterworks by great choreographers and for its innovative hour-long ballets based on children’s literature.

NYTB tours family and adult programs both nationally and abroad. Its audiences know the Company for its theatrical expressiveness, high production quality, and intimate accessibility to every audience member.

DraftWork is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Member Rosie Mendez.

Chris Schlichting is a Minnesota-based choreographer and performer creating work that begins with movement impulses and then accumulate carefully measured layers of cultural sources and influences. Believing in a nimble and flexible definition of dance, he strives to unearth compelling examples that strike an uncertain balance between formal investigations and earnest expression; between large-scale spectacle and delicate intimacy; between dance conventions of presentational styles and elaborate ritual to simple moments of exposed vulnerability.

Schlichting was named Best Choreographer in 2013 by Minneapolis-St. Paul City Pages for his work Matching Drapes, which also received two Sage Awards, including one for “Best Performance” and one for “Best Design”. He is the first recipient of the American Dance Institute’s (Rockville, MD) Commissioned Artist award, a new project that provides commissioning funds, fiscal sponsorship, developmental and production support for a new work from one U.S. based choreographer every year.

Schlichting has been presented by venues throughout Minnesota, including the Southern Theater, the Bryant Lake Bowl, the Red Eye Theater, the Walker Art Center and many more; in New York at Danspace Project and as a frequent contributor to CATCH! performance series; at ODC in San Francisco, CA; and at Velocity in Seattle, WA. He frequently collaborates with Morgan Thorson, including performances in “Faker” and “Heaven”, both of which enjoyed illustrious tours throughout the U.S. and for “Faker” also in Daejeon, South Korea.

Schlichting’s work has been commissioned by Danspace Project (by Tere O’Connor for Food for Thought, by Judy Hussie-Taylor for the Body Madness Platform), James Sewell Ballet (Ballet Works Project), the Walker Art Center (The Momentum Series, the 25th Sculpture Garden Celebration, and for a new work in the 2014/15 performance season), The Southern Theater, Young Dance, and Zenon Dance Company. He was selected to participate in the Regional Dance Development Initiative (RDDI) and the Minnesota Contemporary Dance Platform (MCDP) and for the upcoming Dance USA Conference in June of 2014.

Mina Nishimura was born and raised in Tokyo. She was introduced to butoh and improvisational dance through Kota Yamazaki’s teaching while studying at Merce Cunningham Studio where she has completed the international program in 2005. Nishimura has performed nationally and internationally with Kota Yamazaki, Neil Greenburg, David Gordon, DD Dorvillier, Yoshiko Chuma, RoseAnne Spradlin, Daria Fain, Trajal Harrel, Mårten Spångberg, Cori Olinghouse, Moriah Evans, Chantal Yzermans among others, and also has appeared in theater and film productions, such as Harry Partch’s Delusion of Fury (directed by John Jesurun) and Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (directed by Stephen Earnhart), as a body-based actress. After nearly one year residency in Senegal to assist a cultural exchange project, Nishimura started making her own work. Her works have been presented by Mount Tremper Arts Summer Festival, DTW (currently NYLA), The Kitchen/Dance and Process, Danspace Project/Out of Space, Movement Research, Harlem Stage, Roulette, Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo), Bennington College and other NYC venues. Nishimura was the danceWeb scholar at Impuls Tanz (Vienna) in 2009, and also invited to DunaPart in Budapest through DTW’s Suitcase Fund in the same year. In 2013, Nishimura curated for Movement Research Spring Festival “Alternate/Shelter” along with three other fellow artists. She was in the AIR program at Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2010-2011, at Chez Bushwick in 2013 and at Movement Research in 2013-2015. Nishimura has taught at Bennington College (Vermont) and Ferris University (Japan) as a guest faculty as well as at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Movement Research/Sunday Process Lab and Moving Lab at Earthdance. Nishimura received BAX’s Summer Space grant this year to develop her new work Celery of Everything.