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GZDC had its beginnings in a dance
group
in Richmond, VA called Steve's House Dance Collective. Co-founded in
1992 by Rob Petres and Ray Schwartz, Steve's House was a loosely formed
group of dancers and choreographers who collaborated with each other
and took turns staging concerts. Steve's House became a well-known name
in the Richmond performing arts community, even though it was not
formally organized or incorporated. By 1999, through self-funding and
donations, the group was staging up to two major performances per year.
 After
successful production of a concert of his own choreography
entitled Transgressions, in the fall of 1999, co-founder Rob
Petres determined to create a formally organized company with two
choreographers who had also done work with Steve's House over several
years, Pam England and Victoria Fink. These three, in collaboration
with dancer and Executive Director Lea Marshall, incorporated Ground
Zero Dance Company in August of 2000.
Since that time, GZDC has regularly
presented new and repertory work by company choreographers and guest
artists, at venues throughout Richmond,
including the Grace Street Theater, Artspace Gallery, St. Catherine's
School, the Tredegar Iron Works Gun Foundry Building, and the Valentine
Museum. In addition, GZDC has twice been presented at the Philadelphia
Fringe Festival (2000, 2001), and at the Charlottesville Festival of
Contemporary Dance and Improvisation in Performance.
The company remains committed to
supporting its choreographers in the creation of new work, and in
collaborating with guest artists from Richmond and beyond in order to
bring new and diverse work before Richmond and central Virginia
audiences.
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 In September, Rob Petres's
Rope was named "Pick of the Day" by the Philadelphia City Paper
(see
article) at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
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In October, choreography by England, Petres, and
Fink comprised GZDC's premiere concert, The Beginning, in
Richmond at the Grace Street Theater and in Charlottesville at the New
Dance Space.
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  Victoria Fink's
Between Eros and Psyche performed at the
Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September, and later in the fall in
Richmond and Charlottesville as part of Polarity, a concert of
Fink's choreography presented by GZDC.
  In March, GZDC
performed Pam England's COURT at the Tredegar
Iron Works Gun Foundry Building in Richmond. Five dancers, two singers,
three musicians, and a Fool.
In May, Rob Petres premiered a new
short work entitled Other Things at the 3rd Annual
Charlottesville Festival of Contemporary Dance and Improvisation in
Performance. The piece was also accepted and performed in the Virginia
Commonwealth University Department of Dance Alumni Concert in October.
 After an October Repertory
Concert featuring work by choreographers Pam England, Victoria Fink,
Tommy Parlon, Rob Petres, and guest artist Julie Mayo, the company
finished out the year in December at the Grace Street Theater in
Richmond with Finger of the Sun: an intriguing and entertaining
evening of choreography and improvisation by Rob Petres and Ray Eliot
Schwartz, along with special guests Karl Anderson of Brooklyn, NY and
Gionatan Surrenti of Rome, Italy. The performance week was documented
in an online journal (see
article) by Lea Marshall.
May 16 & 17, GZDC presented new work by Pam England
and Tommy
Parlon, in
collaboration with violinist Laura Roelofs, pianist Charles Staples,
and cellist Teresa Bjornes at St. Catherine's School in Richmond. The
Richmond Times-Dispatch spoke favorably of the evening (see article).
In September, members of Ground Zero Dance Company
performed with Chris Burnside and Dancers in a concert of original
choreography by Chris Burnside at Virginia Commonwealth University’s
Grace Street Theater.
October 24 & 25: At the Williamsburg Art Nexus in
Brooklyn, NY,
Brooklyn-based SLAMFEST and Richmond-based Ground Zero Dance Company
presented 3-Sided Void, an evening of choreography and
improvisation by
Karl Anderson/Kate Weare, Rob Petres, and Ray Eliot Schwartz.
 January: Company co-founder Rob Petres was awarded an
Individual Artist Fellowship in Choreography by the Virginia Commission
for the Arts, to assist in the creation of his new work, Moment of
Flight.
February 13 & 14: At the Grace Street Theater in
Richmond, GZDC presented Lovers, Singers & Bugs, a concert
of
choreography by GZDC’s Tommy Parlon and Pam England, as well as by
guests Incidents Physical Theater, of New York.
Summer: GZDC partnered with Richmond-based The
Performance Initiative to help present ENGAGE, a bipartisan project
that seeks to remedy the current crisis of low voter participation
among young adults and disenfranchised voters through collaboration
between social action workers, artists, and community members.
January 7 & 8: GZDC presented Company Assembled,
a
benefit concert of choreography by colleagues from
near and far: James Frazier (VCU Dance, Richmond); Karl Anderson/Kate
Weare (Brooklyn, NY); Paule Turner (Philadelphia, PA); Ray Eliot
Schwartz (Austin, TX); Heather Maloney (VA); Katharine Birdsall, of the
Zen Monkey Project (Charlottesville, VA); Allison Waddell (Chapel Hill,
NC) at the Grace Street Theater in Richmond. Proceeds benefited GZDC’s
ongoing fundraising efforts for Moment of Flight; twenty
percent of the
total proceeds were donated to the Hand Workshop Art Center, now
the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.
April 1-9: Rob Petres's Moment of Flight
premiered at Live Arts
Theater in Charlottesville, VA, as a co-production of Live Arts and
GZDC. The world premiere work was paired with Petres’s popular Rope
(1999) for an evening of extraordinary physical theatre.
 Summer: GZDC offers ongoing open Modern class for
company members and dancers in the community. In July, benefactor Bob
Petres purchases an old gymnasium building in Manchester, just across
the river from downtown Richmond. He forms an LLC, Dogtown Dance
Theatre, which will partner with GZDC to transform the gym into an
accessible, affordable dance space for rehearsals, classes, and
performances by Richmond artists and visiting choreographers and
companies. A long road lies ahead, but what a space!
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