Co-Directors

Mexican artist, teacher, arts ambassador and researcher; Mayra Morales currently works at Universidad de las Americas since 2005. First as dance professor at the BA Dance and then from August 2006 to July 2008 as the Program's Coordinator. She returned in August 2008, to teaching, researching and creating. She has recently begun working in DEPA, an imaginary company for the Arts Development in Mexico.

Mayra studied dance from a small age in Puebla City and Mexico City. Pursuing an expansion in her practice within dance she traveled frequently to Monterrey, Xalapa, Guadalajara, San Luis Potosí, Canada, Russia, USA, Portugal and finally, London, where she discovered Contemporary Dance. With a Scholarship of Excellence in Humanities, she studied her BA Dance at UDLA-P between 1999 to 2002, graduating with Magna Cum Laude. She won an honorific mention in the 'best performer' contest during San Luis Potosi's Dance Festival 2001. She lived, studied and worked in London, England from 2003 to 2005, where she studied her MA in European Dance-Theatre Practices at LABAN, supported by an award by the National Fund for the Arts and Culture, Mexico, 2003.

Since 1999 she has been working as a performer and collaborating with national and international choreographers for creating and co-creating dance and interdisciplinary pieces. Her work constantly questions the nature of artistic practice and investigates within installation, performance art, site-specific and Dance-Theatre methodologies. Since 2004 she has declared herself as a Non-Disciplinarity Artist, with which she makes use of any possible medium in order to facilitate answers within a rigorous enquiry on Thought, Life and Human Condition, and in doing so, hopefully avoiding the categorization of processes and results.

Notable among her activities abroad: in 2005, participation in "The Dancer's Project" at The Place, London; in 2006, invitation for auditioning at 2nd cycle at P.A.R.T.S., Brussels, Belgium and invitation to perform at "Arena Festival", Germany; in 2007 attended the International Symposium on Dance Research: Rethinking Dance Theory and Practice at Paris, France; in 2008 receives "DanceWEB Europe Scholarship" for participating at Impulstanz Dance Festival, Vienna, Austria where she co-founds "Embassy of..." together with other scholarship holder colleagues; she is invited to perform with artist Nadia Lauro for her piece "I Hear Voices"; spends her last summer days in NY City planning projects for the future, especially with artist Penny Arcade, with whom she co-founds "ImpulsARcade" together with 9 others.

In Mexico: in 2007, was awarded the Prize for Best Choreography during Festival "Poesía y Movimiento" with her Piece "Mil Años Madrugada"; in July 2008, invited to participate at Festival Danza Extrema at Xalapa, Veracruz; in February 2008 her project "From A to Z" gets funded by Puebla's Government through the FOESCAP 2008-2009. She currently works with both projects "From A to Z" and "The Dinner Project" which started at Vienna under the supervision of coaches DD Dorvillier and Trajal Harrel for the proposed investigation "Public Service", inaugurating itself with the Performance "We are not here to like each other".

At University she has taught courses in Performance and Ensemble, History and Theory of Dance, Choreography, Contemporary Dance Technique, Repertory, Body Conditioning, Movement for Actors, Seminar in Dance and Phenomenology, Seminar in Dance-Theatre and Theory of Performance Studies; at present she teaches and develops the courses: Introduction to Dance and Tendencies and Problems of Today's Dance.

Since 2006 co-founds and co-directs, together with Ray Eliot Schwartz, Performatica: International Forum for Contemporary Dance and Movement Arts. Her mission is to share, exchange and generate praxis of thought and consciousness in response to the Society of the Spectacle in which we live and imagines a future in which change is possible towards substituting "I" for "us". Art for her is not about communication nor expression, but a response to an internal voice that commands: "Pull me back to Life".

http://udladanza.wordpress.com/

Ray Eliot Schwartz

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. and Mexico.

