Rulan
Tangen has 20 years of experience as a dedicated dance artist, performing
professionally with ballet, modem and powwow dance companies in New
York, Canada, California and Europe. She began serious ballet training
in Russian style technique with Mme Elena Piernik in San Francisco,
which led to a scholarship at the prestigious Marin Ballet School. With
its associated company, she began performing the classical repertory
as well as new roles with choreographers including Norbert Vesak and
Val Caniparoli. After graduating early from high school at age 14, she
chose to move to New York City where she studied on scholarship with
David Howard and performed with several ballet companies in the Northeast.
After touring Europe and becoming exposed to Tanztheater aesthetics,
she focused on working with emerging choreographers to develop new work.
By adding graham and other modern dance movement forms to her vocabulary,
she became a contemporary dancer, performing with several opera companies,
Peridance Ensemble and Michael Mao Dance in New York and European tours,
as well as being honored as a finalist in the Hennessy Cognac Performing
Arts Awards in 1989. As a principal dancer and rehearsal director for
Michael Mao dance she was involved in projects including developing
movement for non-sighted adults, and for inner city high school students
who spoke English as a second language.
Summers were spent immersed in powwow culture across the country. In
Lower Brule South Dakota, she received her naming ceremony and northern
plains traditional regalia, and went on to receive top awards in contests
before focusing on creating a traditional dance company of Native children,
called Maka Chante. As co-founder, co-director, choreographer, manager
and dancer, she oversaw touring of several states including inter-tribal
cultural exchange opportunities for the youth dancers. Her choreography/staging
was recognized with top honors for team dancing at the Six Nations powwow
1989, and the group subsequently was Invited to perform for the United
Nations School, Dallas Intertribal Arts Festival, Nelson Mandela Welcoming
concert, L'Ecole de Beaux Arts in Pads, L'Universte de Montpellier France,
and Sarah Lawrence College, among others.
A car accident led her to leave NYC to recuperate in California, where
the process of recovery re- acquainted her with therapeutic techniques
such as yoga and pilates. She received training as a laban- based creative
movement teacher, and in the Harkness kinaesthetic dance methodology
that had been the base of her early training at Marin Ballet. She became
a teacher, then rehearsal director and principal dancer for the Redwood
Empire Ballet, which was then experimenting with bringing in European
choreographer for a Tanztheater approach. But, having recovered from
injury, she chose to clearly dedicate her efforts in the arena of Native
contemporary dance, the fusion of the different worlds she has walked
in. She came to Canada for the first time in 1997 to dance with Karen
Jamieson in Vancouver, for a ollaborative, site-opecific outdoor processional
work entitled "the River", in association with community groups
including First nations singers and dancers. While in Canada, she danced
in a Much Music command performance for Prince Charles, and was given
the opportunity to participate in an Aboriginal Dance Project in Toronto,
for development of material for the nationally televised Aboriginal
Achievement Awards. She also was able to share her teaching skills as
guest teacher at Maindance and Simon Frasier University. She returned
to the States to be featured in a lead role in the innovative Native
musical "TRIBE' at the Ordway Theater, under the Inspired direction
of Raoul Trujillo and choreography of Alejandro Ronceria. Soon after,
she moved to New Mexico to develop a more permanent base for her dance
art.
She has taught dance in public schools and community outreach programs
to pueblos and reservations under the auspices of National Dance Institute,
and has developed dance workshops for Institute of American Indian arts
and Nizhoni Bridges of Utah. She has performed locally with Daystar
Native Dance Theater, One Soul, Moving People, Native Roots and Rhythms,
and Wise Fool New Mexico. As well, she toured extensively with Robert
Mirabal's Rare Tribal Mob , as featured on PBS, and continues extensive
work in Canada with Aboriginal dance initiatives including Banff Centre's
Aboriginal Dance Program, the innovative opera BONES, QUEST exploring
Blackfoot creation stories, KAHA:WI a Mohawk based epic, and Earth In
Motion's International Choreographers workshop.
She believes in dance as healing and transformative, and is involved
with anti-oppression workshops through Wise Fool New Mexico, and works
closely with Journeys Through Knowledge, an initiative for health and
wellness of body, mind and spirit for Native youth. Her choreography
has been recognized as "an unusually successful fusion of modem
dance and Native American movement", as well as "combustible",
"a tangible quality of breath", "beautifully realized
works".
In 2003 Rulan was appointed Director of the Indigenous Dance Program/Earth
Dance Theater at the Native American Cultural Center in San Francisco,
CA and was featured alongside lifelong dance collaborators at the Red
Rhythms Symposium on Native contemporary dance at UC Riverside.
In 2004, she created Dancing Earth as a culmination of her deeply personal
yet universal vision, creating innovative choreography with longtime
collaborators and emerging artists. As a survivor of cancer, she profoundly
believes in this luminous expression of global indigenous arts and cultures
as a profound source of universal healing.
Click
here for Rulan's Curriculum Vitae