Company Profile
BANDALOOP
Company Overview
INNOVATOR OF VERTICAL DANCE: www.bandaloop.org
BANDALOOP honors nature, community, and the human spirit through perspective-bending dance.
An innovator in vertical performance, BANDALOOP seamlessly weaves dynamic physicality, intricate choreography and climbing technology to turn the dance floor on its side. Founded by Amelia Rudolph and under the artistic direction of Melecio Estrella, BANDALOOP re-imagines dance, activates public spaces, and inspires wonder and imagination in audiences around the world. The company trains dancers and youth at home and on tour, and has performed for millions of people in over 22 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, and Asia, and on screens in films and digital media.
BANDALOOP is based in Oakland, CA, where the company incubates and produces work for its local audiences and for touring performances presented around the globe. Education and outreach are an intrinsic part of the company’s mission. In addition to its ongoing work with youth, BANDALOOP offers regular classes, camps, and intensives at its home studio and in the mountains, and team building programs for executives and leaders of organizations. To learn more about BANDALOOP's education initiatives, click here.
BANDALOOP CORE VALUES
• Embracing the Adventure of the Unknown
• Igniting Imagination
• Creating Elemental Connection
• Revolutionary Leadership
• Commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accountability (IDEA)
• Determined Endurance
• A Culture of Safety
EQUITY STATEMENT
Nourished by its roots in the mountains and environmental activism, BANDALOOP creates public art that is site-responsive to place and community, reimagining what is possible through perspective-bending dance. BANDALOOP is a learning organization that acknowledges its own fallibility. As such, we approach the work of anti-oppression and building equity with curiosity and humility. BANDALOOP works to be a more equitable organization with the understanding that harmful historical bias and oppression pervades the performing arts, a reflection of the larger system of false hierarchies of human value. We are committed to unearthing the inequities in our company culture, and changing the way we work together to cultivate a welcoming and supportive environment for all. We are doing this by funding our ongoing IDEA work (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accountability/Access); shifting the power dynamics within our company to be more equitable; implementing inclusive, diverse, and supportive hiring practices; and engaging creative processes and teaching pedagogies that recognize histories of oppression and seek pathways to just and healthy relationships.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
BANDALOOP is based in unceded and federally unrecognized Lisjan (Ohlone) territory, colonially known as Oakland, California. We recognize that the majority of us are newcomers, and have benefited / are benefiting from the colonization, expropriation, and genocide of native people / native land. We speak of the Ohlone people in the present tense, they are here, they are vital and still stewarding the land.
Please join BANDALOOP in paying your annual Shuumi Land Tax to The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust at https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/pay-the-shuumi-land-tax/.
Company History
A HISTORY OF FLIGHT
BANDALOOP was founded in 1991 by Amelia Rudolph in an effort to create a dance company that called on her experience with and passion for movement, climbing, artistic expression and connections to the environment. The idea grew out of her graduate studies where she spent her time exploring comparative religion at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley and her background as a dancer and choreographer.
During her time at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Amelia explored the concept of dance as spiritual ritual, an idea that was the at the center of her thesis project. During that time, Amelia also became an avid climber and couldn't help but notice that the sport was another form of dance - a "duet" between the rock and the climber.
The combination of studies unveiled Amelia's desire to create experiences that celebrate the majesty and vulnerability of natural spaces, showing their beauty, strength and possibility. Further, Amelia knew she wanted to create a different kind of company, one that is based in kindness and healthy play.
In 1991, BANDALOOP had its first live-performance at a climbing gym named City Rock in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, Amelia, along with dedicated dancers and staff members, has created a company that constantly pushes the limits of how people view their relationships with their environment and each other, and how they understand and experience dance and movement.
Today, the company is based in Oakland, CA, where the company creates work for its bi-annual home season and live performances presented globally each year. Highlights of the past ten years include:
tours of China, Mexico and of India, sponsored by the US State Dept., including performances on the historic Golconda Fort in Hyderabad and on the Grand Cathedral in Puebla Mexico
the large-scale multi-media “#SFPublicCanvas,” which premiered in the Tenderloin in June, 2016
the re-mount of the mountain work “Crossing” released as a short film titled “SHIFT,”
the premiere of the indoor work commissioned by Fort Mason Center titled “Harboring” in 2013 to critical acclaim and sold out houses and its subsequent national and international tour; a free outdoor two week festival in 2011, attracting upwards of 8000 people to three Bay Area sites;
BANDALOOP has performed on architectural landmarks and skyscrapers around the world including in São Paulo, Mumbai, Seoul, Soweto, Verona, Lisbon, Muscat, Atlanta, Houston, New York and other urban centers. The Trisha Brown Company has designated BANDALOOP exclusively as the “artist of record” to re-mount and tour Brown’s seminal work “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building.” The recent BANDALOOP video “Waltz on the Walls of City Hall” has received millions of views on YouTube.
The organization has deep roots in activism, championing support and sustainability of two crucial pillars of BANDALOOP’s work: nature and people. Uplifting and amplifying the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices at home has been a sustained evolution organizationally; when the pandemic began in 2020, this effort emerged publicly with the short film #ResistanceIsBeautiful — which is set to become a live, touring work post-Covid.
Education and outreach are also an intrinsic part of the organization’s mission. In addition to its ongoing work with Oakland youth at Destiny Arts, Bandaloop offers regular classes, camps, and intensives at its home studio in Oakland and in the mountains across the United States.
Benefits
$200/month medical reimbursement for all FTE
PTO and Paid Sick Leave
Ironworks Climbing Gym membership after 6 months of regular/ongoing employment