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, the Colorado College Summer Dance Festival, 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. Click this link to download a PDF and read his Master's Thesis:

Exploring the Space Between: The Effect of Somatic Education on Agency and Ownership Within a Collaborative Dance-Making Process

Currently he is serving as the Coordinator of the Licenciatura en 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 gathers together an international cadre of practicing dancers, choreographers, theorists, and teachers of contemporary dance and related movement arts. They convene workshops, roundtable discussions and performances 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.

http://udladanza.wordpress.com/

Technical Director

In 1999, he graduated as an Electronical Engineer with a major in Communication from UDLA. He then went on in 2004, to receive his MBA, at the same institution, specializing in Services Marketing.

He is currently UDLA's Head of the Scenic Arts Lab. Since 2003, he has been appointed as Technical Director of UDLA Danza, UDLA Ballet, Teatro UDLA, Opera UDLA, Performática and the Sunny Savoy Company. He has participated in national and international festivals such as:

• Performática 2007 & 2008
• ITI-UNESCO's Encuentro Nacional de los Amantes del Teatro 2006
• Jaime Sieber, Rip Parker and Ellen Bromberg's Hidden Sky, at the Temporada Cultural UDLA Fall 2005
• ITI-UNESCO's First National Congreso of Scenic Arts, Quetzalcóatl 2005
• V Festival de Danza Contemporánea Zona Centro, Saltillo 2006
• Muestra Internacional de Danza Oaxaca, 2005
• Ciclo Solo Mujeres, Teatro de la Danza, DF 2005
• 2° Festival Poli Sensorial, Morelia 2004
• Festival Enésimo, Guadalajara 2004
• 6° Festival Internacional de Puebla 2004
• Extremadura 7: Gran Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporánea, Monterrey 2004
• 6° Encuentro Internacional de Escuelas Superiores de Teatro 2003

He has also collaborated as sound engineer with rock bands.

From 1995-2000 he worked as technician within the Events Department at UDLA, which produces around 400 cultural events per year.

Since 2003 he has been teaching Scenic Production at the university, focusing on montage, set design and lightning design for theatre, dance and performance pieces. He also works as advisor for future graduates.

His lightning designs have granted him awards, such as Mayra Morales' De la A a la Z, within 2007's Festival Poesía en Movimiento.

His first performance, Eclipse, was first shown at Performática 2007.

Papers Committee

Enrique Ruiz Acosta, visual artist. Graduated from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, with a Specialty on Arts and Design in TH Darmstadt, Germany. Enrique also has a master degree in Information Design from the Universidad de las Americas in 2001, and is currently a Doctoral candidate in the Creation and Theories of Culture program at the same institution. His more recent artistic production and exhibition includes: Zebra at Alternativa once, in April, 2006 in San Pedro, NL. Efímeras 2006 at Arte AC, and Arte Nuestro - Entre Siglos at the Museo Metropolitano, both in Monterrey, NL, in march of 2006. Also, Titulares at Ramis Barquet in Monterrey, NL, in November of 2005, just to name few. Enrique has received several grants and awards in the last few years, like: Premio a las Artes UANL 2003, Distinction at Primera Bienal Nacional in Yucatán in 2002, and Premio Fianciarte NL, in 2001. In 2004, he coordinated and participated as co-author of the book Transferencias, convenciones y simulacros. Dialogos para una vision y una interpretacion de las artes visuales de Monterrey. Published by the Program for Support of Scientific and Technological Research of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. Also, in the year 2000 he co-authored the book 100 años a través de 100 artistas. Las artes plasticas de Nuevo Leon Siglo XX, under the editorial coordination of Xavier Moyssen, and published by the Museum of Monterrey and FEMSA. Enrique has also collaborated several times for the magazine Armas y Letras and teaches workshops and seminars on Contemporary Art on a regular basis.

Professor Anne Kristiina Kurjenoja Lounassaari has a Masters Degree in Architecture with a Specialty in Housing from the Polytechnic University of Helsinki (1986), Finland and currently a candidate for a doctoral degree on Creation and Theories of Culture at the Universidad de las Americas Puebla. She has participated in the following academic and professional activities in the last few years: Since 1988, she has been an associate Professor at UDLAP where she teaches different courses on Architecture and Interior Architecture; related to design, landscaping, sustainability and environmental design. From 2003 until 2005 she was part of the Department of Space Planning at UDLAP, as the chief of projects. She is also responsible of the Virtual Workshop of the Americas, with Texas A&M University (2000- 2006) and with Ball State University (2007, 2008). She has participated in several architecture contests around the world. E-mail: annek.kurjenoja@udlap.mx.

