Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet

Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet

Lemon Sponge Cake respectfully requests funding to create of groundbreaking choreography under visionary artistic direction, via production of world premiere performances in collaboration world-class dancers, whilst offering the finest dance education and outreach activities to the entire community.

Internationally recognized choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl, granted US Alien of Extraordinary Ability, and Jenifer Sher founded Lemon Sponge Cake in 1999 becoming non-profit in 2003. We receive critical-acclaim nationally and internationally for our signature contemporary movement language, and powerful work being a vehicle able to depict relevant themes via emotional, thought provoking, distinctly progressive.

World-class collaborators gather in Boulder to create dynamic new works, local talent to dancers of American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet or Finnish National Ballet. Projects are premiered at Chautauqua, Dairy Art Center and Newman Center prior to touring. We shine light on Boulder via commissions: Finnish National Ballet, Vienna State Ballet, Lines Ballet and American College Dance Festival + more. Sher-Machherndl is four time winner of the prestigious New York Ballet Builders choreography award.

Lemon Sponge Cake has been a ten year prominent RO at Dairy Arts Center founding educational programs, intensives, workshops + out-reach activities. We develop + strengthen program excellence via performance, education, collaboration and out-reach impacting tens-of-thousands of lives. 

Over the last 24 years Lemon Sponge Cake has evolved into a platform to address and reflect to its audiences, relevant global and human rights issues affecting the world we live in. For example

About the Artistic Director     

Internationally recognized choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl was born in Vienna, Austria. He’s been granted the US visa ‘Alien of Extraordinary Ability’.  He’s been principal dancer with Dutch National Ballet, Bavarian State Ballet and Nederlands Dance Theater, co-director of Salzburg Ballet and assistant artistic director at Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. He’s created choreography for Vienna State Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Bavarian State Ballet, Scapino Ballet, Salzburg Ballet, Lines Ballet BFA, Denver Arts & Venues, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Santa Fe Dance Festival.  He’s taught at Vienna State Ballet Academy, Finnish National Ballet School, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music, Dance, Kuopio Dance Festival, Lines Ballet, Dominican University California, Colorado Ballet, University of Colorado, Colorado State University, University of Wyoming and more.  He’s been named ‘Dance Person of the Year’ by the Denver Post, a four-time winner of New York Ballet Builders Award, and featured on the MTV Emmy Award winning series MADE. Robert is a founder of the acclaimed Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet where he’s choreographed many new works and established a variety of educational programs.

Testimonials

"Austrian-born dancer and choreographer, Robert Sher-Machherndl, is everything an artist should be: a fiercely creative, self-confident individual who exploits familiar forms for his own devices. A visionary who forces us to look at the human body in strangely appealing new ways, and a dancer who makes the rigorous and punishing seem at once effortless and alien"
Dance Person of the Year - Denver Post

"Sher-Machherndl's movement style, reminiscent of William Forsythe, seems to deliberately accentuate his length and angularity, which becomes striking in combination with his clear center and precise technique"
Dance Enthusiast

"Another stunner, RUSH, I had figured was the work of a Forsythe disciple, like maybe Helen Pickett, who loves to ricochet between deconstructed épaulement and the ballet vocabulary itself. Wrong again. It was made by Robert Sher-Machherndl for the Dominican University LINES Ballet BFA program. How did I feel? Like I discovered a new program and a new choreographer."
Wendy Perron

" Mr. Sher-Machherndl, a former principal dancer with the Dutch National Ballet and Bavarian State Ballet, is a choreographer to watch for."
The New York Times

"Decidedly contemporary style that is gaining increased national attention, and deservedly so. He is an obvious talent ."
Denver Post

"Funny, dark and provocative, Trust was a highlight of the program."
The New York Times