There's a new dance company in town: The Dancing People Company. Well, they're not exactly brand new, but they're becoming one of Southern Oregon's premiere professional modern dance troupes. Their next performance will run June 3-4.

The Dancing People Company started in 1994, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when founder Robin Stiehm decided to scale back her performing career in order to devote more time to choreography.

"We quickly gained a reputation as an innovative and cohesive modern dance company," Stiehm recalled. Stiehm's dances were about people and their innate desire to communicate, connect, and discover a common voice. "Before long, we were performing for appreciative audiences all over Minnesota and the Midwest," Stiehm said. "Dancing People Company was invited to perform at several international festivals including those in Poland, Russia and Japan. In fact, we believe we were the first American modern dance company to perform in Belarus!"

Stiehm moved to the Rogue Valley in 2002. In 2003 she relocated Dancing People Company to Ashland. The company performed as part of the 2003 "It's About Dance" evening at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater. That's where Peggy Paver first saw the company. She had just moved to the Rogue Valley that year.

"I wrote an e-mail to Robin the next day," Paver said. "I told her, 'We have similar styles. It's nice to have someone with that caliber of performance here. Let's get together.'"

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At their very first meeting, the two dancers brainstormed how to have a company that lives and works in the Rogue Valley.

"And that's what we're working toward," said Paver, who became co-artistic director of the company with Stiehm in 2005. "What our choreography has in common is following the impulse all the way to the end. There's a fluidity that emerges."

Dancing People Company is Eric Boone, Mary Ann Bradley, Jessica Cressley, Robert Haarman and Kristin Van Loon. The company performs in Ashland and the surrounding Rogue Valley communities and tours nationally, with a current focus in the Pacific Northwest.

"We're committed to the community," Paver said. "We have donated performances at the Craterian, Horizon Institute's 'An Evening in Celebration of the Human Spirit,' Ashland High School, Lithia Springs Girls School and the Lithia Artist's Guild."

Bradley and Cressley, who live in Minnesota, are committed to travelling back and forth to perform with the company in Ashland. Meanwhile, the company is recruiting dancers from the valley.

Dancing People Company is developing a school and training program that adheres to its philosophy that "dance is an accessible art form that illuminates the commonality of human experience — that dance is an important means of expressing our everyday lives." Dancing People Company is expanding its education and community involvement programs. The group provides dance and performance opportunities in their home town and conducts workshops in the towns where they tour which helps people connect and find a shared artistic voice.

Stiehm started dancing in 1969 and has been dancing professionally since 1975. She began choreographing in 1989, while still dancing at MN's New Dance Ensemble. She was the 2000 recipient of the Bush Foundation's Artist Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards in the Midwest region. In both 1999 and 2001 she received Minneapolis' City Pages "Best Choreographer" award.

Paver has been a dance educator, choreographer and performer since 1991. She received a master's degree in dance from the University of Arizona in 1995 and spent 14 years teaching at University High and Tucson Fine Arts Magnet Schools in Tucson, Ariz. She was a senior choreographer and community educator with ZUZI Dance Company in Tucson. She has studied and performed with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Washington, D.C.; David Dorfman Dance, and Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Co., N.Y. Her master's thesis grew into the Tucson Arts Connections program, which is currently recognized by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and was the recipient of the 1999 Arizona Governor's Arts Education award.

In its June concert, Dancing People Company will present three premieres and three classics from its repertoire. New dances include "Solo," "Ritual Reborn" and "Mrs. Hamlet." Old favorites will include "Give/Get/Take," "Everything, All the Time" and "Chance Makes Luck." The show is mainly for adults, but is appropriate for children. Most pieces are 10 to 15 minutes and the complete program runs just under two hours.