Laura Fernández Vázquez. Actress, Theater Director, is currently in charge of the Theater Workshop of Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla, México, and she is a co-founder member of the independent theater company Teatrofilia A.C. based in Puebla, México. In August 2006 she started Doctoral studies in the program on Creation and Theories of Culture at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Her doctoral dissertation will address the method of Theater of the Oppressed developed by the Brazilian contemporary author Augusto Boal. Since October 2005 she is a regular participant of the workshops Butoh Ritual Mexicano offered by Diego Piñón in Tlalpujahua, Michoacan, México. In her acting career she has participated in more than 20 productions, as an artist, director or producer. Among them we find: Losers, by Marko Castillo, La calle de las pasiones, by Aída Andrade, Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega, La Ñonga by Oscar Liera, La Señora y sus Amibas by Antonio González Caballero, Malas Palabras by Perla Szuchmacher. In 2006 she was awarded the Premio a la Mejor Actriz (Best Actress Award) at the State Theater Show of Puebla. In 2003 she debuted as director with the adaptation and production of Prometeo Encadenado by Esquilo, a project that obtained a scholarship - Beca de Jóvenes Creadores - from FOESCAP and CONACULTA. During 2003 and 2004 she participated with the Puebla Theater State Company, México, directed by José Solé. Since the year 2000 she has participated in several projects by Marko Castillo. Her acting path started in 1994 under the direction of Guillermo Cabello. She was part of the Theater Workshop of Antonio González Caballero from 1997 until 1998 in Mexico City, and in the Theater of the Tree Company directed by Wilfrido Momox. She holds a Master Degree on Hispano-American Language and Literature by Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, México. She graduated with a Communications Degree from Universidad Iberoamericana Plantel Golfo-Centro, Puebla, México, in 1999. Since the year 2000 she has collaborated by presenting seminars and courses with the Philosophy and Letters department of the UDLAP, in DEMAC (initials in Spanish for Documentation and Women Studies A.C.) and in the Centro de Readapatación Social del Estado de Puebla, (State Penitentiary System) in Puebla, México. She was a research assistant for Dra. Lilia Venegas (U.N.A.M.) in Cuernavaca, Morelos, México in 1999, and a journalist for the supplement Virtualia of the La Jornada newspaper, for the Rizoma magazine, and La Buhardilla newspaper, in México D.F. between 1997 and 1998.

María Emilia Ismael Simental, violinist, researcher in music and teacher - was born in Durango México. She started formal music training at age 8 in the Conservatoire of the City of Puebla and with private tutors. Among her teachers were the violinists Mikhail Medvid and Sergei Gorbenko. At an early age she became a member of chamber and symphonic orchestras - the State Symphonic Orchestra of Durango and the Symphonic Orchestra of Streamwood being two of them. Since 2000 she has practiced free improvisation as a violinist and has also participated in different festivals such as Instrumenta 2004 in Mexico and Interlace in London. She was a member of the UDLA-P Chamber Choir from 2003 until 2006 with which she recorded two CD's; "Oh Tiempo" and "De Cuba pa' Usté". With the Chamber Choir she participated in international festivals and contests. Among these is the international choir competition Florilege Vocal in Tours, France, where the Choir was awarded two honours including the Renaissance prix, "Francois Rabelais". Emilia graduated as a BMus from Universidad de las Américas, Puebla in 2003. Her thesis was entitled, "Alfred Schnittke and the Possibility of Expression in Music." During this time she worked as a research assistant on post-tonal music with Luisa Vilar, PhD. (AMS). In 2006 she was awarded a Master Degree in Music in Russian Music Studies with distinction from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She participated as a speaker in the inaugural ceremony of the Schnittke Archive in February 2006 in London, delivering the paper "Alfred Schnittke and the Znamenny Rospev." She has studied with Elliott Antokoletz and Alexander Ivashkin, two prominent musicologists. Presently she is a PhD candidate at the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla in the Programme of Creation and Theory of Culture. She continues her research on Russian and Mexican Music and participates actively as a speaker on 20th century Music at various venues, most recently presenting a paper on the problem of the "popular" in music at Forhum 2008. At UDLA-P she also lectures on the Theory of Music, Medieval Music, Twentieth Century Music History and Musicology.

