Mayra Morales began training as a ballet dancer as a child. In 1999, thanks to a scholarship for excellence, she began her training in contemporary dance while studying for a BA in Dance at the University of the Americas, Mexico.(UDLA-P) In 2002, she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a thesis that - using body, dance and video - focused on the identity of quotidian life experiences. In 2001, Mayra won an honorific mention as 'best performer' in an important contemporary dance contest in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

Mayra lived, studied and worked in London from 2003-2005. In 2003 she was awarded a scholarship from the National Fund for The Arts in Mexico for achieving a Master's degree in European Dance Theatre Practices at the Laban Centre in London, from which she graduated in December 2004. Since graduation, she has been creating pieces that questioned the nature of dance and the performer's identity as a dancer. During her studies, she created a solo piece as a self portrait based on the 'death of the dance/er' in which she integrated installation, performance, site-specific and dance theatre methodologies.

During the summer of 2005 she was selected to participate in the Dancer's Project in London where she trained in contemporary dance with Sean Feldman, and improvisation with Janet Smith and Chris Benstead at The Place. She began teaching at the UDLA-P, in 2005, offering classes in contemporary dance technique, performance making, dance history and a seminar based on an independent doctoral research topic: Towards Non-Disciplinarity: Through a New Phenomenontology; Investigating the Human Condition.

During the summer of 2006 she learned ROSAS' repertory at Brussels while auditioning for the 2nd Cycle at P.A.R.T.S. and she was invited to perform at the Arena Festival in Germany. She has choreographed a piece for UDLA-DANZA and is currently making a new piece for the company.

In August 2006 she became Coordinator of the Dance Department at UDLA-P. Her mission is to be part of the Mexican dance revolution. Recently, she organized an internal choreography prize and a space for students' performances. Her primary interest is creating and investigating independent projects as a polemical Mexican choreographer of our times, in order to transform people's minds and to enlarge their human consciousness and social development.

Ray Eliot Schwartz is a movement artist and activist who has spent the last 20 years committed to developing an experiential understanding of the body. As a co-founder of four contemporary dance projects in the southern United States: Sheep Army, The Zen Monkey Project, Steve's House Dance Collective, and THEM, he has choreographed, performed, presented other artists, and developed educational curricula for diverse populations of students. In addition, he has taught at The Mimar Sinan Universitesi in Istanbul, Turkey, and colleges and universities throughout the U.S.

Schwartz has served on the faculty of the American Dance Festival, the Bates Dance Festival, MELT, the Movement Research educational intensive located in NYC, SFADI, and has taught, performed and conducted research extensively in the U.S, Europe and Asia. His training includes high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts and a BFA in Dance from Virginia Commonwealth University. Additional study includes certification as Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering, trainings in Zero-Balancing, Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Traditional Thai Massage, and the Feldenkrais Method. For his MFA at the University of Texas at Austin Schwartz balanced academic research with a commitment to service and activism within the Austin, Texas arts scene. Towards that end, he directed Sheep Army/Elsewhere Dance Theater, taught classes in dance, movement, and body-work, researched the aesthetic and pedagogical implications evoked by the integration of somatic movement education and contemporary dance forms, presented papers at conferences, and published articles. Currently he is a Profesor Visitante de Danza en la Universidad De Las Americas in Cholula/Puebla, Mexico.

As part of his work there, he initiated and co-directed Performática: Foro Internacional de Danza Contemporánea y Artes de Movimiento. This congress gathered together an international cadre of practicing dancers, choreographers, theorists, and teachers of contemporary dance and related movement arts. They convened workshops, roundtable discussions and performances over the course of nine days in March, 2007 - with the goal of facilitating international and intercultural exchange of dance practices, knowledge, theory, and culture as related to discourse of bodily movement, expression, and philosophy.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | V | W | Z

Alejandra Adame

Licientatura in Dance, became the coordinator of Dance and Scenic Arts for the government of Puebla. Since 2001 has been the Sub-director of the National Network of Dance Festivals and the National Sub-coordinator of Dance for the National Institute of Bellas Artes. A large part of her work, artistic projects, and choreographies have been developed in Mexico City.

Karl Anderson

Karl started dancing when he was nineteen. Discovering dance was a cathartic experience that changed his life in every respect. For the first time, Karl discovered something that he loved. He was driven to investigate himself, his world-view, and the worlds of art and expression. In 1986, Karl received a BFA in Dance from the California Institute of the Arts. Upon graduation, he returned to San Francisco. He performed with Contraband, the Joe Goode Performance Group, Motivity and with The San Francisco Moving Company. He also presented his own work at Centerspace and at Footwork Studio in San Francisco.

Upon moving to New York in 1987, Karl performed with Ze' Eva Cohen, David Dorfman, Charles Dennis, Jeff McMahon, Stephanie Skura and Merián Soto. Karl's company, SLAMFEST, was presented at BACA Downtown, Fieldworks, Gowanus Arts Exchange, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Performance Space 122's New Stuff Series, Rapp Arts Center, Robert Yohn's Dance Loft and Socrates Sculpture Park. His choreography was also presented at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse, New York; the Patio Theater of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico; the John L. Haar Theater in Edmonton, Canada (1989 and 1991); and the first National Performance Network touring contract in Canada at the Dancer's Studio West in Calgary.

Mr. Anderson took a hiatus from dance in 1990. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a Bachelor's of Architecture in 1996 and a Master's of Architecture in 1998. Midway through this major life change, Karl realized that although he liked architecture, dance was what he loved. During his last year at Pratt, he performed with David Lindsay-Abaire and Daniel Safer, Speed Carroll, Pt. Satya Narayana Charka, Beth Coiner and Andrea Mills. Since graduating from Pratt, Karl has performed with Wendy Blum, Keely Garfield, Allyson Green, Kate Gyllenhaal, Curt Haworth, Clarinda MacLow, Amy Sue Rosen, Lynn Marie Ruse, Jordana Toback and Sally Silvers. He is currently dancing with Molly Rabinowitz.

Since 1998, SLAMFEST productions have been presented at Arts on the Hudson II Festival on Pier 63, The TalkTalk/WalkWalk Festival at the Bowery Poetry Club in 2003 and 2004, The BRICK Studio, CalArts School of Dance Alumni Concert at St. Mark's Church, CalArts Alumni Concert at The Kitchen, Dancenow Downtown Festival 2000 (at the Joyce SoHo), Dancenowfest 2001 (at Williamsburg Arts Nexus and at Joyce SoHo), Dancenow/NYC 2002 (at the Joyce SoHo), Dancenow/NYC 2005 (at Joe's Pub), Dancenow/NYC Festival 2006 (at Dance Theater Workshop), Downtown Dance Festival at Chase Plaza, Dance Theater Workshop's Freshtracks Showcase, A Splitstream, and the Carnival Series, Dancer's over 40 at the 42nd St. Studios, Danspace Project's Food For Thought series, Dixon Place, DUMBO art under the bridge Dance Festival (2001 and 2006), Galapagos Art & Performance Space, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Joyce SoHo Benefit Auction 2007, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Movement Research at the Judson Church and Movement Research Improvisation Festival at Danspace Project, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Sal Anthony's Movement Salon, University Settlement, and Wave Rising Series at the John Ryan Theater. In 2002 and 2003 SLAMFEST self-produced full evening concerts at the Williamsburg Arts Nexus and a partially subsidized self-produced concert at the Joyce SoHo in 2007.

SLAMFEST has toured domestically to Hoboken, New Jersey at the DeBaun Auditorium at Steven's Institute in their SWEAT Modern Dance Series (2006), the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (2004), Richmond, Virginia at the Grace St. Theater (2002, 2004, and 2005); the 'East Meets West' Performance Festival at Sushi in San Diego (2005); the WestWaveDanceFestival at the ODC Theater in San Francisco (2005); presented improvisation-based works in Seattle at the Textile Factory and at On The House (2003). SLAMFEST has also toured internationally to John Moores University in Liverpool, England (2006) and to Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico (2007).

Mr. Anderson is a certified instructor of the Skinner Releasing Technique and has taught both domestically and internationally. A card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Karl is an artist member of Dance Theater Workshop and serves on the DTW Curatorial Advisory Committee.

Angier/Bingham Dance (D. Chase Angier and Robert Bingham)

D. Chase Angier and Robert Bingham have been creating dances together since 2003. Their work synthesizes their very different backgrounds in dance and dance theater, but is unified by their shared interest in creating dances that break from familiarity and habit. Their most recent work, Regardless, is a series of duets illustrating a stormy and complicated relationship. In this dance, as in all of their work, they operate within the temporal and spatial constraints of dance to bring to life a rich emotional world of need, hope, desire, and sabotage, and to create dances that evoke, but do not dictate, story and meaning. Regardless has been performed in theaters, festivals, and universities throughout the East Coast.

D. Chase Angier

D. Chase Angier has been an Assistant Professor of Dance/ Dance Program Director at Alfred University since 2002. Her creative research investigates the mixture of movement with other art forms and sites, through her collaboration with dynamic creative artists in Art, Music, Theater, and Dance. Prior to coming to Alfred, Chase created dance theater works, performed and taught in New York City since 1988. In 1995, she founded Chase Dance Theater, a company comprised of dancers, actors, writers, musicians, and visual artists who whom she collaborated to create innovative works. Her works have been performed nationally and reviewed as "intelligent entertainment," "a comic romp" and "fine story telling" by the New York Times and The Dance Insider. While in New York City, Chase toured nationally as a performer with Senta Driver's dance company Harry and has performed and choreographed for MTV and Nickelodeon. She received her MFA in choreography from The Ohio State University and her BA in dance from UCLA.

Robert Bingham

Robert Bingham is Visiting Artist in Residence in Dance at Alfred University. He received his M.F.A. in dance from SUNY Brockport, where he was a Pylyshenko-Strasser Award recipient. Prior to attending graduate school, Robert danced with several New York-based companies and artists including De Facto Dance, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Jennifer Monson. His own work was included in programs at various venues, including P.S.122 and The Painted Bride in Philadelphia. More recently he has danced in works by Kelly Donovan, dance scholar Sondra Fraleigh, and butoh-based choreographer Lani Weissbach, and he regularly collaborates with AU colleague D. Chase Angier, with whom he performs frequently throughout the east coast as Angier/Bingham Dance. Robert is a featured dancer in the dance-on-film "Broken Images," which has been shown nationally.

Robert has had extensive training in somatic modalities, including certification to teach yoga (Integral Yoga Institute, 1996), and graduation from East-West Institute of Somatic Therapy (2003). His dance and yoga studies take him regularly to India, where he has also taught, choreographed and performed. In summer 2007 he traveled there to study kalaripayettu, a south Indian martial art which he incorporates in his dance technique classes.

David Appel

David Appel is a choreographer, performer, and teacher whose work has been presented to acclaim throughout North America and in Europe since 1973. Called "an adventurer in internal and external space," he has followed his own road and quietly created a reputation for work that is resonant, subtly musical, and full of magic. His dancing and dances - intimate, detailed, quirky, intriguingly blending improvisation and set material, and conspicuously clear - express a continual re-acquaintance and delight with the intricacies of the physical, re-affirming in the process that the ordinary and the extraordinary are indeed two sides of the same coin.

David has also performed with Simone Forti, City Dance Theater of Boston (a company touring innovative pieces during the early 1970s), several dance/music collaborative groups, and with many individual artists in a variety of media. He has received a number of grants and awards for his choreography, including 3 NEA Choreographers' Fellowships, and has been invited to participate in festivals in both the United States and abroad, such as: Festival of New Dance (St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada), Performance Mix (New York, NY), Improvised and Otherwise (Brooklyn, NY), the 12th International Festival of Modern Dance (Kaunas, Lithuania), Improvisation Festival/NY (New York, NY), Transit Dances (Philadelphia, PA), New Views, New Voices (Philadelphia, PA), International Dance Week (Prague, Czech Republic), Dartington Dance Festival (Totnes, Devon, England), and Contact at 10th & 2nd (New York, NY).

His training includes a variety of movement techniques (including Cunningham, Nikolais, Limon, ballet, release, T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and Aikido), intensive study with Simone Forti, improvisation with Judith Dunn and Dana Reitz, and contact improvisation with Steve Paxton, among others. He has also studied music for many years, and since 1971 has absorbed elements from a variety of body-centered and energy-based therapies and methods of movement re-education (Ideokinesiology, massage, Alexander Technique, etc.). He has a B.A. in Dance from Bennington College and an M.A. in Dance from Goddard College.

David has worked with people from various communities and backgrounds, and age groups ranging from children to older adults. He has appeared at venues such as Joyce SoHo and The Kitchen in New York City, Philadelphia's Painted Bride Art Center, Links Hall in Chicago, The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA, Dance Place in Washington, DC, and Montreal's Tangente. Residencies have included visits to such institutions as Humboldt State University (CA), Alma College (MI), Ohio University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. He has taught at the International Summer School of Dance (Edinburgh, Scotland), Boston University Theater Institute, and Penland School of Crafts, and has been on the faculty at schools including New York University, the University of the Arts (PA), and George Washington University (DC). Some of the companies who have commissioned and performed his choreography are Aura Dance Theatre (Kaunas, Lithuania), Mimi Fortunae Dance Theatre (Brno, Czech Republic), Wall Street Dance Works (Asheville, NC), and Southern Danceworks (Birmingham, AL).

Although he makes group pieces and does collaborations whenever possible, he has become most known for his singular and compelling solo performances. Starting in 1994, he embarked on a path that has carried him into an intensive and ongoing investigation of how the body articulates amidst encountering the forces of growth and change. Yet even as he focuses on exploring and illuminating stories rooted in the body, he also seeks to uncover how they reflect the struggle to mediate and move fluidly between our internal landscape and being "in the world."

Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company (ABDC) (Carisa Armstrong & Christine Bergeron)

The Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company (ABDC) is a non-profit modern dance company consisting of performing artists who contribute in the making of works and engage in community outreach programs. Artistic Directors Carisa Armstrong and Christine Bergeron have been choreographing professionally since 1998 and have been collaborating together since 2003. Their work has been critically and popularly acclaimed in Texas, New York, Ohio, Illinois and Florida and been described as moving, clever, athletic, skewed and innovative. The Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company currently resides in Bryan/College Station, Texas and is the company in residence at Texas A&M University. The company also participates in community outreach programs including activities such as Visit with the Artist, Art and Improvisation, Sketching Dance, NDW Community Performance, Brazos Contemporary Dance Festival, lecture demonstrations, master classes and workshops.

Nick Bankes (see Legitimate Bodies Dance Company)

Brian Banks (see Susan Douglas Roberts)

Eloy Barragán

Eloy was born in Mexico City and trained with the National School of Dance in Mexico, the Royal Academy of Dance in London, and the Joffrey Ballet School. Adept of a variety of styles, Eloy performed as a dancer with the Washington Ballet, Compañía Nacional de Danza , Rebecca Kelly Dance Co., New York Theater Ballet and Joffrey Ballet II; and as a principal with Ballet de Monterey in Mexico, Ballet Royal de Wallonie in Belgium, Mainz Stattheater and Dortmundt Stattheater, Germany; Ballet Idaho and Eugene Ballet.

Throughout his career as a dancer, Eloy worked closely with numerous master choreographers, notably Vicente Nevrada, Youry Vamos, Anne Marie De Angelo, Jorge Lefebre, Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Lynn-Taylor Corbett, Charles Bennet and Choo-San Goh. These influences led Eloy to a choreographic and teaching career of his own.

