- Stefanie Batten Bland -

September 2023 Dance Magazine cover artist, Stefanie Batten Bland is a global maker. The child of a jazz composer/producer, father, and writer mother, she was raised in SoHo when it was led by artists. Batten Bland interrogates contemporary and historical cultural symbolism—their categories of cultural identifiers and how these identities influence human relationships. Her work is at the intersection of dance-theatre, film, and immersive experience. Batten Bland's choreography is personal, and its social and philosophical message, visceral. 

Batten Bland danced for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Lar Lubovitch, Tanztheater Wüppertal Pina Bausch, PunchDrunk's Sleep No More, Hungarian choreographer Pal Frenák, Jérome Savary at the Paris Opéra Comique and creator Georges Mombôye of the Côte d’Ivoire. Batten Bland established Company SBB in France in 2008 and moved it to New York in 2012. 

Known for her unique visual and movement aesthetic in the immersive field, Batten Bland is the Artistic Director of the inaugural 2024 immersive theatre summer intensive, CONCRETE. She served as movement director for Eve's Song at The Public Theater and is casting and movement director for Emursive Productions, as well as their performance and identity consultant for Sleep No More. Company SBB has been presented at BAM Next Wave Festival, Lincoln Center, Bates Dance Festival, Celebrity Series (Boston), Modlin Center for the Arts (Richmond, VA), ADF, The Yard at Martha's Vineyard, Duke Performances, PEAK Performances, La MaMa Experimental Theater and internationally at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Danse à Lille in France, and Tanztendenzen in Germany amongst others.

Batten Bland has created for fashion and lifestyle partners Louis Vuitton, Van Cleef & Arpels, Hermès, and Guerlain. She has produced 14 dance cinema films shown in international festivals in South Africa, Buenos Aires, Greece, and Germany. Her 2021 film Kolonial, received thirteen US and international film awards and was nominated for three Bessie Awards. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Dance Magazine, Marie Claire, and Dance Europe.

She receives grants and awards from National Dance Project Production NDP, Creative Capital, NYSCA, Guggenheim Works In Process, Harkness Foundation, a Jerome RobbinsAward, a Bessie Schönberg Fellowship at The Yard, and a Toulmin Creator Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Batten Bland received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College and is currently an Assistant Professor at Montclair State University's Department of Theatre and Dance.