Davids Taylor’s Zikr Dance Ensemble is proud to announce that it is one of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2022/2023 recipients of a Challenge America grant. The $10,000 grant is to support the company’s critically acclaimed Rural Colorado Community Tour Program, which over the past 14 years, has brought world class contemporary dance to dozens of smaller, more rural communities throughout the state of Colorado and northern New Mexico. Zikr Dance Ensemble was also awarded its first grant from the Western States Arts Foundation, a $2500 award, for the same purpose. Over the next year, Zikr Dance Ensemble will be bringing major performances, outreach programs and master classes to Salida, Ouray, Rifle, Grand Junction, Carbondale, Telluride, Steamboat Springs, Pagosa Springs, Pueblo and Taos, New Mexico. ​In addition, Zikr Dance Ensemble is excited to announce that for its 2023 Spring Season, “Mysteries, Rites & Revelations”, the company will present its premiere of Mobile, the iconic miniature masterpiece by the late Tomm Ruud, former dancer and choreographer with Ballet West and San Francisco Ballet. ​ Ruud choreographed the piece in 1968 to Adam Khachaturian’s Adagio from the Gayne Suite. Mobile takes its title from the initial letters of the concept which inspired it: Moving Objects Behaving in Linear Equipoise. A work for three dancers who move in slow parallelograms, literally mobiles that evolve into other mobiles. “Fascinating, striking, exquisitely conceived,” (San Francisco Chronicle), “The sheer engineering feat of it is reason to see it time and time again.” (Blake A. Samson, Fine Arts News Service). The ballet has been staged for over 20 major companies in the USA over the past 28 years by Mr, Ruud’s son, Christopher Ruud, who currently serves as the Director of Kansas City Ballet’s Second Company.