Eloy has created numerous works for Ballet Idaho, Eugene Ballet, Utah Ballet and American Repertory Company. He has a premiere with the National Ballet of Puerto Rico and China's Beijing Dance Academy. Mr. Barragán has been commissioned original choreographic work for the Richmond Ballet, Beijing Dance Academy and Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico in 2008. He has guest taught for several companies including the José Limón Company, the National Ballet Company in Costa Rica, and the National Company of Panama, National Ballet of Puerto Rico and the National Superior Conservatory of Paris.

Eloy arrived at the University of Iowa in 2005, and has created four world premieres for the Department of Dance. He is the recipient of the prestigious 2006 Old Gold Fellowship for his research on Latin American choreographers. He is also the 2006 recipient of the AHI Grant for a collaborative performance project that premiered in New York City and recently performed in Iowa City. In 2002 he received an artistic fellowship from the State of Idaho Arts Commission, along with a choreographic fellowship from the NEA.

He is member of the American Dance Guild, CORPS de Ballet International, Council of Organized Researchers for Pedagogical Studies, International Dance Council. In 2007 he was invited to be on the Board of the Scientific Committee for the First European Dance Congress "Dance From East to West" which took place in Cappadocia, Turkey.

Andrea Beckham

She is a choreographer, dancer and educator. Her choreography has been presented since 1989 in Texas, New York, the Arts on the Hill Festival in Wyoming, Utah; the Avignon-Off Festival in France, the Cyprus International Festival, Taiwan, several small venues around Europe, including the Young Tanzsommer tour in Austria in 2004 and 2006, and her collaborations with Yacov Sharir in Holland, Portugal and China. With deep roots in Texas, Andrea developed an ongoing relationship with the Sharir Dance Company (Sharir + Bustamante Danceworks) from 1983 to 2005, first as a dancer, later as an infrequent guest artist and choreographer. She has also performed with Llory Wilson's Tallulah Dance Company in Seattle, New York, and Jacob's Pillow, Massachusetts, and with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in New York, among many others. Andrea was an award winner with frequent partner Heywood "Woody" McGriff in the choreography of Yacov Sharir in Tel Aviv, Israel. She performed and taught for Ballet Austin at international festivals in Limmasol and Nicosia, Cyprus (1996-97), and choreographed and taught for American Ballet Theatre's Summer Intensive Workshops for four years. Andrea is currently teaching in both the Theater and Dance areas at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as running the Pilates-evolved Movement and Physical Conditioning Laboratory there, and, always, working on collaborative projects with her own pick-up company, Andrea Beckham Collaborative Dance.

Christine Bergeron (see Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company (ABDC))

Robert Bingham (see Angier/Bingham Dance)

Katharine Birdsall

I graduated from TISCH School of the Arts at New York University in 1991 with a BFA in Dance. My previous training was in classical ballet, which I studied and performed in Florida, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, France and Virginia. In New York I began my study of modern dance techniques and improvisation. Injuries from my time as a ballet dancer lead me to explore more somatically-grounded methods and philosophies for conscious movement and performance. I studied ballet and Pilates with Christine Wright. Within my first summer at Bates Dance Festival in Maine I studied contact improvisation with Andrew Harwood and Alexander Technique with Tommy Thompson. My last year in New York I took class with Barbara Mahler at the Klien School. These experiences radically changed my movement and lead me to study with many more wonderful teachers. They have also directly influenced my dance making and the other dance makers with whom I have chosen to work.

In 1991 I danced with Daniel Burkholder's company, Quiescence in Washington DC. In 1996 I certified as a teacher of the Alexander Technique at The Virginia School, opened the studio, New Dance Space, in Charlottesville Virginia, and co-founded the Zen Monkey Project with Ray Schwartz and Savitri Durkee. Since then I have been teaching, performing, and making dances mostly in Virginia but also in Georgia, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington DC, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I also have completed a 200 hour course for teachers in Yoga with Lisa Clark and David Beadle in Chapel Hill NC. Currently I teach yoga at an independent high school and live on a farm with my husband and two children. Last year's Performática was a highlight for me.

Mirta Blostein

Modern Dance choreographer and dancer born in Argentina. She has resided in Mexico since 1977. She received her BA in Artistic Education at INBA (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) and has a Master's in Social Psychology for Groups and Institutions from UAM-Xochimilco. She has so far premiered 50 full-length pieces that have been presented in Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Cuba, Germany and Italy. She has also developed work using alternative spaces, such as the Modern Art Museum and the Carrillo Gil Museum of Contemporary Art, in Mexico.

She teaches the subject Scenic Projects at INBA's Escuela Nacional de Danza Clásica y Contemporánea. In 2001, she started her project titled Tiempo Vida Movimiento, inspired by life's stages, and thus commences with the stage of maturity, inspired by the age of 40, which gives way to the piece El Pie, Los Pies o La Historia en el Zapato. She received funds from the Programa de Apoyo a la Docencia, Investigación y Difusión de las Artes (PADID); the piece was interpreted by three dancers. Taking now the age of 50, she develops another chapter called Cincuenta y Pico... Both works received very good reviews.

Mirta's work centers itself upon the investigation of the development of the body's expressive language: movement. Thus, she was invited to participate at international congresses as lecturer. She had a most important participation at Mexico's congress The Deciphered Body.

She teaches Body Expression, and is a founding member of La Maravilla Corporal, a group of practice, study and promotion of body expression in Mexico. This group has been going on for seven years, giving courses at institutions such as Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.
www.escenica.7.com/mirtablostein
www.maravillacorporal.org

BLUE LAPIS LIGHT

BLUE LAPIS LIGHT is a non-profit aerial site-specific dance company based in Austin, TX.

www.bluelapislight.org. Blue Lapis Light is led by the artistic direction of Sally Jacques who chooses to generate movement through on-site collaboration with the dancers. The company uses various suspension techniques to achieve the illusion of dancing in the air, on the sides of buildings, and in other various places. The company takes its name from the East Indian concept of Tanmatric light. The blue light represents the Akasha (ether) Tanmatra, a state of enlightened meditation in which consciousness merges with the universe.

Sermini

Sermini is a native of Puerto Rico. He has a ten-year background in opera, having a Masters Degree in Opera Performance from the University of Texas at Austin. He has acted in a number of experimental and traditional theater productions (Wirelessless), short films (Post Coital Cigarettes, Death of an Ally), and the feature Anything for Now. He was Music Coordinator and Composer for the festival award winning The Ticket. He has held key roles in opera classics such as La Boheme, Faust, Othello with Opera de Puerto Rico and made his debut with the Austin Lyric Opera in Lady Macbeth of Mitks.

Nicole Whiteside

Nicole is a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas. She dances with Blue Lapis Light, Sheep Army/Elsewhere Dance Theater, and Little Stolen Moments. In Austin, she has performed with a number of companies including Undertow Dance Theater, Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks, the Austin School of Classical Ballet, and the American Repertory Ensemble. In 2007, the Austin Critics Table awarded her Best Dancer for her performance in Blue Lapis Light's "Requiem".

Beth Brandt (see Susan Douglas Roberts)

Nick Bryson (see Legitimate Bodies Dance Company)

José Luis Bustamante

José has choreographed for various companies in Mexico and was one of five finalists in the 1986 Dance Umbrella Workouts choreography competition. During 1989, José traveled to France as one of ten young American choreographers selected nationwide to participate in the American Dance Festival's Franco-American exchange program in celebration of France's bicentennial. He was one of three national finalists for the Dewar's Profile Performance Arts Awards for choreography. In 1992, José completed an eight-week choreography residency at The Yard in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, premiering his work there and in New York City. He is a recipient of numerous NEA grants, and his work has been selected for festivals in Israel, Greece, and Portugal. José is currently Chair of the Dance Department at Austin Community College.

Francisco Carrera

Born in Mexico City. He begins his artistic studies at Centro de Educación Artística Frida Kahlo, at INBA, where he studies High School in Arts and Humanities. After that, he enters INBA's Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral, where he studies a BFA in Acting. He studies a specialty in Dance Creation at the Centro de Investigación Coreográfica, which also belongs to INBA.

He has worked as educator, actor, director, choreographer, assistant in direction, dancer and light designer. He has taken courses in Pantomime, Lightning, Butoh, Humphrey-Limón Technique, Release, Functional Anatomy, Street Theatre and others.

He was a member of Productora Teatral Innombrable, of En dos partes Company and of Caída Libre Danza Contemporánea. He was a guest dancer at Pata de Cabra. He is a guest actor of ABCdidáctico and is a member of Yúmare Arte Escénico.

He has taught courses at Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, at Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral and at the Universidad Veracruzana's Faculty of Dance.

Since 1996, he founds Arte Escénico ELEUSIS, an artistic project which explores the possibilities that scenic art can bring, where he fuses elements of diverse artistic manifestations. With this project he has participated in the creation of dance and theatre productions. At Centro Cultural Los Talleres A.C. he has premiered four choreographies, one of which entered the international season called Soliloquios y Diálogos Bailados.

He has done two Artistic Residencies at The Banff Centre for Arts in Canada, within the Aboriginal Dance Program. This year he had contact with cultural manifestations within traditional and contemporary art, within indigenous communities in Canada, Alaska, United States and New Zealand. As part of the Aboriginal Arts program he participated in the production of two choreographic works, based on traditional indigenous elements and ritual choreographic structure, fusing tradition with modernity.

He has worked on Carlos Rivera's artistic project Yúmare Arte Escénico, a project that seeks scenic answers that combine traditional elements with contemporary elements. He collaborates on an artistic project called Integrarte and with Fundación Voz de Libertad, which generates cultural projects for social readaptation of people who have been in seclusion. He is, too, professor and director of Centro de Educación Artística Luis Spota Saavedra, at INBA.

He currently directs Arte Escénico ELEUSIS, focusing on the quest to obtain a body language that comes from mastering energy.

Omar Carrum (see Delfos Danza Contemporanea)

Centro de Investigación Coreográfica (CICO)

Its background goes back to the Centro Superior de Coreografía (CESUCO), which was founded by professor Lin Durán in 1978. Its creation answered the growing necessity of an academic education in choreography, which was non-existent in Mexico. Project CESUCO concluded in 1983 due to the end of the presidential period. In September 1983, under the wing of INBA, work was created under the name Centro de Investigación Coreográfica (CICO), at the Centro Cultural del Bosque, which is currently occupied by the ENDF.

CICO works as a laboratory for artistic creation and theoretical investigation; it develops its functions in continuous communal action. The main axis of this education is creativity and investigation of choreographic and body languages. The staging of concerts is a main part of the academic, artistic and investigative work. The piece we present in the foro is the students' work, it showcases the style of each of these young choreographers.

Karina Cepeda

Born in Puebla, she got her BFA in Dance from Universidad de las Américas-Puebla. She did a Master's in Education Sciences in 2006. She received FOESCAP's scholarship to carry on an investigation about approaching dance through dance's language (2004) and in 2006 she received it in the category of Support to Production. She received also the Fulbright García Robles Scholarship to study the first semester of the Master's degree in Dance at Irvine University, California. She attained the Fifth Degree of the Cuban School of Ballet, supervised by Maitre Fernando Alonso and Mirtha García and Cecilia Rébora, at Universidad de Celaya. She has worked with different teachers and choreographers, such as John Mead, CharlotteBoye-Christensen, Amy Hatchman, Jennifer Tsukayama, Ivonne Robles Gil, Cliff Keuter, Michelle Descombey, Alicia Sanchez, Mary Fitzgerald, David Allan, Nancy Ruyter, Donald McKayle, among others. She was a member of the company UDLA-Danza from 1985 to 1999. She was a member of Sunny Savoy's Company from 1997 to 1999. She danced at the Ballet de Cámara de la Ciudad de Puebla in 1996. Her experience as choreographer consists of dance projects presented nationally and internationally, such as Songs of Sorrow, Songs of Hope in 2001, which was a via internet collaboration with musicians at NYU; Fantasmas Humanos in 2001; Yaxkin in 1999; Corazones del Cielo in 1999; Vertigo in 1998, among others. As a dance educator, she has taught ballet and modern dance at Estudio de Danza Antoinette, in Puebla, since 2000. She participated at the Jugartes Program at UDLA (1996-1997) and in the Agrupación de Misioneros de la Infancia, within the community of Santiago, in Puebla. She participated also at the Primer Curso de Verano Internacional de Danza Clásica de Puebla, in 2002. She has taught at Escuela de Danza Antoinette, which is part of the Royal Academy of Dance, as well as in other academies and universities such as Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and at UDLAP. She won exchange scholarships between UDLA/Arizona State University and the Texas Christian University to study at the Summer Workshop. Karina is founder of Quinto Elemento and is its director, choreographer and dancer.

Li Chiao-Ping

LI CHIAO-PING DANCE LCPD has performed at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage (Washington, DC), Jacob's Pillow (Lee, MA), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME), Insight Arts Women's Performance Festival (Chicago), Movable Beast Experimental Dance Festival (Chicago), Cleveland Experimental Dance Festival, Dance Now Festival (New York), and Treasure in the House series at Highways (Santa Monica, California). The company's 2006-2007 season included performances at the Dance Now Festival in New York City; American Dance Guild 50th Anniversary concert (NYC); New England Conservatory of Music (Boston, MA); Mills College (Oakland, CA); Overture Center for the Arts (Madison, WI); Julia Morgan Center for the Arts (Berkeley, CA); and Summer Intercontinental Dance Festival (Madison, WI). The company has received funding from Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, Madison CitiArts, Madison Civic Center Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Wisconsin Arts Board, and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as support from individuals. She recently received the Wisconsin Dance Council Award in Choreography and Performance.

Andrea Yugoslavia Chirinos

Andrea Yugoslavia Chirinos Brown, was born in Mexico City, where she began dancing professionally with U.X Onodanza. En 1992 she began doing her own work with Danza Luthor. She moved to N.Y and Boston to studied a BFA in Modern Dance and Alexander Technic.In Mexico she continued studied pedagogy with professor Lin Duran. She taught movement awareness, creativity and modern dance, at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional, public schools at New York city, at Ludwik Margules theater school and in her own studio Mitrovica Danza contemporanea.

Colectivo Independiente de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa

Its members:

Ixchel Méndez Salmón (1979)

Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua / Morelia, Michoacán
Multidisciplinary Artist of Performance Art, Dancer and General Director or Colectivo Independiente de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa, since 2003. She currently resides in Morelia, Michoacán. She has studies in Mexico, United States and Spain, she took up Ballet, Modern Dance, Architecture, Scenography of the Spectacle, Scenic Arts, Filmmmaking and Avant-Garde Art. She works with mixed techniques in Improvisation, Performance Art, Postmodern Dance, Ballet, Release and Cunningham. She has been pupil of artists such as Laura Urdapilleta, Pilar Medina, Alicia Marvan (Lowerleft Performance Collective), Rebecca Bryant (Lowerleft Performance Collective) and César Villavicencio.

Benjamín Gámez Lamadrid (1984)

He was born in Mexicali Baja California Norte. In 1998 he creates and participates as active member of the Avant-Garde Rock Band Sangre de Puerco, with which he performs in various private events and different forums linked to Contemporary Art. He is currently studying a BFA in Musicology at the Conservatorio de las Rosas, in Morelia Michoacán. He also creates and performs on the percussive duo La Pérca Terca, with percussionist Rogelio Vargas. He is founding member of the Progressive Experimental Rock Group La Sonrisa Vertical and is part of Colectivo de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa, under Ixchel Méndez Salmón's direction.

Pedro A. Vargas Madrigal (1982)

Born in Tijuana Baja California Norte. He commences his studies in classical guitar with masters Francisco Guerrero and Roberto Limón. Pedro Vargas is an adventurer, an experimental and eclectic musician. He participated with the alternative art group Producciones del Tercer Mundo, as counselor. He was also involved with the Latin American group Malembe, which attended the Festival de Música Regional Kupalnoshka, in the cities of Gdánsk, Chiehanov and Warsaw in Poland. Later, he enters the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Michoacán. He dedicates part of his time to the production of electronic music and is part of the group La Sonrisa Vertical. He is also a member of Colectivo de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa.

