“Striking”

JACK ANDERSON, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“... Ms. Wolfgruber, a former Lar Lubovitch dancer, stood, knees pressed together and feet splayed, uncurling her torso in wonderfully delicate undulations to a Schubert piano sonata, performed live by Colin Huggins – not a bad way to enter this world.”

CLAUDIA LA ROCCO, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Luminous.”

BURT SUPREE, THE VILLAGE VOICE

"When Wallie Wolfgruber began choreographing a new work for SUNY Brockport’s upcoming modern dance showcase, she thought first about creating an appealing duet.
     But then she saw those awful images. The time was last spring, and CBS news had just broadcast the first photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
    “ After I saw those pictures, I couldn’t go back into the studio and make a pretty dance,”  says Wolfgruber, assistant professor of dance at the State University of New York College at Brockport. “ I had to create something that responded to that atrocity.”
    So Wolfgruber created American Blessings, a dance that will receive its world premiere Thursday night at Hartwell Dance Theater...Arranged for nine dancers, American Blessings is a dark work, but one that offers a few surprises. For instance, it’s danced to Johann Sebastian Bach’s luminous Goldberg Variations instead of something gloomy, like Barber’s ubiquitous Adagio for Strings."

JOHN PITCHER, DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE