Amelia es conocida como la pionera fundadora y directora artística de la compañía de danza BANDALOOP, cuya visión ayudó a definir la danza vertical como una nueva técnica estética en el campo de la danza. Coreógrafa, bailarina/atleta, escritora, cineasta, guía de aprendizaje experiencial, oradora pública y madre, su trabajo activa espacios públicos y naturales a través de actuaciones y películas, inspirando asombro y desorientación positiva en audiencias y estudiantes de todo el mundo. Basado en un uso no tradicional de la gravedad, su trabajo dinámico e imagista investiga las relaciones humanas, los entornos naturales y construidos, y celebra la comunidad a través de actuaciones que suelen fusionar la tecnología de la escalada en roca y un espíritu de aventura para poner de cabeza al escenario dancístico.
Ha recibido más de 35 subvenciones y comisiones, entre las que se encuentran de modo reciente aquellas de las fundaciones Mellon, Gerbode y Hewlett, y además ha recibido el apoyo del National Endowment for the Arts a lo largo de más de dos décadas, de manera ininterrumpida. Su trabajo ha sido compartido con varios millones de personas alrededor del mundo a través de presentaciones en vivo, transmisiones televisivas y películas. Fue miembro durante tres años del Consejo de Dance USA y presidenta del Consejo de Directores Generales de Compañías de Danza de Tamaño Medio. Amelia cuenta con una licenciatura y una maestría en religión comparada de Swarthmore College (Pensilvania) y del Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (California).
Amelia is a choreographer, dancer/athlete, teacher and community leader. Her work is informed by natural and built spaces, human relationships, and by non-traditional relationships with gravity. She founded BANDALOOP in 1991, bringing together dance, climbing and varied off-the-ground movement into site-reactive performances on cliffs, urban structures and in theaters. She is an active and dynamic performer, teaches youth in Oakland through Destiny Arts Center and recently served on the board of Dance/USA. Amelia is the creator of the short film “SHIFT” which was shown at 16 festivals internationally, garnering two awards. Rudolph premiered her multi-media urban performance work in San Francisco’s Tenderloin/Mid-Market district, “#SFPublic Canvas” in 2016, staged “#PublicCanvas” in Providence, RI, and is readying a version to premiere in Atlanta, GA in 2018 and Oakland, CA. She is currently editing the new mountain film “Coyote Waltz,” filmed in Yosemite.
Rudolph holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in comparative religion from Swarthmore College and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Her intellectual and artistic sensibilities inform her work inspiring practical, spiritual, theoretical and political creativity. Her choreography has explored dance in theaters and on buildings and cliffs all over the US and in 21 countries. Rudolph is continually challenged and inspired by her experiences in nature, with her dancers and with communities that unearth and clarify her values, identity and art.
Since 2000 she has been named an Irvine Fellow and awarded funding and commissions from the Gerbode Foundation, Dance/USA’s Engaging Dance Audiences, the California Arts Commission, the National Dance Project, Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Creative Work Fund, San Francisco Foundation, the City of Oakland, The Center for Cultural Innovation, Arts Partners in Creative Development in Canada as part of the Cultural Olympiad, the Kenneth Rainin, Wattis and Irvine Foundations as well as the San Francisco Arts Commission. Bandaloop is a multi-year grant recipient for organizational support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Rudolph has been designated by the Trisha Brown Company to re-mount and perform Brown’s seminal work “Man Walking Down the Side of a Building” exclusively throughout the world. A collaboration with GoPro, “Waltz on the Walls of City Hall,” garnered 2.5 million views on YouTube.
Developing first as a dancer and gymnast, her early training was with the Lou Conte and Ellis Duboulet studios in Chicago. She spent seven years at the school of the Hubbard Street Dance Company where she became a company apprentice at 17. She has performed with Mark Morris, Dance Brigade, Clay Taliaferro and Sarah Elgart among others. She competed as a competitive gymnast and captain of the cross-country team in college. She began climbing in 1989 in California’s Sierra Nevada range and her experiences have ranged from back-country peaks and big walls to sport climbing and three seasons as a national climbing competitor. In 2005 she began to surf which is now a regular athletic medium through which she engages nature’s beauty, movement and power. Amelia recently completed a three month sabbatical living, climbing and exploring Italy with her family.