Desmond Ray Ramirez

Video-(Música) Instrumentos Multiculturales-Performance

Mirla Criste

In addition to her work in professional and academic theatre, Mirla Criste claims 25 years of study and practice in contact improvisation, beginning in 1982 with Nancy Stark-Smith. She lived and danced in New York City for ten years, before engaging in graduate study to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Drama. She is the graduate movement specialist in the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Georgia. Contact Theatre, a modality comprising the intersection of contact improvisation and theatre, constitutes her primary topic of research.

David de la Cruz

Born in Mexico City in 1980. In 1997 he begins his theatre studies with the company TADECO, founded by Antonio González Caballero, whose objective is to take theatre to the communities. In 1999 he commences his modern dance studies at Viandante, directed by Nora Manneck. That same year he starts his plastic art studies at the Taller de la Gráfica Popular, school founded by José Guadalupe Posadas. Since 2000 he studies Butoh with master Diego Piñón at Butoh Ritual Mexicano AC. In 2006 he decides to work as a soloist and premieres La Rebelión del Atlas, with which he has performed in different festivals in Mexico and South America, among them, the Encuentro de Teatro Popular Latinoamericano de Ecuador and Performática 2007, in Puebla, Mexico.

He begins his work as a teacher in 2004 at the Foro de Teatro Contemporáneo, as Professor Ricardo Díaz's adjunct. He still works with diverse theatre companies residing in Mexico City. He currently works with many groups of actors and dancers, with whom he continues to develop his pedagogic work.

Delfos Danza Contemporánea

Claudia Lavista

Dancer, Choreographer and Teacher. She has been immersed in the world of arts since she was 8 years old, taking up theatre, music and cello. She did her dance studies at the Sistema Nacional para la Enseñanza Profesional de la Danza, with Federico Castro. In 1987 she enters the Group U.X. Onodanza and is thenceforth invited to become part of Venezuela's Danzahoy Company, in which she develops her career for 5 years. In 1992 she founds Delfos Danza Contemporánea, alongside Víctor Manuel Ruiz, winning the Premio Nacional de Danza, on that same year.

She has been acknowledged for her artistic work since the beginning of her career and for her outstanding labour she has received multiple awards, like Premio Nacional de Danza for Best Female Performer in 1998 and 2002; Premio a la Mejor Intérprete del XXV Festival Internacional de Danza Lila López, in 2005. In the year 2000 she was considered by specialized critics as one of the 10 Best Mexican Female Dancers of the XX century.

She has received the following scholarships from Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes: Intérprete in 1994, VII Concurso de Proyectos Especiales in 1996, Joven Creador in 2002 and Intérpretes con Trayectoria in 2006. She also received from Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes the scholarships for Artistas con Trayectoria in 2001 and Producción Escénica in 2005.In 2007 she was invited as Artist in Residence to the Bates Dance Festival, in United States.

She has taught classes in diverse schools in Mexico and abroad, and her work (both in choreography and as a dancer) has been acclaimed by critics in countries like Brazil, Canada, United States, Italy, France, Spain, Corea, Singapore, South Africa, Colombia, Greece and others. She has staged 7 pieces for different companies, among which are Compañía Nacional de Danza de México and Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers, Canada. She is currently co-director, choreographer and dancer of Delfos. She is also co-director and teacher of the Escuela Profesional de Danza Contemporánea de Mazatlán, which is acknowledged as one of the best options for professional development in Latin America.

"If you want to talk about Latin America's modern dance's greatest figures, Claudia Lavista's name is inevitable." - Valerio Cesio. "Por la Danza" Magazine. Madrid, España 1999.

Omar Carrum

Dancer, choreographer, educator and videomaker, he begins his dance formation at the Estudio Profesional de Danza Ema Pulido in 1990. In 1992 he becomes a founding member of Delfos Danza Contemporánea, developing a brilliant career not only as a dancer but as a choreographer as well.

He has danced in over 56 pieces, created 18 choreographies, one videodance and 9 audiovisuals, he has participated in 13 collaborations. He has showcased his work in more than 18 countries.

Because of his outstanding artistic work, he has been the recipient of Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes' scholarships for Intérprete in 1995 and 2001 and Joven Creador in 2004. the Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes granted him the scholarships for Desarrollo Artístico Individual in 2001, Creador con Trayectoria in 204 and Artistas con Trayectoria in 2007.

In the year 2000 he receives the prize for Best Male Performer at the Premio Nacional de la Danza and in 2002 he receives the First Place as Choreographer at the XXIII Concurso de Composición Coreográfica INBA-UAM, at Palacio de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City. As a teacher of modern dance, jazz, yoga, choreography and Certified Instructor of the Diet Program The Zone, he has taught classes, given special courses and staged choreography in important schools of Mexico, Brazil, Japan and the United States. He is currently a dancer and choreographer at Delfos and is Academic and Logistics Coordinator and a teacher at the Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán.

"Omar Carrum, an actor whose virtuosism reaches plenitude, and a dancer with an admirable sincerity to whom there seem to be no vague aproximations." - Orlando Taquechel, El Imparcial, México

Kent De Spain

He is recognized for his work as both a dance/multimedia artist and a researcher. He received his BA in Dance (1980) and MA in Choreography (1986) from UCLA, and his Ed.D. in Dance Studies from Temple University (1997). He has taught and toured throughout the United States and beyond, including performances at Jacob's Pillow and Judson Church, and has performed for a number of choreographers, including being a guest artist with the Brazilian modern dance company Grupo Tran Chan, Kei Takei and Moving Earth, Lower Left, and the dance/theater troupe Ausdruckstanz. He has been the recipient of several major awards, including the Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Choreography and an Established Choreographers Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He also received a Performance Fellowship from the Philadelphia Repertory Development Initiative, which commissioned choreographer Ralph Lemon to create an original work called So this is the hero, for he and his partner Leslie Dworkin. Presently an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, De Spain has taught master classes and workshops in the United States, Europe and Asia; he has been a Visiting Artist/Professor in Dance at Columbia College, University of Georgia, Oberlin College, UCLA, and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and has been on the dance faculty at Temple University and Bryn Mawr College.

De Spain is widely known as an authority on improvisational process in movement. He has published a series of articles in the journal Contact Quarterly examining the relationship between movement improvisation and recent scientific thought (Chaos Theory, Quantum Theory, Neuropsychology). He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Improvisation at Ohio State University, his dissertation is still the most comprehensive academic study of improvisational process yet undertaken, and his essay, The Cutting Edge of Awareness: Reports From the Inside of Improvisation, appears in the book "Taken by Surprise". He has presented his broad-ranging dance research at numerous international conferences and symposia, including the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD), the Uncommon Senses Conference at Concordia University in Montreal, the "body/machine" congress in Toronto, and the Multimedia Technologies and Applications (MTAC) conference in Irvine, California. De Spain has also written extensively on the interface between dance and technology, and his articles, Dance and Technology: A Pas de Deux for Posthumans and Notes from the Dance/Tech Front Lines, plus his presentations at Dancing with the Mouse and other conferences have established him as an important voice in the discourse surrounding the critical and theoretical implications of the interface between the moving human body and technology.

Sven Doehner, PhD, MFA.

Sven is an archetypal psychotherapist from Mexico City. Trained by James Hillman in the Depth Psychology of C.G. Jung, he has a private practice and is the Director of the Instituto de Psicología Profunda en México. Sven has guided workshops and courses in Europe, North and South America since 1981, integrating Depth Psychology with ancestral healing and native spiritual traditions. Sven works alchemically with the images and sounds in people's dreams and lives in ways that facilitate personal and transpersonal transformation.

Susan Douglas Roberts

Susan Douglas Roberts is a performer, choreographer and Associate Professor of Modern Dance in the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at TCU. She is the Artistic Director of wild goose chase. Susan has choreographed and taught, by invitation, in all parts of the world: North, Central and South America, Europe, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan. Most recently her work was presented at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre (NYC) and the Summer International Dance Festival in Madison, WI. She has worked in collaboration with composers, sculptors, poets, puppeteers, photographers and filmmakers, and is deeply interested in Spanish language and literature. One of the founder/artistic directors of Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth (a repertory company), she was with the company through 11 seasons (1990-2001.) In 1998, she was the recipient of the TCU College of Fine Arts Award for Distinguished Teaching and is currently on the Fulbright Senior Specialists roster. Susan graduated with the MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Collaborating Artists with Susan Douglas Roberts

Brian Banks (composer, Fortuna)

Brian is a composer and native of Seattle, WA where he began his formal study of composition at age sixteen. He holds degrees from the Peabody Institute of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, and completed his Ph.D. In Music at the University of California at Berkeley. His principal teachers have included Morris Moshe Cotel, Andrew Imbrie, Richard Felciano and Olly Wilson. Recent projects include Destierros (Blue Tropes) - a work commissioned by the ensemble Signos with support from the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture; and the disc Brian Banks: Piano Music. In 1996, Brian received a Fulbright Scholar award for research and teaching in Mexico, and is currently Professor of Music at the Universidad de las Américas-Puebla.

Tuba Oztekin Koymen (photographer, Fortuna)

Tuba Oztekin Koymen lives and works in Texas. She has received her B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Bilkent University in Turkey. She earned her M.F.A in Photography and Digital Imaging from Maryland Institute of Art in 1999. Major solo exhibitions include those at the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University, the Light Factory in North Carolina, the Fort Worth Community Arts Center and Austin College in Sherman Texas. Her photographs have been in many group exhibitions and are in several private and museum collections nationally and internationally. Koymen currently works as an Adjunct Professor of Photography at Texas Christian University.

Beth Brandt (performer, Fortuna)

Growing up, Beth studied dance both in and out of the USA while traveling with her military family. She continued this multilayered education by attending the American Dance Festival, the American College Dance Festival, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company Summer Intensive. Beth refined these studies in 2003 by earning her BFA in modern dance from Texas Christian University. Her drive to continue moving and learning has led her to Gyrotonic®. Beth is a certified Gyrotonic® instructor and currently teaches for Gyrotonic® Manhattan in NYC. She has continued dancing and performing throughout these studies and is a founding member of the VonHowardProject, a NY/NJ based contemporary dance company directed by Christian Von Howard. It was with the VHP that Fortuna had its NYC premiere, reuniting Beth with her teacher and friend Susan Douglas Roberts.

Kevin Taylor (performer, Fortuna)

Born in Bozeman, Montana and raised a Texan, Kevin now resides in New York City. He is a founding member of the VonHowardProject, a NY/NJ based contemporary dance company directed by Christian Von Howard. He has performed VHP repertory at the Joyce Soho, Dixon Place, Dance Theatre Workshop, and Rutgers University, among others, and most recently at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre. Kevin also works on the administrative staff for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Kevin is a 2004 Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate of Texas Christian University, where he first began studying with Susan Douglas Roberts. He is so happy to have the opportunity to connect with her again with the creation of Fortuna and to bring the dance to the Foro Performática.

Leslie Dworkin

Leslie Dworkin has been a professional dance artist, touring in both the United States and Europe, since 1991. She has performed in the works of such noted choreographers as Ralph Lemon, David Appel, and Maureen Fleming; and in 1999 she worked with Bebe Miller as an associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. She was a member of the Melanie Stewart Dance Company in Philadelphia and has been a guest artist with the Brazilian modern dance company Grupo Tran Chan, Kei Takei and Moving Earth, Sharir+Bustamante DanceWorks, and the Leah Stein Dance Company, among others. Her national and international touring has included performances at Jacob's Pillow; the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; and performances at The Kitchen, Judson Church, The Knitting Factory, Joyce SoHo, and Dixon Place in New York City.

In 1991, Leslie received an MFA in Choreography from Temple University where she was also awarded a prestigious University Fellowship. For the past decade, Leslie's choreographic work, which has been produced throughout the US, has been consistently lauded and supported. She has received numerous fellowships and commissions including a 2003 Djerassi Artist Fellowship, a Choreographic Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and two prestigious Choreographic Fellowships as part of the Philadelphia Repertory Development Initiative. She completed a year in the Movement Research Exchange program which included performance/teaching residencies in both Philadelphia and New York, and has been a part of the New Dance Series at the Knitting Factory. And she was a choreographer-in-residence from 1992-1995, as part of the Susan Hess Choreographers Project in Philadelphia. Her work explores a release-based aesthetic and the connection between natural forces and cycles and the human condition.

Leslie taught professional-level technique class in Philadelphia for many years, and has also been on the dance faculty at Bryn Mawr College, UCLA, University of Austin at Texas, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has taught as a guest artist in numerous college residencies, including those at Ohio University, Oberlin College, and Sonoma State University. She has developed an approach to teaching modern dance technique that fosters an increased awareness of the body-mind connection and a full-bodied, articulate, fluid and powerful movement style. Leslie is also a certified Trager bodywork practitioner, integrating the somatic knowledge of that approach into both her teaching and performance style.

Elsewhere Dance Theater

The members of Elsewhere Dance Theater, use a body-based creative process to create choreography, improvised scores and theatrical spectacle.

Elsewhere Dance Theater is a collective of Austin, Texas based semi-professional contemporary dancers and choreographers. Current members include Lisa Del Rosario, Alison Hart, Angie Johnson, Michel Scott, Lindsey Taylor, Nicole Whiteside and Matthew Young. The company values collaboration and has developed techniques of creating work through improvisational scores devoid of any single director or choreographer.

Elsewhere Dance Theater was founded by Ray a while back. We still channel his essence and teaching in every rehearsal.

Lisa del Rosario

Lisa del Rosario began her dance studies at the Margo Marshall School of Ballet and the Cleveland San Jose School of Ballet. She continued her training as a presidential scholarship student at the University of Texas at Austin where she received her B.F.A. in Dance. She also studied classical piano and violin for many years and in her later years studied Pilates, Yoga, Tai Chi, Vipassana Meditation, Qigong, and the Feldenkrais Method of movement education. Lisa has danced professionally in the Philippines with The Philippine National Folk Dance Company, Bayanihan. She currently dances locally with Moving Voices Dance, Sheep Army/Elsewhere Dance Theatre, Subclavian Groove Dance Company, Yellow Tape Construction Co., Da Theatre Collective, and other independent choreographers. Lisa has taught and choreographed for UT's Informal Classes, the Dougherty Arts School, the McCallum High School Fine Arts Academy, and the Texas Arts Project at St. Stephen's Episcopal School; and she is currently in her fifth season teaching at Ballet Austin. Lisa is undergoing training in New York to become a Guild Certified Practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method® under the tutelage of educational director Dr. Larry Goldfarb and will be fully certified in July 2008.

Alison Hart

Alison Hart is currently the Performing Arts Management Fellow in residence at the University of Texas Performing Arts Center (UTPAC) in Austin. Through this Fellowship Alison produces Inspired by Appalachia, a summer concert series at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. She also contributes to UTPAC projects including strategic planning, re-branding, and developing student audience engagement. Prior to joining the UTPAC staff, Alison completed a master's degree in Public Affairs from UT's LBJ School with portfolio degrees in nonprofit management and cultural policy. Alison lived for four years in Portland, Maine where she immersed herself in the contemporary dance community by serving as the Associate Director of the Bates Dance Festival and working as a dance artist-in-residence in Maine schools.

