Arianne MacBean

"Dancer-Choreographer Arianne MacBean (is) the Diane Keaton of dance - quirky, endearing and eminently watch-able."
- Los Angeles Times, May 2005

Arianne MacBean is a choreographer, writer and educator. As Artistic Director of The Big Show Co., her work has been performed at such venues as the DIA Center for the Arts and WOW in New York and at the Skirball Cultural Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, UCLA's Armand Hammer Museum, Electric Lodge, and Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, among others. She toured Germany in July 2001 with performances and workshops in Freiburg, Endingen, Amoltern and Munich.

As a performer, MacBean has worked with such artists as Meredith Monk, Paul Taylor, Tere O'Connor, Liz Lerman and Victoria Marks. She is the Producer of the popular Dance Moving Forward Festival, a performance event that brings innovative and alternative choreography to the city of Los Angeles. She has worked with at-risk teens in Hollywood while developing curriculum that explores the pliable lines between movement and text. She has been a featured presenter at the National Dance Education Organization's Conferences in 2000, 2001 and 2003 for her work in developing “Scripting the Body” curriculum. As a published author of both fiction and criticism, she has read her literary work at Skylight Books in Silverlake and at Beyond Baroque in Venice.

MacBean received the 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005 Cultural Arts Grants from the City of Los Angeles to produce the Dance Moving Forward Festival and has been awarded a grant from the California Council for the Humanities, the DURFEE Residency Award and the Clifton Webb Award. She has been an artist-in-residence with the city of Los Angeles for two years and taught at Scripps College and Los Angeles Valley Community College. She has been an active member of the LA dance community through her leadership of the Dance Resource Center in 2004 as well as through her indefatigable volunteerism.

MacBean holds a B.A. in Dance from UCLA, and is a graduate from California Institute of the Arts with a double Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Dance and Critical Writing. She is currently the Chair of the Dance Department at Oakwood School in North Hollywood.