“My goal teaching and creating dance is to connect people to their bodies. Fostering positive social change, the studio is a headquarter to gather artists and audiences to achieve this mission.”
-Silvana Cardell, Artistic Director
About
Our Mission
About
Founded in 2019, Cardell Dance Studio was created as a home for Silvana Cardell’s artistic practice and for the programs growing around it: rehearsals, classes, workshops, creative research, performance development, and community gatherings.
The studio is part of Silvana Cardell’s long history of creating spaces for dance, training, performance, and artistic exchange—from Escuela de Danza del Abasto and Sala Ana Itelman in Buenos Aires, to Mount Vernon Dance Space in Philadelphia, and now Cardell Dance Studio in the Art Museum neighborhood.
Located in a renovated industrial building at 1713 Melon Street, Cardell Dance Studio serves as a welcoming artistic and cultural resource for local, regional, and international communities. The studio offers recreational and professional dance classes, workshops, rehearsal, and cultural programs taught by movement artists and dance innovators.
Cultivating creativity, confidence, and artistic skill, Cardell Dance Studio supports affordable dance education while providing a space for artistic experimentation, embodied learning, and community gathering.
Goals
- Foster a welcoming environment that embraces diversity in age, experience, cultural background, artistic perspective, and ways of moving.
- Expand access to dance education and creative expression for historically underserved and underrepresented communities.
- Engage audiences in our artistic practice
- To design dance programs for professional dancers to train, create, discuss, and produce dance performances.
About Silvana Cardell
Silvana Cardell (she/her/hers) is a bicultural choreographer, scholar and educator based in Philadelphia. She is the Artistic Director at Cardell Dance Theater and the Director of the Dance Program at Georgian Court University, New Jersey since 2009. Prior to working at GCU, she worked as faculty for the School of Dance at The University of the Arts.
Ms. Cardell holds a BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts and an MFA in Choreography from Temple University. She danced for the Adriana Coll Dance Company (1983-1986) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Cardell served as the Director of Armar Danza Teatro (1992-1996) in Buenos Aires. For the next several years she directed her own dance company S. Cardell Danza and EDA Escuela de Danza del Abasto, sponsored by Secretaria de Cultura de la Nacion. Cardell received the most prestigious choreography award in Latin America from Fundacion Antorchas. Cardell was a founding member of CoCoA-Datei, a nonprofit organization devoted to developing dance in Argentina. She and her husband, architect Pablo Meninato, created the Sala Ana Itelman, a performance space that showcased mainstream and avant-grade national and international artists, sponsored by Instituto Nacional del Teatro and Secretaria de Cultura de la Nacion. She later became a dancer, choreographer, and artistic co-director at Group Motion Dance Company (2005-2007) in Philadelphia. She founded Cardell Dance Theater in 2002 in Philadelphia.
Ms. Cardell has been invited to teach at major dance and theater festivals throughout Latin America, and her choreography has been awarded, sponsored, and commissioned internationally by several organizations, including Antorchas Foundation, Instituto Nacional de Teatro, Secretaria de Cultura de la Ciudad, Red Latinoamericana de Productores de Danza y Teatro, Teatro Gral San Martin, Presidente Alvear, and Teatro de las Provincias. In the United States, her work has been presented by Group Motion, the American Dance College Festival, University of the Arts, Swarthmore College, Harold Prince Theater at the Annenberg Center of the Performing Arts, Georgian Court University, Mt. Vernon Dance Space, Falls Bridge, New Festival’s Dance House, New Festival, and Christ Church Neighborhood House.
Learn more about Silvana at cardelldancetheater.com