Angela Johnson

Angela Johnson is a native of Houston, Texas and a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin. Performatica 2008 marks Angie's debut with SheepArmy/Elsewhere Dance Theater. In addition to her work with EDT, she has performed with several companies in Austin including Ballet East Dance Theater (under the direction of Regina Larkin and Hope Boykin), The Getalong Gang, Sharir + Bustamante Danceworks and has enjoyed working with several independent choreographers. Angie also spent time in northern California and Nevada where she performed with Area 51 Dance Theatre, and has studied in New York with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Aside from dancing, she is the producer for a commercial music and sound design company, and also teaches the Gyrotonic Expansion System® in Austin.

Michel Scott

Lindsey Taylor

Matthew Young

Matthew Young is a dancer/musician/photographer/sculptor/carpenter based in Austin, TX. He has been creating dance works there for eight years and has trained informally since childhood. Matthew is a dedicated choreographer and improviser and manages to bring many of his aforementioned talents to bear on his dance works. Matthew's collaborative experience with Elsewhere Dance Theater over the past four years has been an extremely fulfilling artistic endeavor that has brought him both critical acclaim and personal fulfillment.

Jane Franklin Dance

Jane Franklin Dance is known for a lively mix of dance, theater, and humor for partnerships with music, media, and visual artists, and for the ability to inspire community populations of all ages. The company has been presented at numerous state and regional venues including the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Booth Playhouse in Charlotte NC, and the International Dance Festival in NYC. Collaborative projects with poetry, live music, community participation and visual art have received funding in multiple years. Performances and workshops are conducted for Montgomery County Public Schools and for Arlington's Humanities Project. A STAR Award recipient for "Outstanding Community Outreach," ongoing projects include work with the Senior Adult community, after school projects for young dancers, and Dance Sampler, a showcase of regional choreographers. Jane Franklin Dance has been recognized by Metro DC Dance Awards, Virginia's Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and the company tours for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Paul Mellon Arts in Education Program and the Virginia Commission's Tour Directory.

Jane Franklin Dance explores the space memory occupies in "Temporal Interference," a collaboration with digital artist Bryan Leister and composer Gina Biver. Using live video, electroacoustic software and a Theremin, dancers carve out an interactive environment of sound and color. The media installation will be available for audience interaction following the performance.

Artistic Director Jane Franklin

Jane Franklin's innovative dances have been presented in Colorado, Maryland, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington DC, Wyoming, North Carolina and in London, England. Her work has been funded by agencies and foundations in Colorado and Virginia and commissioned by numerous companies, schools and communities nationwide. Jane's professional credentials include an MFA from the Ohio State University as a University Fellow and certification from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. She has taught at Naropa Institute, University of Colorado, Loretto Heights College, The Ohio State University, Luther College, Shenandoahm University, Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies in New York, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange School, and George Mason University. Jane was an invited presenter at Dance and the Child International Conference in Saskatchewan, Canada, and has led workshops for the Kennedy Center's "Professional Development Opportunities for Teachers" program.

Brianne Barrow Little

Originally from North Carolina, Brianne graduated from NC State Univeristy in 2001 with an English degree and, in 2005, from American University with a Master of Arts in Dance. Prior to coming to the DC area, she danced and performed with Meredith Dance Theatre under Alyson Colwell-Waber and David Beadle in North Carolina. She has performed in the works of Peter DiMuro, Keith Johnson, DougVarone, Gerri Houlihan and, locally, Christine Stone Martin and April Betty. Brianne is enjoying her time with Jane Franklin Dance, and has also performed with Katrina Toews/K2 and Gesel Mason Performance Project. In addition to dancing, Brianne teaches Pilates and works at the Kennedy Center.

Nellie Rainwater

Nellie grew up in Rhode Island, studying dance at Rhode Island Ballet Arts Academy and performing with Rhode Island's Ballet Theater. She then graduated magna cum laude from St. Olaf College in Minnesota with a B.A. degree in Dance and English and a Women's Studies concentration. In 2002, her choreography won the Viola Rossings Prize in Women's Studies and was presented at the American College Dance Festival in Tempe, Arizona. After graduating, she was accepted into the Zenon Block E Summer Scholarship program in Minneapolis. Locally, Nellie has danced for Jessica Marchant (MM-PSE), Next Reflex Dance Collective, Jeslyn Dance Gallery, Christine Stone Martin, Heidi Schimpf and April Betty. She also teaches dance and creative movement at various locations in the metro area.

Bryan Leister

Bryan currently works from his studio in Denver, Colorado and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver where he teaches digital design. He received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Art and Visual Technology from George Mason University.

His work has been commissioned for the covers of many national and international magazines. His paintings are in the collections of The Museum of American Art, The District of Columbia Historical society, Kohler, Celestial Seasonings, James River Paper Company, Blue Cross Blue Shields and many private collections.

His new media installation and video work has been exhibited throughout the Washington DC region including shows at the The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Provisions Gallery, The Pyramid Atlantic gallery and the Arlington Arts Center. Temporal Interference, a collaboration with the Jane Franklin Dance Company, was performed this spring at The Kennedy Center Millenium Stage.

Benjamín Gámez Lamadrid (see Colectivo Independiente de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa)

Gandharva and Abril Ghandi

It is a project formed in August 2006. Its main objective is to study and interpret classical music from the north of India (Hindustani) and to fuse these instruments with other traditional ones from many different cultures, such as the Australian didjeridoo, mouth harps, baroque viola da gamba, occidental violin, Mongolian harmonic chant, Cuban tres, darbuka, pre-Hispanic instruments..., working in this way with different musicians and having as basis concepts such as understanding, tolerance and research. Gandharva is a sanskrit word which means "singer of the celestial planets", the term appears in the classic of Hindu literature, The Mahabharata.

Gandharva has performed at the Osho centers in Mexico City and Toluca, at UNAM's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, during the chair Historia de la India, led by Graciela de la Lama; also at the Sala Hermilo Novelo, which belongs to the school Vida y Movimiento, at the Festival de la India in Cuernavaca and in many private events.

Its members are:

José Pablo Jiménez

He entered the Escuela Autónoma de Música when he was eighteen, taking up cello as his first instrument. He was part of the Orquesta Juvenil de México, and took classes with Master Luda and Mónica del águila. He offered various concerts with the orchestra in professional music halls around the country. He continued his cello studies at the Escuela Nacional de Música, with Master Edgardo Espinoza and thenceforth with Master Rocío Orozco, perfectioning in this way the baroque language of cello. He started his studies in viola da gamba with Master Gabriela Villa Waltz, and it has now become his base instrument. He is one of the few musicians who play this instrument in Mexico. In 2004 he tries World Music, fusing diverse genres and sounds from different times and places, playing instruments such as the viola da gamba, mouth harps, didjeridoo, pre-Hispanic flutes, Mayan trumpets, Tibetan bowl... He also learned Mongolia's harmonic chant.

Jerónimo Serna

He started his musical studies at the age of twelve, taking private piano lessons. He studied for two years at the Escuela Libre de Música and afterwards he got in the Nacional de Música, in the area of Composition, at the Julio Estrada chair, where he currently studies the sixth semester. He has studied Hindu music with Siddhartha Siliceo, Hollving Argaez and Paul Livingstone. He currently studies the tabla with Francisco Bringas. He participates with the group Indra Swara, devoted to Indonesian music, and with the pre-Hispanic instrument ensemble Cuaucuicatl.

Alejandro Vega

He started his studies in guitar learning by his own. After that, he entered the Conservatorio Nacional. He took an interest in music from India and took several courses with Paul Livingstone (Pandit Ravi Shankar's disciple), Hollving Argaez and Siddhartha Siliceo. He has taken personal instruction on the sitar by Shalil Shankar, Shema Mukerjee and the above mentioned. He has worked in theatre, circus, diverse interdisciplinarian projects, Mohiniyattam, among others. He has presented work in different cultural festivals from different states of the country. He also plays the Cuban tres, the didjeridoo and Latin percussions. He is interested in the study of music through other approaches (historical, social, philoshophical), reason by which he currently is concluding his studies in History at UNAM. He participated at the Music and History seminars, as well as the Interdiciplinary Music Studies seminars, at the Faculty of Philoshophy and Letters of the same institution.

Abril Ghandi

Though she practices Mexican folklore, athletism and modern dance, it is in Mohiniyattam, classical style from the south of India, where she solidifies her dance. Her main instruction as mohiniyattam dancer took place in Kerala, at the Noopura Institute of Classical Dance, and later on at the Natana Kaisiki Research and Performing Centre for Mohiniyattam, under the tutelage of Smt. Nirmala Panicker, one of the masters of the style. She also takes on a Bachelor's in Mexican Studies at UTM. She practices yoga on a regular basis and, having mystical interests from a very early age, spiritual masters such as Doña Rosita, Gurudev Singh Khalsa and Lama Tenzin W. Rinpoche have guided her steps.

Abril's dance investigation focuses on the recovery of narrative elements in dance, as well as in the integration of Hindu classical dance as basis of movement stylization in free proposals, in the way other contemporary artists use ballet or modern dance, due to its sharpness in rhythm and to the richness in detail of eye expression, as well as hands and face. With this project she plunges into the adaptation of movements inspired by pre-Hispanic positions of the body.

Cristina Goletti (see Legitimate Bodies Dance Company)

Rudi Goblen

Rudi has performed alongside artists such as The Roots, Mos Def, De La Soul, Mf Doom and Def Jux. Besides his musical pursuits he has been breaking for over thirteen years and is an acclaimed B-Boy. His crew "Flipside Kings" have traveled in and out the country competing, judging, and winning various events in places such as France, South America, Holland, Canada, UK and Asia. Rudi is also a member of "D-Projects," a cross section of conservatory and street trained artists creating provocative contemporary performances and currently touring with their latest piece Scratch & Burn, a peace ritual that begs the question "when is war not the answer?" In addition, commissioned by Miami Light Project and the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, he premiered his one-man show Insanity at the Here & Now Festival in 2006. In the show written and performed by himself and directed by Teo Castellanos, his character wakes up to a nightmare plagued by financial burdens, apocalyptic prophecies, media propaganda and keeping up with the Jones, while trying to sleep through the American dream. Beatbox, rhyme and b-boy movements weave together his journey back to insane sanity. Rudi has now spent the last four years fueling his new found passion for theater/performance art and new creative expressions, while working to bring it and true hip-hop to a broader audience.

Anna Gottreich

I am a professional performer and teacher of Brazilian Dance and movement. I hold a Master's from UC Berkeley, where my focus was Afro-Caribbean "folk forms" in music, dance and languages. In addition, I am a linguist and educator. Currently I teach Spanish, French and am an English language learner Specialist (ESL) in the public schools.

With respect to my dance endeavors, I teach several multi-level classes, to adults and children. I have produced and choreographed dance/theatre projects/shows, both independently and in the public school sector, under the auspices of CARE (California Artists in Education).

I was lead dancer in San Francisco's award-winning Samba do Coraçao Dance Company, and I have been featured in several Bay Area performances, such as Ethnic Dance Festival (Samba and Afro) and have appeared on television (in Boston, morning show). Guest Lecturer/Demonstrator for several World Culture Day events throughout the Bay Area, for the past seven years.

My dance training and specific interests lie in Afro-Brazilian Orixa traditions, Carnaval Samba, regional and folkloric forms such as frevo, maracatu, and maculele. I studied Dunham Technique, and Brazilian Contemporaneo studies in Bahia, Brazil and in Miami, Florida at the INDAMI Institute. My teaching is greatly influenced by Afro-modern movement, (and this is certainly the new wave happening in Brazil, plugging in the so-called "traditional" to a modern dance discipline). Still, my "specialty" is Samba, and breaking steps down for beginners.

Ground Zero Dance Company (GZDC)

Its members:

Damion Bond

Damion witnesses the body as a study in balance, a structure whose efficiency relies on the seamless inter workings of its parts. A graduate of VCU's Dance Department, she had been highly trained in the craft of proper body movement and alignment techniques, but upon graduation, she desired a deeper understanding of and connection to the body. Learning Reiki, or healing energy movement, was her introduction to this world. In 2005, after three years of practice, Damion became a teacher of this art. That same year, she began studying Thai massage and Thai herbal massage with Tao Mountain School of Traditional Thai Massage and Herbal Medicine. Her interest lead her to Thailand where she learned under the tutelage of Baan "Mama" Nit, a renown massage master. In January 2008, she was entitled a teacher of Thai massage and Thai Herbal massage through Tao Mountain. After Thailand, she received national certification in traditional table massage, hot stone therapy, cranio-sacral technique, and pregnancy massage from the American Institute of Massage. Amidst this devotion to healing movement, Damion has remained passionate about dance. She currently performs and presents choreography with Ground Zero Dance Company and Amaranth Dance Company and holds both in high esteem for allowing her work, fused with healing energy touch and movement, to exist on stage.

Kathleen Legault

Artistic Associate, holds a degree in History and Education from the State University of New York at Potsdam where she began dancing under Diane Defries and Don Borsh. Her interests lie in transcending through dark retreat and connection; influences include Bartenieff Fundamentals, Klein Technique, Yoga, and contact improvisation. Ms. Legault has performed with Richmond Performing Arts Collective, Steve's House Dance Collective, Starr Foster Dance Project, Lane Gifford, Sidra Bell, Victoria Skinner, JoAnna Mendl Shaw, Pam England, Dim Sum Dance,

Nouvelle Burlesque and with Ground Zero Dance Company. Her recent work includes the collaborative duets Poor Edward and Epoch and has been performed in Virginia; New York; Burgos, Spain; and Puebla, Mexico. In addition to dancing, Kat is currently Administrative Director for Virginia Commonwalth University's Department of Theatre where she teaches and learns in Movement for the Actor.

Lea Marshall

Co-founder and Executive Director of Ground Zero Dance Company, and Producer/Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Dance & Choreography. Lea also serves as a freelance dance writer/critic for Style Weekly, Dance Magazine, and occasionally C-ville Weekly, RVA Magazine, Ballet-Dance Magazine and Dance International. Her writing has also appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, in the web-zine Delicate Monster, 64 Magazine, No Shame Theater, The Hook, and in Sacred Bearings: A Journal About Surviving. Lea received a BA in English from the University of Virginia in 1994, and began studying dance in college under Juanita Wilson, Mary Marshall, and Robert Cook. She has performed in various productions with Live Arts Theater Ensemble (Charlottesville, Virginia) since 1993, and from 1998-2000 she danced with Steve's House Dance Collective before helping to found Ground Zero. Working with Ground Zero Dance Company, Lea has produced the work of local, regional and national choreographers in a range of venues. For two years she worked as Administrative Coordinator for the Live Arts Technical Team, American High School Theater Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and she has also covered the Fringe as a dance critic from 2004-2006. She is also a member of the Dance Critics Association.

Rob Petres

Choreographer, is a co-founder of Ground Zero Dance Company. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992 with a BA in dance and choreography. In 1993 he co-founded the Richmond-based Steve's House Dance Collective with Ray Schwartz, where he worked as a choreographer, dancer, technical director, and lighting designer. He has served as a technical coordinator for Dance Theater Workshop, and as Technical Director and Lighting Designer for Live Arts Theater Ensemble in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rob has performed with the Zen Monkey Project, Cooper/England Dance Works, Chris Burnside and Dancers, and has choreographed for Live Arts Theater Ensemble, including Cabaret, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Batboy, Floyd Collins, and Urinetown. His work has been presented by VCU, Yes, Virginia Dance! and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. From 2004-2005 Rob served as Technical Coordinator for the American High School Theater Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Rob was awarded a 2004 Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography to assist in the creation of Moment of Flight, a groundbreaking dance theater work that premiered at Live Arts Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2005 and in Richmond, Virginia in 2006 to rave reviews. He is currently working with Dogtown Dance, LLC to create a new dance venue in Richmond which, in addition to housing the work of Ground Zero Dance Company, will present the work of local, national, and international dance artists.

