WADE MADSEN is from Albuquerque New Mexico where he graduated from the University of New Mexico. Wade has been in Seattle teaching, performing, and choreographing since 1977. He has toured nationally with the Bill Evans Dance Company, with Tandy Beal & Company and with Dayna Hanson and company. In the fall of 2017, Madsen performed with Peggy Piacenza in her premiere work, ‘The Event’. Since 1980 thru the present Wade has been collaborating with Nancy Cranbourne in dance works and the theatrical duo ‘Mandy and Bebe’. Wade also continues producing work with his own company, ’Wade Madsen & Dancers’, and is currently a professor of dance at Cornish College of the Arts, where he has been on faculty since 1984, and is a senior faculty member at Velocity Dance Center, in Seattle 

 

Madsen has received grants and fellowships for choreography from King County and Seattle Arts Commissions, Bossak Heilbron Foundation, and Allied Arts. Madsen has three times been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts in Choreography, along with a choreography fellowship from Artist Trust in 1998. Wade has over 190 works of choreography, ranging from shorter dance gems like “The Red Shoes", "Dress", "Flame" and "Unlucky” to several full evening suites including the acclaimed works "Vampire" "Salon" “Dons Party”,” In Search of Dulcinea", "The Waiting Line",   and “The Four Elements”.

 

Madsen's choreography has been commissioned by Spectrum Dance, Arc Dance Company, Dance Gallery, Forty Women over Forty, Co-Motion Dance, Rockhopper Dance Company, Third Avenue Dance Company, D-9 Dance Collective, Lehua dance Theatre, Interweave dance company, and Bill Evans Dance Company, His work has been seen at On the Boards, the Seattle Repertory Theater, Act Theater, and Intiman Theater, Seattle Opera along with Cornish College of the Arts, the University of Washington, Riverside Community College, Bellevue Community College, Newcomb College, Cabrillo College, Mt Holyoke College,  University of California/Fresno,  Cal Poly, and Boulder Colorado

 

Of “The Waiting Line” Mary Murfin Bayley in the Seattle Times wrote, “(the work) is a beautifully realized vision of what it means to be human and vulnerable...’The Waiting Line’ is the work of a choreographer in complete control of his art.”

And Gigi Berardi of Dance Magazine offered: “Madsen makes good use of the burgeoning dance talent in Seattle, and showed that his dancers can act ---with tremendous focus...he showed his talent for highlighting the vulnerability of the human character be it embarrassingly inane (Don’s Party) or tragically beautiful (Dulcinea)” 

 

 Madsen was also a contributing cast member of the Hanson film, ‘The Improvement Club’, and a cast member of the ‘Event ‘  production by Peggy Piacenza. Most recently Wade premiered three works in 2016 and 2017, ‘Garden’, ‘ Looking Back in Itself’ and ‘Cannot be Undone’ based in the story of Macbeth.  In the spring of 2017 Madsen premiered two other works, 'Alice …(Where is there always?)' and ‘People’ at On the Boards, and in the Fall of 2018 Madsen premiered ‘Being between’ for OTBs Solo Festival, 'Faeries', and 'The Journey'.