Ambient Cowboy is lonely and joyous, dark and funny, violent and loving – a continuation of Ivy Baldwin’s interest in deconstructing and combining disparate elements and influences to create mysterious, surreal worlds full of emotional and physical extremes. Seeded by a visit to Philip Johnson’s Glass House, with its brilliantly audacious imposition of serene, spare modernity on the abundant, looming wilderness, Ambient Cowboy explores this fertile landscape of contrasting elements through dance, drama, sound and setting.

Choreography Ivy Baldwin
Performed by Ivy Baldwin, Lawrence Cassella, Molly Poerstel and Eleanor Smith
Music Composition Justin Jones
Lighting Design Chloe Z. Brown
Costume Design the Company
Set Design Anna Schuleit

Premiere New York Live Arts, 2012

“The sophisticated compositional divergences call attention to the less-controllable personal ones.”
– The New York Times

“If you want to catch a glimpse of where dance and performance are headed, look no further than Ivy Baldwin’s Ambient Cowboy.”
– Gwarlingo

There are a few lovely moments in Cowboy when Baldwin, with her keen eye, captures something ordinary in a way that’s so right it becomes extraordinary.
– The Huffington Post

Ambient Cowboy was commissioned by New York Live Arts DTW Commissioning Fund, and is made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation. It was developed, in part, at a creative residency at the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center through a partnership with New York Live Arts, with support from the New York State DanceForce with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts Dance Program. Ambient Cowboy was made possible, in part, by grants from the Jerome Foundation and the William and Karen Tell Foundation, a creative residency at Dragons Egg in CT., and by Ivy Baldwin Dance Commissioning Circle members Kathleen Williams and Mark Abel, Michael Grossman, Olivier Rustat, Robert and Judith Baldwin, and Smooch Cafe in Brooklyn.