Miguel Gutierrez

Miguel Gutierrez is a dance and music artist based in Brooklyn. He creates group work with the Powerful People and he also makes solos. Since 2001 he has made enter the seen, I succumb, Sabotage (in collaboration with Jaime Fennelly), dAMNATION rOAD, Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies, myendlesslove, and Everyone. He collaborates with a wide range of contemporary dance, music and visual artists.

Gutierrez's work is borne from basic questions regarding existence and the theatrical situation: Who are we and why are we here? What binds the performers and viewers in an attentive space of perception? How is a dance performance a practice for experiencing the intricacy of the mind/body system? These questions drive the work, and the urgent bodies inside of it. These bodies are full of desire: to be loved, to communicate, and to understand the complexity of identity. Gutierrez is interested in "hyper presence," where the real becomes more real, while restlessly situated within the artifice of the stage. He is fascinated by how the transcendent can emerge out of the ordinary at any moment.

His work has been presented in NYC at Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, MIX: The NY Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, across the country at Velocity Dance Center in Seattle, Diverseworks in Houston, and the Flynn Center in Burlington, and internationally at festivals and venues such as Performance Space in Sydney, ImPuls Tanz in Vienna, Springdance Festival in Utrecht, Kampnagel in Hamburg and eXplore Festival in Bucharest. He has received support for his work from the NEA, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts' Fellowship and BUILD program, and the NPN Creative Commissioning Fund.

Miguel curated the infamous, but now defunct, SHTUDIO SHOW at Chez Bushwick for a year. He also curated the Dance and Process program at The Kitchen in '05 and '06. He has performed as a singer with My Robot Friend and Antony and the Johnsons.

Gutierrez has also worked as a performer with several other influential contemporary artists: Sarah Michelson, Joe Goode Performance Group, Ann Liv Young, Juliette Mapp, Jennifer Lacey, Yvonne Meier, Jennifer Monson, Erin Cornell and Deborah Hay. Currently he is touring internationally in French choreographer Alain Buffard's latest work, (Not) a Love Song. Miguel is twice the winner of a Bessie - New York Dance and Performance Award: one in 2006 for choreography for Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies, and one in 2002 for his work as a dancer with John Jasperse Company.

Miguel regularly teaches classes in technique and creative process all over the world. Most recently he invented DEEP AEROBICS, an absurd(ist) workout for the leftist imagination revolutionary in all of us. www.miguelgutierrez.org and www.myspace.com/DEEPAEROBICS

Amanda Hamp

Amanda Hamp is currently working with Jane Hawley in facilitating and developing the Movement Fundamentals curriculum for dance training in the Theatre/Dance department at Luther College (Decorah, Iowa, USA). She wonders what dance does, and practices possible answers through teaching, choreographing and performing. She's in the middle of a collaboration with eight movement artists, a papermaker, a costume designer and a couple set and lighting designers to make Paper Weight, an evening-length dance that probes issues around the Mexico/US border.

Before returning to Luther as Assistant Professor in Dance she did projects with modern dance companies and artists in Tucson, Arizona. There she also began practicing Skinner Releasing and aerial dancing, which opened new realms of consciousness and physical dis/orientation. She is a regular collaborator with Black Earth Collaborative Arts in Decorah, Iowa. Other dance experiences include her pursuits as a student at Luther College (BA), the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance (Professional Diploma in Dance Studies), and the University of Iowa (MFA).

Jane Hawley/Luther College

Jane Hawley received her training from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York and the University of Illinois earning the degree of MFA in performance and choreography. Performance opportunities have taken her to Eastern Europe and the ACDFA National Festival at the Kennedy Center where she received Dance Magazine's Award for Outstanding Performer. Performances also include the New York premiere of Bebe Miller's Sanctuary at the Merce Cunningham Space. As a modern dance artist, Hawley has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, Michigan Arts and Cultural Affairs, Traverse Area Arts Council and Iowa Arts Council.

She co-founded Black Earth Collaborative Arts Company,a non-profit performance company based in Leelanau County now residing in Decorah, Iowa, to promote and produce original community cultural and collaborative performance works by professional artists of diverse art forms. Hawley is deeply curious in the renovation of dance training and designed the "Movement Fundamentals" curriculum implemented into the Luther College Theatre/Dance department program in 2001. The curriculum is rooted in somatic techniques and training is grounded in the concepts of: alignment, function, range, efficiency, vocabulary and intention.

John Jenkinson (performing with Mirla Criste)

John Jenkinson has discovered that contact improvisation is more than a dance - it is a conduit through which he can funnel his creativity. After he was introduced to the form under the instruction of Mirla Criste in the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Georgia, he began appearing in several dance and theatre productions in the Atlanta and Athens area. He claims that contact has opened his body and his mind, and hopes to continue to integrate all that he has learned from dance into his life on the stage. Since acquiring his Bachelor of Arts degree from UGA, John has realized his dream of being an actor living hand-to-mouth in Atlanta, Georgia, where he is currently developing a commedia dell'arte troupe - a stylized form of comedy improv.

Karen Jensen

Karen Jensen is a Senior at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, USA. She is continuously fascinated with going into self to find answers to questions rather than initially seeking answers from an outside source. Her passion lies in the practice of Authentic Movement, which cultivates a deeper awareness of how the self is formed, what consistent movement patterns are present and how individuals choose to relate to themselves, others and the environment.

Tina Kambour

Tina Kambour came to Oklahoma from New York in 1991 and is on faculty at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst and her choreography has been commissioned by universities, festivals and professional companies. In June 2004 her work Keeping Things Whole was performed for the National American College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. She is currently studying Somatic Movement Therapy under the direction of Martha Eddy. She is a visiting faculty member for the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida and she has taught for the Bill Evans Institute of Dance.

Tuba Oztekin Koymen (see Susan Douglas Roberts)

Sandra Lacy

Sandra holds a BA in Psychology and is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Dancing in London. She has performed with the Maryland Ballet, Impetus Dance Theater, Phoenix Repertory Dance, Path Dance Company, James Hansen's Assemblage Dance Company and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company. Currently Ms. Lacy is co-artistic director of Lacy&Shade Solo Duet Dance Works, a company combining the distinct personalities of Sandra Lacy and Mary Williford-Shade. Recent performances of the company include The Out of the Loop Theater Festival in Addison, Texas; The Toronto Fringe Festival in Canada; The Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts; The Yes Virginia Dance Festival in Richmond and The Maryland Showcase for Choreographers.

Ms. Lacy is the recipient of six Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in Solo Dance Performance. She is a member of the Dance Faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and The Baltimore School for the Arts.

Karen Langevin

Karen Langevin received a BA in Dance and Anthropology from California State University Long Beach and is a certified Alexander Teacher from ACAT. She has taught and performed in Arizona, Ethiopia, Kenya and New York where she worked with Stephanie Skura, Viveca Vázquez, and Doug Elkins, among others. Currently, she is part of the faculty at the Music Conservatory of Puerto Rico,where she teaches the Alexander Technique. She also teaches yoga, improvisation, and has a private practice in San Juan. Karen has been studying, investigating, and researching movement for over 25 years, of which the last 15 have been focused on improvisation. Together with Eduardo Alegría and Lydia Platon, she presented DE LA MANGA, an improvisational series, at the Teatro Salvador Brau and Teatro Estudio Yerbabruja. Most recently she created ATLAS CONSENTIDO, a full-evening work presented at Teatro Estudio Yerbabruja and QUEHACER (a solo) shown in Homenaje a la Mentira y la Muerte at Café Teatro Araba. She is mom to Diego and Eva.

Janice Lancaster (see VIA Dance Collaborative)

François-Joseph Lapointe

He holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Université de Montréal (1992). Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin (1992-1994). In June 1994, François-Joseph Lapointe becomes Assistant Professor in the Département de Sciences Biologiques at the Université de Montréal; he is promoted to Associate Professor in 1998, and to Full Professor in 2003. In 1990, he receives the Academic Gold Medal of the Governor General of Canada, awarded to the best doctoral student in each Canadian university. In 1996, the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) awards him the Prize for Outstanding Research. He receives the Prize for Excellence in Teaching from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2002, and from the Université de Montréal in 2003. He has published 80 academic papers and presented his work at 120 scientific conferences. His research is presently funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and by the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (FQRNT).

As an artist and researcher in Arts, he is interested in the application of biological concepts to dance composition and he has created the field of Choreogenetics. He is currently pursuing a second Ph.D. in Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal. François-Joseph Lapointe is the current director of the Laboratoire d'écologie Moléculaire et évolution (LEMEE) at Université de Montréal.

Sue Lauther

Sue teaches and practices contact improvisation in Troy, New York, USA, where she also teaches contemporary dance, improvisation, repertory, and ballet at the Emma Willard School, with special interests in dance history and composition. Sue has taught dance around the nation in such places as Saint Mary's College in Indiana, Northwestern State University in Louisiana, Lane Community College in Oregon, Weber State University in Utah, Utah State University, and the University of Illinois, where she received her M.F.A. She has served as a guest teacher and choreographer for projects around the world, including Argentina, Taiwan, New Zealand, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Sue enjoys the metaphors she finds within the contact form: support, self-sufficiency, awareness, communication and managing the unexpected. Sue believes that technique is being able to demonstrate physical intention clearly, so she approaches teaching as a vehicle to help her students explore, expand, and clarify their options. She encourages her dancers be part of the artistic process. Her choreography encompasses a broad range of styles and perspectives - from playful to pensive, zany to formal.
E-mail: slauther@emmawillard.org

Claudia Lavista (see Delfos Danza Contemporanea)

Kathleen Legault (see Ground Zero Dance Company)

Legitimate Bodies Dance Company (Nick Bryson & Cristina Goletti)

Legitimate Bodies Dance Company, led by artistic duo Nick Bryson and Cristina Goletti, is one of the most thrilling new dance initiative in Ireland. Nick and Cristina met on the Daghdha Dance Company's mentoring programme and started a choreographic collaboration that ended up in"History is still a game" a solo performed by Cristina at the Performatica Festival in Mexico. Their second piece, a collaboration with musician Nick Bankes and dramaturg Talal Al Muhanna, "Lingering on a Diagonal", has been supported by Dance Ireland under the Incubator Programme for Choreogrpher and was performed as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival 2007 at the DanceHouse with great success of audience and pubblic. ("Words and motions in perfect balance..." Irish Times, Sept 2007) Shortly after that they founded Legitimate Bodies that became the company in residence at the Birr Theatre and Arts Centre. The company is generously supported by Offaly County Coucil and the Arts Council. Since then they toured in various venues in Ireland, Italy and Northern Ireland.

Formed by:

Nick Bryson

Nick, originally from Belfast, North Ireland, trained as a dancer at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds and as a choreographer at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. He worked as a choreographer in residence at the Firkin Crane in Cork, taking his creations to Dublin, Amsterdam, New York and Basel amongst other places. As a dancer he has worked for Rebus, This Torsion, Myriad and Daghdha Dance Companies. He also holds an MA in Performance from the University of Limerick.

Cristina Goletti

Cristina, who is from Italy, trained at the London Contemporary Dance School where she gained a Postgraduate Diploma with distinction dancing and touring across Europe with Edge, the Postgraduate Company of LCDS. As a dancer, she performed works by Hofesh Schechter, Jonathan Lunn, Charles Linehan, Maresa Von Stockert and Yann Lheraux, amongst others. In Ireland as part of the Daghdha Mentoring Programme, she was in Michael Klien's Sand Section and in Ruins for Myriad Dance Company. She has also been teaching release technique across Europe, Japan and Mexico.

Nick Bankes

Nick plays double bass and base guitar. He worked as a session and West End musician in the 70's, before graduating in Psychology with an MA from University College Cork. He now works as a well-respected psychotherapist in Ireland and the U.K. He maintains a lively interest in music and arts and he is chairman of the Image Festival committee in Waterford.

Bryan Leister (see Jane Franklin Dance)

Vicente Leyva Maldonado

Vincente is a dancer, choreographer and educador, born in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. He began his dance studies at the age of sixteen at Mazatlán's Escuela Profesional de Danza, where he got the degree of professional dancer, in 2004.

In 2002 he was invited by choreographer and dancer Xitlali Piña to be a part of the piece Rutas y Voces, which won second place at the Premio Nacional de Coreografía, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. That same year he received a scholarship from the Instituto de Cultura de Zacatecas in the field of Artistic Individual Development. He was invited in 2004 by Santiago de Chile's Hunabkù Danza Contemporánea to take part in various projects.

With the aid of FONCA's program Apoyo para Estudios en el Extranjero (2005), he traveled to Madrid, Spain, where he was invited by Carmen Werner and her company, Provisional Danza, to continue developing himself as dancer and choreographer. There, he worked as assistant director and pupil, rehearsing, preparing tours and new creations. During this period, he participated in the festivals Madrid en Danza, Veranos de la Villa, Noche de Solos, and Noche de Duetos.

In 2006 he founded the group La Luciérnaga Danza Contemporánea. That same year he received the choreographic composition award at the Festival Internacional José Limón, at Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico. He also received Sinaloa's FOESCA's scholarship in the area of Artistic Individual Development. In the year 2007, he was honored with one of the grants offered by the Consejo Ciudadano de Mazatlán, in which he participated with the project "Escena para tres".

He has participated in various editions of the José Limón Festival, Festival Cultural Mazatlán, Festival Maz-Cultura, Festival Sinaloa de las Artes, II Encuentro de Danza Contemporánea de Guadalajara, Premio Regional de Coreografía 2002, Premio Nacional de Danza INBA-UAM 2002, Premio Miguel Covarrubias 2006, Premio de Pintura Antonio López Sáenz, and Festival Yervanìz Creel, in Chihuahua.

He is currently co-director, choreographer, dancer and teacher of La Luciérnaga, based in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. In it, he has developed a series of choreographic pieces that integrate the group's repertoire.

Brianne Barrow Little (see Jane Franklin Dance)

Laurie MacFarlane

Laurie MacFarlane has performed her choreography and improvisations for over 20 years in theaters, studios, churches, jazz clubs, cafes, a friend's garage, empty storefront windows, sidewalks and on the street. She currently resides in Geneseo, New York.

Leilani Maciel Cabañas

She received the scholarship "Apoyo a Humanidades" in 2002 to Major in Dance at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP). From her entrance until the end of her studies she was part of the Compañía UDLA Danza, performing sixteen pieces of known choreographers such as Sunny Savoy, Rip Parker, Pedro Beiro, Terrie Poore, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Mayra Morales, John Mead, Pilar Gallegos and Ray Schwartz. In 2005 she was a part of an academic exchange at SUNY Potsdam. There she formed part of the company Borders, performing and competing with the choreography of Tiffany Rhynard at a national level and winning one of the first ten places.

As a performer, she has participated and been invited to important festivals such as Festival Internacional de Puebla, Festival Nacional de Danza Contemporánea Zona Centro "Raúl Flores Canelo", and Festival Latinoamericano Callejero de Artes Escénicas y Multidisciplinarias in Mexico City, among others. She was a member of Compañía Sunny Savoy in 2006, which toured Mexico. As a choreographer she has presented her works in stages like Auditorio UDLAP, Casa de la Cultura Puebla, Auditorio UVM CLV, and she was invited to form part of Performática 2007 with her piece hombREanimal.

She received her Dance Major degree in 2007, graduating with Honors and obtaining the Silver Medallion (by virtue of getting the highest accumulated average of her generation). She was selected to perform in Heidi Latsky's piece From the Limb, which was presented at the Steps Choreography/Performance Program 2007 in New York. During her stay, she continued her training with highlight artists such as Elisa Monte, Stephen Petronio and Company, Jacquelyn Buglisi, Bradley Shelver and Kevin Wynn, among others.

