In celebration of Peabody’s 150th birthday, and the 92nd of Peabody Dance, the oldest dance school in the country, internationally acclaimed director/choreographer Martha Clarke returned to her hometown of Baltimore as distinguished guest artist and Peabody Dance alumnus.  Peabody opened its doors to leading institutions and local freelance artists to participate in new collaborations mentored by Ms Clarke, which were presented at Peabody on April 14,15, 2007.  Artistic producer of the event is Carol Bartlett who also directs the Peabody Dance program. Composers, singers, choregraphers, dancers, actors and visual artists were invited to meet Ms Clarke in May 2006. As a result of that exchange, choreographers and composers were matched by Ms. Bartlett, and four exciting projects were launched over the summer.  The projects involve artists, faculty and students from Peabody Dance and Conservatory, and the following institutions:  Towson Graduate Theater Arts Program, Goucher College, Baltimore School for the Arts, Washington School of Ballet, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, and local freelance artists.

MacArthur Award winner Martha Clarke has maintained a career which spans dance, theater and opera.  Trained at Juilliard under Antony Tudor and Anna Sokolow, she was a founding member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Crowsnest and has choreographed for the Nederlans Dans Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among others. As a director Ms. Clarke’s many original productions include The Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, Miracolo d’amore, Endangered Species, An Uncertain Hour, The Hunger Artist, and Vers la flamme. She directed the premiere of Christopher Hampton’s Alice’s Adventures Underground at the Royal National Theatre in London. In opera Ms. Clarke has directed The Magic Flute for the Glimmerglass Opera and the Canadian Opera Company, Cosi fan tutte for Glimmerglass, Tan Dun’s Marco Polo for the Munich Biennale, the Hong-Kong Festival, and the New York City Opera, and Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice for the English National Opera and the New York City Opera. She directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the American Repertory Theater and a music/theater work,Belle Epoque, based on the life of Toulouse Lautrec at Lincoln Center Theater. She has collaborated with Richard Greenberg, Charles L. Mee, and Sebastian Barry, among many others.  In addition to the MacArthur Award, Ms. Clarke has received two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation as well as fifteen grants from the NEA. She has received the Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards, and the L.A. Critics Award. She has been the subject of a film for PBS, "Martha Clarke, Light and Dark," and her "Garden of Earthly Delights" has been filmed by the BBC.  NEA has just given a grant for the remounting of her "Garden of Earthly Delights" under a program dedicated to the remounting of American masterworks.   Her new "Kaos," based on the works of Luigi Pirandello, has just been given the first Tony Randall Foundation Award; it opens November 3 at the New York Theater Workshop.