Nowadays, she serves as a contemporary dance teacher, as a performer of AXIS Plástica and a choreographer of her own projects in collaboration with other new artists.

Barbara Magee

Barbara Magee has an MFA/Dance from the University of Illinois. During her career, Ms. Magee has worked collaboratively with several contemporary companies as artistic director, choreographer and performer, showcasing work and teaching workshops throughout the United States, as well as Canada, Mexico, Germany and Japan. She is a certified Pilates instructor through Power Pilates of New York City and currently teaches ballet, contemporary dance, repertory and Pilates at the Emma Willard School in Troy, NY.

Barbara Mahler

BARBARA MAHLER has taught daily classes for 27 years plus, educating and teaching (with, and inspired by, Susan Klein) a generation of dancers. She is s a widely respected dance teacher and choreographer, very active in the development contemporary dance technique. Essentially self-taught, she brings to her classes the perspective, understanding and experience of working on her own movement re-education. Barbara was a Movement Research artist in residence for the 2000-01 season, is for the 2006-08 season, is an adjunct faculty at Hunter College, NYC, and is on the artist advisory board of BAX. She is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Barbara was originally inspired by pioneer dance kinesiologist Dorothy Vislocky. She also maintains a private practice in Zero Balancing and other healing modalities.

"Mahler, a noted teacher, views dance training as a voyage of self-discovery. Barbara Mahler roots her choreography in distillation, as if she aims to extract the essence of her ideas, making them calmer and purer. The image is that of a seesaw in perfect, unwavering equilibrium, a woman at ease in control."(Village Voice 2007)

Heather Maloney

Heather Maloney is a performer, choreographer and activist originally from Virginia. Her choreography has been presented at Florida Dance Festival, New World School of the Arts, Fundanza Comuna Venezuela. She has been awarded residencies at the Queens Museum of Art, New York (2003); at The Center For New Dance Development in Portland, Maine (2005); NPN Residency through a Community Fund presenter Tigertail Productions June 2004. She has been awarded the Choreographer's Fellowship from the Miami Dade Cultural Affairs for 2007. Maloney is Co-Director of InKub8, a south Florida-based open share collective. She holds a BFA from New World School of the Arts and has taught workshops at New World School of the Arts, Bates College as well as in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. Maloney is currently an adjunct faculty in the dance department at Florida International University.

Lydia Margules

Lydia's been a director since 1993, staging dramas such as Hampton, Lorca, Liera and other collective creations; she is also an actress with more than 20 years of experience. She is a dancer, assistant in direction, and a lightning designer. She studied in Mexico and France, majoring in Acting and Dance. She is a Theatre Professor in diverse institutions and has published works in different specialized magazines and Mexican newspapers.

Lea Marshall (see Ground Zero Dance Company)

Ulises Martínez Martínez

Actor and dancer, Ulises has a BA in Dramatic Literature from UNAM's Centro Universitario de Teatro. He has danced in companies such as Utopia, Contradanza, La manga, Asalto diario, Humanicorp and currently is a member of Bruja Danza Contemporánea. The work he presents tonight in Performática 2008 is a dance theatre solo, which originally premiered in Barcelona, Spain. It is titled Instantes del Deseo.

Alicia Marván

Alicia is a performance and visual artist devoted to innovative and creative works that focus on social aspects. Her interests in interdisciplinary art have taken her on a continuous investigation of the diversity of media that explores space, form, movement, time and thought. She currently is Director of the Interdisciplinarian Art & Ecology Residency in Guapamacátaro, Michoacán. She is Visual Communications Coordinator for New York City's Gluckman Mayner Architects, and she collaborates with independent artists from various disciplines.

Born in Mexico City, she began her modern dance training in the Limón, Graham and Cunningham techniques with Cristina Medellín and Polish choreographer Agnieszka Laska. She went on to train in postmodern dance and improvisation in the United States in 1996 and since then has been cultivating such forms of movement through studies with Ana Halprin, Nina Martin, Mary Reich, Jane Blount, Karen Schaffman, Mary Overlie and members of Trisha Brown's company, among others.

Alicia Marván is part of Lower Left Performance Collective, an avant-garde group established in San Diego, California, since 1994. She is also co-director and founder of the Head On Off Dancetheater Ensemble, with which she presented work in alternative spaces and dance for cinema and video. Other participations in scenic projects of Alicia's include working with Keith Hennessy, Nina Martin, Heads On Fire, Sawako Nakayasu, Katsura Kan, Nortec and Trummerflora. She has also directed several productions both in Mexico and the US. She has been in residence at the Sushi Performance and Visual Art as an artist, a teacher at Morelia's CEDART High School, also a teacher in San Diego's State University and as an artist once more at the San Diego Center for the Moving Arts.

In 2004, Marván served as Curatorial Assistant and Production Director of Sushi Performance and Visual Art's Red Ball, in San Diego, California. This event was attended by over 1000 people and included a plastic arts exposition, alongside more than ten dance, performance and music acts. In 2005, she was artistically involved at the Satellite Project, of which she was also Production Director; it was a performance project co-produced by San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art. This collaboration involved five renowned postmodern dance and performance directors: Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad from Body Cartography Project (Minneapolis); Keith Hennessy (San Francisco); Nina Martin (Texas) and Lionel Popkin (Los Angeles). It also included more than 20 dancers, performance artists, musicians, technicians and many people that were part of the four presentations.

Zap McConnell

Zap McConnell began investigating dance/movement performance at North Carolina School of the Arts in 1988. Upon leaving NCSA, she began traveling, splitting her time between performance, visual arts and direct environmental activism in Northern California, New York City, Idaho, Mexico, Costa Rica and Colorado. Zap has been involved with the Zen Monkey Project since 1995 performing, teaching, stage managing, producing and directing evening-length pieces. She facilitated the New Dance Space and co-facilitated Studio 11 at the McGuffey Art Center, organized performance festivals and ZMP's summer dance intensives. She is also a visual artist who regularly creates and prints cartoon books, paints, makes murals, sculpture and has built performance installation sets that also included lights and costumes. Zap has been a main organizer for many large scale community endeavours, spanning from a huge local artist created carnival to an in-depth political community weekend to ten years adoption of a highly impaired stream. For the past nine years, Zap has been a full time core teacher at the Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts, an alternative high school in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Gene Medler

Founder and director of the highly acclaimed North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble (NCYTE) founded in 1982 and director of the NC Rhythm Tap Festival. His teaching credits include Elon University (currently), Duke University, Meredith College, St. Louis Tap Festival, American Dance Festival, The Ballet School of Chapel Hill, the Saratov Music Conservatory (Russia), the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, NY City Tap Festival, Tap Encontro (Rio de Janeiro), The Hot Shoe Show (Vienna, Austria), Feet Beat (Helsinki, Finland), the fourth annual tap dance festival in Berlin and the Eighth Heidelberger Steptanz-Festival (Germany). Selected performance experience includes performances with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, solos in Duke Ellington's Nutcracker, Ellington's David Danced from his sacred music, Rising Stars of Tap (Colorado Dance Festival), and the Great Tap Reunion (Boston). Gene has received grants from the Durham Arts Council, the NC Arts Council, and the Orange County Arts Commission. He was featured in the March 1998 Dance Teacher Now magazine, is recipient of the News and Observer (Raleigh, NC) "Tar Heel of the Week", and won the 1998 "Indy Award" for contribution to the arts awarded by the Independent Magazine. He performed a duet with tap dance legend, Brenda Bufalino, at the World Dance Festival (March, 1999) held at the town Hall Theater in NYC. Gene was also profiled in the September/October Carolina Alumnae Review, can be seen in the PBS special "JUBA, Master of Percussive Dance" and appears in the December 2001 issue of Southern Living. He was chosen to be the 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Dance Alliance annual award for his ongoing commitment to dance in the state of North Carolina and resounding achievement as a dance artist. Most recently, in 2005, he was invited to be a guest teacher at Broadway Dance Center in New York. This occurred concurrently with NCYTE performing a one week run at the Joyce Theater as part of Tap City, the New York City tap festival.

Ixchel Méndez Salmón (see Colectivo Independiente de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa)

MonstaH BlacK a.k.a Reginald Ellis Crump

MonstaH BlacK a.k.a. Reginald Ellis Crump is a self-shaped Messiah of the Funk, bringing his Virginia roots and worldly peregrinations to bear on everything from class consciousness to gender politics. His wildly multidimensional works of art employ the disciplines of musical compositions, choreography, theater and video in seamless harmony. Beginning with his days as a choreographer and performance student at Virginia Commonwealth University, MonstaH has developed a signature performance strategy, marrying elements of circus frenzy with meditative butoh inspired movement. MESAMI is the name he has coined for his original form and its underlying methodology.

A generous grant from Career Transitions for dancers in 2000 helped to get the Sounds Of MESAMI off the ground, resulting in MonstaH's production of two collections of original music melding house/electronica and funk. Yang Poodle Animatron and Heaven Hell and a Place Called Mars, both performed by an outfit appropriately named Ministry Uv Funk. MESAMI Groove Music is MonstaH's independent production company, encompassing a recording label as well as fashion and choreography departments. Based in Harlem since 1999, MESAMI has garnered support from various progressive arts organizations such as Mason Rhynes Productions (Washington, DC), producers of his one man show Skipping Backwards for Capitol Fringe. Skipping Backwards is an evening of music, dance, theater and video addressing gender complexity through the eyes of an African American child growing up in Colonial Williamsburg.

Additional support has been provided by Blackout Arts Collective, Topaz Arts, and Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center (THPAC), where MonstaH was commissioned to create an evening-length work entitled THIS for the Toenails Of Steel Choreographic Festival of 2003. At the world premier of THIS, the theater space at Long Island University was transformed to simulate a womb-like environment, using scent diffusion, set design and sound scapes all masterminded by MonstaH, who's skill in costume design formed visual links among the dancers, members of the live band, and features of the stage.

Site-specific performances have been a specialty of Monstah's through the years, most notably The Field Trip Series, The Acid Box Cabaret, and Delicious Hunger, Hunger Delicious, all staged in Washington DC, in spaces from public sidewalks to The National Theater. It was in these early site-specific works that the roots of MESAMI began to hold. MonstaH's presence has been felt and continually sought in diverse creative scenes. In the late 90's, his single 'The Nerve' (released on Stride Records) hit the east coast House Music underground hard. Simultaneously, MonstaH was expanding his reputation in the dance world, touring internationally with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and working with choreographers from Bill T. Jones (Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin) to Melissa Fenley and Maida Withers Dance Construction.

Monstah's current work in music video direction can be viewed on recording artists Manchildblacks music video 'To The Sky' which is currently in rotation on BET J, at www.manchildblack.com or on youtube.com. A true renaissance man, MonstaH BlacK, promises to remain a force to be reckoned with in the world of cutting edge performance. By Karma Johnson.

Emily Morgan

Emily Morgan is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Texas at El Paso. She received her MFA in Choreography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she was a Graduate Teaching Assistant. Emily has taught at Elon University and continues to teach each summer at the North Carolina Governor's School. She has studied extensively at the Merce Cunningham Studio, as well as at the Trisha Brown Studio and the Limón Institute. Emily holds a BA in Dance from Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble (NCYTE) (see Gene Medler)

Ruben T. Ornelas

He has presented his dances in the Americas and East Africa. He has taught at universities and professional schools in Guatemala, Mexico, United States, United Kingdom and Uganda. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Dance at State University of New York, Geneseo.

José Pablo Jiménez (see Gandharva)

Joy Packard

Joy Packard is an associate teacher at the Tamalpa Institute in California, a centre for movement-based expressive arts therapy and education and has a private practice in the UK as a movement educator. She works in schools, with community groups and individual clients.

Ten years ago, after working for more than 20 years in training and development in the corporate world she began to develop a more somatic and arts-based approach to her work. Dance for Peace builds on this approach. In linking the spiritual with a social cause, and using multi-modal art forms as a vehicle for learning - about ourselves, each other and the world around us - it brought together the two threads of her work into a satisfying whole.

"When people come to us feeling stuck, heart sick, or searching for meaning in life and career, their creative capacities often seem dulled. The symbolic act of creating a dance, a drawing or a piece of writing affirms the basic life force in us - the impulse to create. These activities touch the emotion, the psyche and the soul and increase a person's creative resources for decision-making. In an increasingly disembodied society, embodied creativity becomes an important problem-solving tool for everyday living rather than a distant childhood memory or hobby."

Ania Paula Páez Peláez

Ania Paula Páez Peláez is originally from Mexico City. She began her studies in dance in 1999 with Sergio Gómez and his group Codigodance. In 2002 she entered Universidad de las Américas-Puebla, majoring in Dance. She received a scholarship for excellency and the Support to Humanities Scholarship. She was a member of the Dean's List in 2002 and 2005 and she also received a distinction from UDLA's José Gaos College.

She was a member of Sunny Savoy's Modern Dance Company from 2004 to 2006, touring nationally in Morelia, Oaxaca, Monterrey, Tlaxcala, Guadalajara and Puebla; and abroad in places like Portugal and Cyprus, where she became member of UNESCO's International Dance Council. She was a member of the company UDLA Danza throughout her entire career, where she worked with choreographers such as Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Jan Erkert, Rip Parker, Sunny Savoy, Ray Schwartz and Holly Williams; and a member of Ballet UDLA from 2003 to 2005, under Pedro Beiro's direction. In the summer of 2005 she participated at the American Dance Festival at Duke University in North Carolina with an academic credit and a full scholarship as Staff Assistant, continuing in this way her training with renowned teachers. In the summer of 2007 she attented Zen Monkey Project in Georgia, Athens, also with a full scholarship and participating as interpreter on the final performance and in projects of creative collaboration.

In 2006, she collaborated on the reasearch "La danza contemporánea callejera en México 1985-1995", under the direction of César Delgado Martínez, at the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información de la Danza José Limón, as part of the Nacional Center for the Arts. Last October she presented her dissertation with a piece called En Construcción, attaining the best grades and an Honor Mention, as well as being invited to present a fragment of her piece at Fall 2007's production of UDLA Danza.

Rob Petres (see Ground Zero Dance Company)

Dawn Poirer (see VIA Dance Collaborative)

Denise Posnak

Denise has performed, choreographed and taught throughout the United States and Hungary. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Chapman University with a degree in Education, she moved to Budapest, Hungary where she taught English and Dance in public high schools from 1998-2000. In 2006 she completed a MFA in dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where her research included somatic practices in the dance classroom, dance for the camera, and site-specific art. She believes strongly in collaboration of art forms and artists and has collaborated with musicians, filmmakers and visual artists since 2000. She is a certified Pilates instructor and continues her Pilates research through Janice Dulak and master teacher, Romana Krysanowska. She has served on faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently on faculty at the University of Georgia at Athens.

Jill Priest

Jill Priest completed the Master of Fine Arts in Choreography and Performance from Texas Woman's University and currently serves as the Dance Education Degree Coordinator at the University of Central Oklahoma. Prior to joining the faculty at UCO, she founded and directed Tulsa Contemporary Dance Theatre, presenting work at the Living Arts New Genre Festival, the Tulsa Performing Arts Center and the Nightingale Theatre. For four years, Jill served as Dance Program Coordinator at Northeastern State University and Artistic Director of the GoVertigo Dance Company.

Scott Putman

Scott Putman is an Associate Professor in dance and choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Amaranth Contemporary Dance as well as the creator of the Elemental Body Alignment System. He is also a resident choreographer of Pasadena Dance Theater and continues to be a faculty member of California State Summer School of the Arts. His work is continually being seen nationally and internationally at dance festivals, choreography showcases as well as through commissions by both ballet and modern companies. Scott's acclaimed choreography has received several awards and was awarded the 2005 National Choreography Plan Award for Exceptional Choreography from RDA, Pacific. He has danced for Mordine and Company Dance Theatre, Dimitrius Klein Dance Company, Minnesota Ballet, Ballet Theatre of Chicago, Donald McKayle, David Alan, Douglas Becker and Geri Houlihan. Scott Received his BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and MFA from the University of California at Irvine, where he was a chancellors fellow and William Gillespie Scholar.

Nellie Rainwater (see Jane Franklin Dance)

Alejandra Ramírez

Dancer, choreographer and dance educator. She got her BA in Dance at Universidad de las Américas-Puebla. At that same institution she received the Mary O. Jenkins Scholarship to Academic Excellency. She is a founding member and director of the group Bruja Danza.

She has studied with teachers such as: Guillermina Bravo, Rosa Romero, Juan Manuel Ramos, Gerardo Delgado, Alicia Sánchez, Bill Evans, Susan Douglas Roberts, Charlotte Boy-Christensen, Miguel Mancillas, David Franco, Rogelio Guerra, Tomaj Trenda, Francisco Illescas, Vera Sander, Sunny Savoy, Alan Danielson, Diego Vorrath, David Zambrano, Pedro Beiro, Akram Khan, Georgina Tabaco, among others.

Alejandra has created several pieces, since 2001 to date. They have been presented at different festivals and venues, both nationally and abroad. Some of her works are: Navegando, Aire, El rincón de los niños tristes, Con problemas de espacio, Ecos..., Caída Libre (de los seres con inercia al vacío), Solo, Sin par, Rojo en niebla, Ecodistancia, Caída, Cazadora de astros, Mmmmmm..., Punto de partida, Fuga (seres en extinción), among others.

She was invited to join the group of choreographers that make up the Permanent Workshop of Choreographic Creation, a project supported by the Secretaría de Cultura del Estado de Puebla, 2003 to 2004. She was also asked to participate in Puebla's Festival de Danza Contemporánea Poesía en Movimiento, in 2004; and in the Muestra Internacional de Danza de Oaxaca, presenting the piece Ecos... mientras el olvido se aleja, also in 2004.

In Colombia, she was invited to the Festival Universitario de Danza and to the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Foundation, in the city of Bogota. She also performed at Medellín's Muestra Internacional de Danza Contemporánea, with the piece Ecodistancia, in 2004. In February 2006 she traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to perform Caída at the Centro Les Corts. During 2007 she was invited by UDLA-P to create an original choreographic work for their company, UDLA-DANZA. She was also invited by Michoacán's Red Serpiente Festival to be a choreographer in residency; FONCA, Channel 145 ATV and Televisión Educativa invited her as director of Bruja Danza to be a part of the series "Entre Danzantes", in which the company was showcased in its entirety. She performed at the Tercer Encuentro de Jóvenes Creadores FONCA in San Luis Potosí. The piece Fuga (seres en extinción), was selected for competition at the Premio de la Creación Coreográfica Contemporánea Miguel Covarrubias.

She has been twice suppported by FONCA, in the fields of Artistic Residencies Mexico-Colombia and Young Creators (Choreography). She has also received FOESCAP's (Fondo para la Cultura y las Artes del Estado de Puebla) support, in the field of Young Creators.

Since 2003, she has been part of Compañía Serafín Aponte Danza, performing in different forums in Mexico City. She is full-time teacher at Centro Cultural Ollín Yoliztli's Escuela Profesional de Danza Contemporánea. There she teaches: Graham, Release and Experimental Workshops. She is also part of the Academic Council there.

Bogota's Danza Común Foundation invited her to teach two Graham Technique summer intensive workshops: Use of Space and Breaking Down the Body, in 2004. She was invited by Ballet Independiente in 2007 as trainer of the company, teaching postmodern techniques.

Camille Renarhd

Camille Renarhd (France), dancer and choreographer, received her Masters in Choreography/Scenography at ENSATT (National School of Arts and Techniques) France. She worked on different dance creations (2005-06) with the group Essais, in a international choreographic project at CNDC, the National Center of Contemporary Dance, France. Last year, she danced for the american choregrapher Deborah Hay and she received the 'Les Inclassables' prize from AFAA for her choreography in Montreal. In 2007 she created her own company - Company LO and performed in Montreal, Paris and London. She is interested in finding primitive movements in connection with the fluids inside the body. She is passionate about sound and movement in all of its forms.

Rodanza

The group was formed in April 2005. Through the creation of a physical and imaginary space where scenic proposals are shown, in a clear and accessible way, merging different dance languages, Rodanza means to bring the spectator closer to the actual dance event. Rodanza is an independent group born in Puebla City from its founders' need to generate a space in which they would be able to professionalize dance. It is formed by artists fully devoted to the dancer's work; such people have embraced this activity as their way of living.

Julie Rothschild

Julie Rothschild is an independent artist living in Athens, Georgia. She is co-founder of Floorspace and Warehouse Collective. Julie began her modern dance training at Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, Ohio in 1983 and continued to pursue her interest in dance and performance at Colorado College and Ohio State University. She has worked with Prairie Wind Dancers (Lawrence, Kansas), Aha! Dance Theatre (Kansas City), Miki Liszt Dance Company (Charlottesville, Virginia), Live Arts Theatre (Charlottesville), Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (Takoma Park, Maryland), and Zen Monkey Project (Charlottesville), with whom she continues to collaborate. Julie teaches and performs locally and internationally and has recently become a certified Alexander Technique Teacher.

Andee Scott

Andee Scott is a performer, choreographer, and educator. Currently, Andee is working on a solo commissioning project with US and international choreographers Jeanine Durning, Lenka Flory, Claudia Lavista, Kyung-eun Lee, and Elizabeth Gillaspy. Andee will premiere the series of solos in the Fuse Box Festival (May 1-4, 2008) in Austin, Texas. Previously, Andee has performed with Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks and Blue Lapis Light, a site-specific aerial dance company directed by Sally Jacques.

As a choreographer, Andee is a multi-media artist interested in political, feminist, and lesbian issues. Her most recent work, Portrait, adapted the Grand Waltz from Les Sylphides from the stage to a wall. Andee has created work for Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks, Dance Repertory Theatre, and Texas Christian University.

Currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Andee teaches ballet, modern, Pilates, and choreography nationally and internationally. She is a certified Pilates Instructor and registered massage therapist. Andee received her MFA from Texas Woman's University.

Sermini (see BLUE LAPIS LIGHT)

Jerónimo Serna (see Gandharva)

Rachael L. Shaw

Rachael L. Shaw is a local choreographer and founding member of R Squared. For the past several years Rachael has been the Director of Operations of Miki Liszt Dance Company in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has produced and choreographed for many Miki Liszt Dance Company performances. She has also danced with Starr Foster Dance Project, Prospect Dance Group, Zen Monkey Project and Ground Zero Dance Company. This past summer, Rachael directed the aerial piece and performed in the firedance in Shentai, an arts carnival organized by local artists, dancers and actors.

David Silva Carreto

Born in Puebla, Mexico, Davids knowledge of dance, theatre, pantomime and physical theatre has been cultivated by way of taking workshops in the city of Puebla and in Mexico City, at the CENART (National Center for the Arts). He has studied with various teachers from Mexico, United States, Poland and Germany, such as Gerardo Delgado, Vicente Silva, Andrew Harwood, Bernardo Rubinstein, Miguel Mancillas, Shanti Oyarzabal, Agnieszka Blonska, James Donlon, among others. He has taught body expression workshops applied to dance, as well as dance workshops in Quito, Ecuador, with the Independent Dance Front. He has also taught at the School of the Arts in Bayamo, Cuba, at the 2006 International Circus Convention and at the TEC de Monterrey Campus in Puebla. He is co-founder of Rodará, pantomime group. He also works as choreographer and director of Herejes Danza Interdisciplinaria, which merges physical theatre, dance, circus and clowning. In 2005 , I received FONCA's State scholarship, I participated at the XXIII INBA-UAM's Award, and have helped on the production of Grupo Alas' Lazos rotos, in Bayamo Cuba, Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia; I have participated at Oaxaca's International Dance Festival, Intercambio Cultural Puebla-Bayamo, Cuba; I was invited to the Festival Mujeres en la Danza, and other festivals as well. The work which I am currently developing is about physical theatre (a combination of dance, pantomime and theatre), where the spoken word is the last resource of the production.

Laura Silva Cervantes

Teacher, dancer, choreographer and General Director of KOSMODANZ Dance Theatre Company, she is originally from Oaxaca, Mexico. Since 1979 she has devoted herself to art. She received her training at Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez's School of Fine Arts and at Mexico's National Ballet, where she became a professional dancer, majoring in modern dance. She has a Bachelor's in Law and Social Sciences from Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez. In 2004 she received a scholarship from the Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas to study two diplomats in Cultural Development and Sustainable Development at CONACULTA (National Council for Culture and Arts). She is also an accomplished costume designer and has worked as teacher, dancer, regisseur and choreographer with diverse modern dance and dance theatre companies.

In 1995 she worked as artistic coordinator of Grupo Cultural Tradición on a population in Oaxaca called Tlacolula. They presented work at La Guelaguetza, with their traditional Mayordomía, touring Los Angeles, California, Fresno and Oxnard. In 1997 she received from Oaxaca's State Government as recognition for heightening Mexican dance, both nationally and internationally. As performer, she has won three national dance awards, working with diverse companies and choreographers. She has performed at many festivals, domestically and internationally, such as Festival El Cruce, which took place in Rosario, Argentina; and in Performática 2007, organized by the Universidad de las Américas, in Puebla, Mexico. She was a teacher at CONACULTA and at the Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas, with the project "Alas y Raíces a los Niños", where she also took different trainings in diverse artistic disciplines with the renowned teachers of the institution. She has taught workshops in Dance and Corporal Expression at DIJO (Desarrollo Integral de la Juventud Oaxaqueña). She also studied at IBBY-Mexico (International Boards on Books for Young People). She was Cultural Coordinator and Librarian at Oaxaca's Biblioteca Pública Central Estatal. Alongside Ensamble A.C. Espacio de Fomento a la Lectura in the city of Oaxaca, she designed and collaborated on a program that aimed on broadening the reading spectre on parents of small children. Since 1999 to date she is Coordinator of BUNKO (space for reading), in a private school in Oaxaca. She also coordinated Santillana Editorial's program "lectoresenred".

In 2006 she premiered two works: a versed story for kids which she wrote, acted and directed; and a choreographic piece dedicated to the cancer she overcame without ever halting work. In July 2007, she won scholarships from New York's The Field and Free Dimensional so as to attend the International Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology, with other fourteen artists from around the globe in Guapamacátaro, Maravatío, Michoacán, in Mexico. She is currently a dancer, teacher and choreographer of her own company, KOSMODANZ Dance Theatre. She teaches modern dance, encourages reading and gives lectures, workshops and presentations about reading and book selection in diverse institutions and universities. She promotes and conducts cultural events and collaborates at the Coordinación General de Bibliotecas Públicas del Estado. She is continually invited to work as jury in the areas of Theater, Dance and Poetry.

Ida Smith

B.A. Liberal Arts, Reed College
Medical Illustrator
Practitioner and Faculty of Zero Balancing (Energy Medicine)
Yoga Teacher
Student of Dzogchen
Lifetime student of the flow of energy in its' various forms through the structure of man and the physical world.

Jason Akira Somma

A graduate of VCU with a BFA in dance and choreography, Jason has danced with the likes of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co., Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig Dance Theatre Co. and Amanda Loulaki and Short Mean Lady to name a few. His dance film work has been featured on PBS, the Sundance Channel, MTV Europe, Spex Magazine (Colonge, Germany), Seoul Film Festival (Korea), American Dance Festival, and the Impulz Dance Festival. His photography and film work have also been featured in the Deitch Project (SoHo, New York), P.S.1 (MoMA), and the Chrysler Museum of Art. His photography has been published in numerous periodicals to include the New York Times, Village Voice, Dance Magazine, Dance Europe Magazine, Time Out New York Magazine, and LA Times. Jason is currently working on a new dance film series to capture the dance pioneers still with us today in a contemporary form straying from the documentary world. Most recently Jason received a review in Marilyn Magazine from the art consultant of the TATE Modern in London and is still waiting tables three nights a week in New York.

Lou Sturm

German dancer and choreographer. Her training in modern dance took place in Berlin and Amsterdam. She has presented her dance theatre work, choreographies and improvisations in Brussels, Berlin, ámsterdam, France, India and Mexico. She studied Iyengar Yoga both in Europe and India, where she has taught workshops, aside from performing her work. Lou's teaching is based on Release Technique, Axis Syllabus and Limón Technique, but she also uses elements of Ballet, Feldenkrais and Body-Mind Centering. In 2004 she receives Hamburg's Community Performance Teacher diplomma, working with street teens. Since 2006, she resides in Xalapa, Veracruz, where she serves as director of TEMPESDANZA, Centro de Danza Contemporánea.

Katie Swords (see VIA Dance Collaborative)

Jairo Torres Gasca (see Colectivo Independiente de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa)

Margarita Tortajada

Graduated from UNAM in the area of Political Sciences, she gets her Master's degree from INBA-SEP in Artistic Research and Education. Ph.D. in Social Sciences by Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. She is an investigator at CENIDI Danza José Limón, since 1998. She is also part of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores.

She combines her dance experience and her academic formation in diverese research works about dance and its artists. She is the author of texts that reflect upon dance's own theory, as well as historical analysis regarding Mexican dance. Among her best-known books: Danza y poder (INBA, 1995); La danza escénica de la Revolución Mexicana, nacionalista y vigorosa (INHERM, 2000); Mujeres de danza combativa (CONACULTA, 1999); Luis Fandiño, danza generosa y perfecta (INBA, 2000); Danza y género (COBAES-DIFOCUR, 2001); Frutos de mujer: Las mujeres en la danza escénica (CONACULTA-INBA, 2001); and Danza de hombre (SOMEC-Sinaloa-Archivo Histórico del Estado de Sinaloa-ISMUJER, 2005). The last five have been written under the perspective of genre.

Currently, she teaches dance history at Escuela de Danza Contemporánea, Secretaría de Cultura del GDF and she works in research projects such as Danza y dolor and Bailarinas/es y sexualidad - Etapa III Bailarinas/es profesionales (supported by FONCA's Programa de Fomento a Proyectos y Coinversiones Culturales).

Pedro Vargas (see Colectivo Independiente de Arte Acción Señorita Kometa)

Alejandro Vega (see Gandharva)

Marila Velloso

Choreographer and professional dancer. Dancer producer as well, she is director of emovimento consultoria e produções. She is doing a Ph.D in Scenic Arts at Universidade Federal da Bahia. Her master degree is in Communications and Semiotics, from PUC-São Paolo. She is a specialist in Body Conscience. She has a BA in Dance, from PUC-Paraná.

She is a Certified Practitioner and a Somatic Movement Educator, trained at Body-Mind Centering®, in Germany and EUA. As professional dancer since 1980 she has performed in many venues and festivals, both nationally and internationaly. Her project Entreterritórios- Videodança e Instalação got the Prize Klauss Vianna de Fomento à Dança, com apoio da FUNARTE e Petrobrás, in 2007; as well the Violência Violada Project, in 2005. Since 1991 she has worked as contemporary dance teacher at Paraná's Arts Faculty, in Curitiba, where she programs and coordinates Post-Graduates courses, such as "Lato Sensu", in Dance. Since 2004 she became Cia Obragem de Teatro's Movement Director, invited by the Artistic Director, Olga Nenevê.

She also serves as Dance Coordinator at the Cultural Foundation of Curitiba, 2005 to 2008. She was a curator of Casa Hoffmann- Centro de Estudos do Movimento (2005-2006) where she co-coordinates the Programa de Pesquisa em Dança Contemporânea, with Fabiana Britto.

She is also a founder of the Curitiba's Dance Forum. In 2001 and 2003, respectively, she was the promoter and director of the I and II Encontro das Novas Dramaturgias do Corpo, which were curated by Christine Greiner.

She was Artistic Director of Centro Cultural Teatro Guaíra. At the same institution she taught for fifteen years, at the School of Dance. She was Guaíra Ballet Theater's Coordinator, in 2001 and G2 Company's Master, at the same Cultural Center, where she choreographed ...de passagem, for the same company as well.

David Fernando Ventura Zárate

He is an educator, dancer and choreographer, part of KOSMODANZ Dance Theatre Company, in Oaxaca, Mexico, under the direction of Laura Silva.

He is founding member of Koreos Dance Theatre, from 1990 to 1996. He has participated as dancer and choreographer in diverse forums around the country. He was director, teacher and choreographer at URSE's (Universidad Regional del Sureste de Oaxaca) Taller de Danza Contemporánea. He was granted FOESCA's (Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes) scholarship in the field of performer, 1995-1996.

He is a Body Expression teacher in diverse institutions and on the Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas/CONACULTA's program "Alas y Raíces a los Niños Oaxaqueños". For many years in a row he has been member of FONI (Fondo Oaxaqueño de la Niñez), teaching creative dance to indigenous kids.

He received the DIF-Waldeen Award as Best Dancer at the Festival Internacional de la Danza, in San Luis Potosí, 1996. In 2002 he joins KOSMODANZ, creating and interpreting several dance pieces. In 2005-2006 he takes on a personal development course, with hypnosis as its basis. In 2006, within KOSMODANZ, he serves as choreographer and dancer of the piece Polvo de Lágrimas... Viento de Luz. He also writes and acts a play for children, called Juguetes. In 2007 he presented his work at Performática: Foro Internacional de Danza Contemporánea y Artes del Movimiento, at Puebla's Universidad de las Américas.

VIA Dance Collaborative

It is a performance ensemble whose members have diverse aesthetic viewpoints. It was founded in 2003 through Adrienne Westwood's Kenan Fellowship at the Lincoln Center Institute for Arts in Education. VIA had its inaugural performances at Lincoln Center Institute's Clark Studio Theatre, in February 2003. VIA has since had full seasons at Joyce SoHo and at the Ailey Citigroup Theater and has been presented over two dozen times at venues including Joe's Pub (with Dancenow), Dance New Amsterdam, St. Mark's Church and Dance Theatre Workshop. VIA has been presented regionally at the Dance Under the Stars Festival at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California; Mt. Tremper Arts in the Catskills; Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out; and the East Street Theatre in Hadley, Massachusetts. The collaborative has also conducted residency programs at the State University of New York at Fredonia and North Carolina School of the Arts. VIA was recently a company in residence at Performática: International Forum on Contemporary Dance and Movement Arts in Puebla, Mexico. www.viadance.org

Its members are:

Janice Lancaster

Janice is founding member of VIA Dance Collaborative. She has danced with Shen Wei Dance Arts, Abby Chan, Satoshi Haga, and Aynsley Vandenbrouke Movement Group. Her work, St. John's Wort is currently being toured by the Hubbard Street 2 Dance Company of Chicago and she will make a new work on HS2 as part of their National Choreographic Competition coming spring. She was awarded the 2007 Bessie Schonberg Choreographic residency through the Yard on Martha's Vineyard, and her work has been presented in New York City at Joyce SoHo Presents, the Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Lincoln Center's Clark Studio Theatre, Dixon Place at University Settlement, and elsewhere at Universidad de las Américas-Puebla in Cholula, Mexico; the Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; the State University of New York in Fredonia; the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California; and the North Carolina School of the Arts.

Dawn Poirier

Dawn earned an MFA in choreography from the University of Iowa. Her work has been showcased at the American College Dance Festival (2003) and commissioned by Dancers in Company (2002), HSPVA in Houston (2006), and SUNY Fredonia (2005). In New York, she has worked with Geraldine Cardiel, Daniel Charon and Philippa Kaye.

Katie Swords

Katie received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts and danced in 2001 at the Bessie Schoenberg Choreographers and Dancers Residency at The Yard. She has worked with Satoshi Haga, Melissa Briggs Dance, the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, California-based choreographer Hahn Nguyen, Helen Simoneau, and has had the pleasure of performing at Jacob's Pillow in celebration of Paul Taylor's 70th birthday in a piece choreographed by Karla Wolfangle. She has created three new works for VIA: Pearl, Mute (co-choreographed by Dawn Poirier), and Tides. When Katie is not dancing, she works as a personal trainer at the Equinox Fitness Club.

Adrienne Westwood

Adrienne was the recipient of the prestigious 2003-04 Kenan Fellowship at Lincoln Center Institute for Arts in Education, through which she was honored to form VIA Dance Collaborative. Her choreography has been performed by VIA at the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center, Joyce SoHo, Joe's Pub and Dance Theatre Workshop (with Dancenow/NYC/ The Festival), Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, One Arm Red (DUMBO, Brooklyn), the Mulberry St. Theatre, Jacob's Pillow, the McCallum Theatre (Palm Desert, California), and in collaboration with the Orchesis Dance Company at the State University of New York at Fredonia where she served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance in 2005. She has also danced with Monica Bill Barnes (in a fountain in Bowling Green Park!), Helen Simoneau, Stephan Koplowitz, and Hanh Nguyen. She is a 2003 graduate of North Carolina School of the Arts. Adrienne is also proud to work as a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute.

Allison Waddell

Allison is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and teaching consultant who has traveled both nationally and internationally facilitating the movement arts. A North Carolina native, she is a graduate of Meredith College with degrees in Dance and Speech Communication. She has performed and made work with numerous dance companies including Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, the Zen Monkey Project, Chavasse Dance and Performance, Even Exchange Dance Theater, and she is a founding member of the contact improvisation based quartet THEM. Allison has taught and been on faculty at many schools, universities, and institutions in the United States and abroad such as Enloe High School, Meredith College, ArtsTogether, the Chapel Hill Ballet School, and the Durham Arts Council where she served as Education Coordinator. She has also been guest faculty at Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, Turkey and guest artist at Universidad De Las Americas. Her choreography has been presented by the North Carolina Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, the American Dance Festival, Jemal Resit Rey in Istanbul, Turkey, the Middle East Contemporary Dance Festival, in Ankara, Turkey, the Universidad De Las Americas in Puebla, Mexico, and various venues across the United States. Last summer she completed her 200hr yoga teacher training with YogaWorks and is currently working on completing her 300hr advanced training with New York Yoga. Allison lives in Manhattan with her husband and teaches literacy through the arts in the New York City Public Schools.

Sally Wallace

Sally Wallace, Associate Professor of Dance at Purdue University, received her MFA from Case Western Reserve University and her MA from Texas Woman's University. Her focus as an artist is most represented in choreography and performed improvisation. Sally's work, Tides and Solitude received the National Gala honor and was performed at Kennedy Center in Washington DC, in 1998. Windblown received an Alternate National Gala Honor in 2001. Above Water, received Gala honors in American College Dance Festival in 1993. Sally has toured and commissioned her work to dance companies in Ohio, Illinious, Texas and New York.

As an improviser/researcher, Sally received several research grants from Purdue, National Endowment for the Arts and Indiana Arts Commission for creating an educational visual medium for training dancers in Performed Improvisation. This medium, a DVD titled: Creating Performed Improvisation; a framework for listening and compositional skills in dancers, will be marketed to universities internationally come Spring 2008. Sally was invited to present a paper titled: Can Dance Improvisation Be Successful on Stage? at the Congress On Research and Dance Conference in 1997.

Adrienne Westwood (see VIA Dance Collaborative)

Nicole Whiteside (see BLUE LAPIS LIGHT)

Taja Will

As a senior student at Luther College I have worked in music, theatre and dance. My work as a performance artist is to communicate experiences, ideas, and emotions. I am strongly influenced by the density and texture of human existence to create and perform art that is informative. By using the performative body as social activism in dance, theatre, and music, I believe my work encourages and urges social awareness and change. Through constant exploration, training, and play, I am finding pathways to connect intimately with audiences with the hope that their perception of my work will manifest new awakenings in their minds, bodies and souls.

The Emma Willard Dance Company

The Emma Willard Dance Company is an eclectic group of talented and dedicated dancers, ages 15-18, interested in exploring many styles of dance.

Throughout the academic year the dancers learn and rehearse works choreographed by faculty and guest artists (which have included Doug Elkins, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Gabriel Masson, Terry Creach, Ming-Shen Ku, Dan Froot, Paula Hunter, Sharon Garber, Raymond Harris, Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig, Kerry Kreiman, Derrick Davis, Cathy Young, and this year Suzanne Oliver), all active, cutting-edge artists working nationally and internationally. The choreography is designed to challenge the students' versatility, technical virtuosity, and expressive nuance. Students may audition their own choreography, and dances that excel in quality become part of the repertoire.

Each spring, the Emma Willard Dance Company travels to another city to "tour" their repertoire. They have performed in all kinds of venues: colleges, public and private schools, retirement villages, theatres, festivals, and outdoors. Their tour cities have included Chicago, Boston, New York City, Montreal, Philadelphia, Baltimore/DC, San Antonio, Texas, and now Puebla Mexico. When these young dancers enter diverse communities to perform and interact in traditional and non-traditional settings, they begin to develop a tangible understanding of artistic expression. Each audience provides an opportunity for connection as these dancers strive to communicate the energetic, joyous, at times tender, and often thought-provoking choreography. Tour is an intense and valuable experience for all members of this dance company. It is an opportunity for dancers to have a pre-professional experience while networking and seeing a little bit of a new city and the dance it has to offer. The touring experience deepens each performer's ability to be resilient, organized, gracious, and professional.
Web: www.emmawillard.org/arts/ewdanceco.php

Mary Williford-Shade

Hailed by the Washington Post as "the dancing equivalent of Edvard Munch's The Scream" Mary Williford-Shade became know as a principal dancer with Mark Taylor & Friends and Mark Dendy Dancers. Since then, she and her Baltimore-based partner, Sandra Lacy, have formed a solo-duet repertory company, Lacy&Shade. They commission dances by such choreographers as Irene Hultman, Lisa Race, Michael Foley, José Luis Bustamante and Karrine Keithley. In addition to her solo and duet work, Mary has also performed with the Maryland Dance Theater and the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy.

She has an MFA from Ohio State University, is a certified Laban Movement Analyst and is a member of the dance faculty at Texas Woman's University. Her selected performances last year include The Out of the Loop Festival in Addison, Texas; The Toronto Dance Festival in Canada; and the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts. Mary's guest teaching credits include Japan's Mukagowa University, George Washington University, Towson State University, the American Dance Festival and the Bates Dance Festival.

Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner

A kinesthetic experiment in nonsense

In 2006, Portland-based dancers Katie Arrants, Kathleen Keogh, and Rikki Rothenberg began performing together as Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner, a collective based in conceptual absurdity, physical intensity, emotional authenticity, and general friendliness. In the past year, the trio has rapidly evolved from a casual affiliation of like-minded improvisers to a dedicated collective of movement artists committed to idiosyncratic performances that consistently defy categorization. Praised in recent reviews for its "quirky athleticism" and "fresh and smart" brand of humor and mania, Woolly creates audience-friendly work that invites community participation, often inciting audience response ranging from raucous laughter to melancholy reflection.

The collective works in unconventional spaces, ranging from burned-out buildings to highly trafficked alleyways, while maintaining a regular mindfulness/movement practice called The Woolly Process. The collective encourages risk-taking and maintains a philosophy of saying "yes" to all ideas, no matter how peculiar. Performances in the past have included elements such as a Black Sabbath montage, terry-cloth rompers, Tammy Faye Baker make-up, jumping rope, parlor games, ski suits, baby swimming pools, and running around a large square after drinking several glasses of milk. Though the group's choices often make no sense in a literal or linear way, the Woolly universe possesses a bizarre beauty and a strong internal logic. The group strives to maintain a feeling of inclusiveness, welcoming the contributions of the general public (including children and non-dancers), while also reserving the right to be editorial and maintaining a necessary level of physical rigor. The dancers believe in supporting their friends and the general artistic community through regular collaborations with musicians, clothing designers, photographers, and visual artists (such as David Rafn, Diana Lang, Lauren Hobson, and Chris Mulliken).

Over the past year, Woolly has put on over ten performances in spaces ranging from the corner of a small bar to the wide expanses of a converted warehouse. They have performed at the Food and Shelter Festival fundraiser, the Richard Foreman Mini-Festival, the Boris and Natasha Cabaret, and the Water in the Desert performance art festival. They also regularly share bills with bands such as CexFucx, the Evolutionary Jass Band, Damo Suzuki, and Tara Jane O'Neil. In October 2007, the group performed as guest artists in Linda Austin's evening-length show, circus me around. Currently, the trio is collaborating with a filmmaker to produce work that explores empty urban spaces and their transitional existence.

Members of the Woolly collective have taught at the Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation and at the Conduit Summer Dance Intensive in Portland, along with founding and organizing the Food and Shelter Festival of Improvised Dance and Music. Their experience includes studies in performance and visual art at Prescott College and the Massachusetts College of Art, work with the Zen Monkey Project and EDAM dance, performance in Jennifer Monson's BirdBrain, on-going explorations of contemporary technique, contact improvisation, and yoga, and current participation dancing in the year-long, inter-disciplinary South Waterfront Project curated by Linda K. Johnson.

Learn more about the Woolly collective at www.myspace.com/woollymammothcomestodinner and www.ultrapdx.com/zero/2008/01/14/ultra-q-woolly-mammoth-comes-to-dinner/

Jesse Zaritt

Jesse Zaritt is currently an MFA candidate in Dance with the Hollins/American Dance Festival program. Jesse lives and works as a choreographer, teacher, and performer in Tel Aviv, Israel and New York. In Israel, he has recently taught and choreographed for the Seminar HaKibbutzim College and the Acco Theater Festival. Last year, Jesse was the recipient of a Dorot Fellowship in Israel. This grant enabled Jesse to develop a method for teaching movement to diverse populations including individuals with physical disabilities, and to conduct research on the relationship between social/political conflict and choreography. Jesse spent five and a half years as a dancer with the Shen Wei Dance Arts Company, based in New York City. Jesse graduated Cum Laude in 2000 from Pomona College in Claremont, California with a self-designed major in Visual Arts and Dance.

Mark Moti Zemelman

Mark Moti Zemelman, MFA, began practicing Contact Improvisation nineteen years ago. Over the past twelve years he has taught and performed across the USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Europe, and Israel. Recent engagements include Earthdance (USA), DanceBase (Edinburgh), Circuit-Est (Montreal), Zodiak Festival (Helsinki), Villa Sumaya (Guatemala) and Centro de Investigación Coreográfica (Mexico City).

Moti is a teacher and board member at Earthdance Retreat Center in Massachusetts. Among his respected teachers are: Nancy Stark Smith, Andrew Harwood, Ruth Zaporah, Danny Lepkoff, Martin Keogh and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

He was an original member of Wire Monkey Dance (Saliq Francis Savage and Jen Polins, directors), and currently dances with the Silver Swimmers, an internationally based performance troupe. As a musician, Moti plays vocal/electronic music for many Contact Jams and performances, and in 2006 he released his debut CD, Doorwaves. Other practices include yoga, Action Theater, stilt-walking, modern dance, and clowning. He also designs and moderates the new international Contact Improv resource website www.contactimprov.com

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