Performer/Contributor Bios

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

agnieszka&agnieszka (see also Agnieszka Dmochowska and Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz)

The Ensemble agnieszka&agnieszka (PL/B/F) was born in 2007, out of a deep desire of collaboration. Constituted of two young dancers and choreographers Agnieszka Dmochowska and Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz position itself In the luminal space between dance and theatre. The Ensemble works, at the moment, in Paris and Brussels on a project called Things we can still do on stage.

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 with 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.

Penny Arcade

Legend, icon, wild-hearted demoness bad-girl bitch. It is impossible to describe the juggernaut that is Penny Arcade without entering the world of hyperbole that she not only inhabits but also personifies. Since first climbing out of her bedroom window at age 13 to join the fabulously disenfranchised world of queers, junkies, whores, stars, stalkers and geniuses she has become one of the most influential performers in the world. By fearlessly displaying her singular brand of feminist sexuality and personal conflict she has garnered countless fans worldwide with an emotionally and intellectually charged performance style. Internationally revered as writer, director and actress, she has become the very bedrock that many of the biggest names in the entertainment industry have built their careers upon.

Born Susana Carmen Ventura to an immigrant Italian family in the small factory town of New Britain, Connecticut, she became Penny Arcade at age 17 while on LSD in an effort to amuse her mentor and patron, openly gay photographer/artist Jaimie Andrews. It was Andrews, a member of The Playhouse of the Ridiculous, who introduced the young Arcade to legendary director John Vaccaro. Vaccaro, then directing Kenneth Bernard's potent play The Moke Eater, subsequently gave Penny her theatrical debut in the groundbreaking production. Soon after, Arcade became a teenage superstar for Andy Warhol's Factory with a featured role in the Morrissey/Warhol film Women In Revolt but quickly found the life of an upcoming pop tart too one dimensional and fled to Amsterdam.

In 1980, La Mama's Ellen Stewert and Vaccaro invited her to recreate her 1970 New York role in Ken Bernard's play Nite Club. She returned to New York after nearly a decade of globe hopping and international intrigue to resume her apprenticeship with many of the greats of American experimental theatre including Jack Smith, Jackie Curtis and Charles Ludlam. In 1985 Arcade began creating her own improvisational and unscripted solo work. In 1989 she began to create group work, beginning with her commission from Engarde Arts for whom she created A Quiet Night for Sid and Nancy at the Chelsea Hotel.

1990-91 was a prolific period for Arcade during which she wrote four full length shows, including the core of her autobiographical trilogy; Based on A True Story, Invitation to The Beginning Of The End Of The World and La Miseria. It was also in 1990 that she created her most famous work, her sex and censorship show, BITCH!DYKE!FAGHAG!WHORE! A blend of political humanism, freedom of expression and erotic dancing, BITCH!DYKE!FAGHAG!WHORE! toured the world twice both as an international festival as well as a commercial hit in 20 cities around the world.

In the time since BITCH!DYKE!FAGHAG!WHORE! Penny has seen Bad Reputation her all girl show (with a few gay men who wanted their own dance number!) premiere in NYC at Performance Space 122 in March of 1999 and later in Manchester, England, and Glasgow Scotland. Her New York Values - an autopsy on the death of Bohemia and the commodification of rebellion - also had its premiere at PS 122 in spring of 2002 as a group show and has been performed as a solo show in Los Angeles, Austin, Frankfurt, Heldelberg and the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Since 1999 Penny has spearheaded the award winning documentary series Stemming The Tide of Cultural Amnesia, The Lower Eastside Biography Project, an oral history and downtown performance project cum training program sponsored in part by Manhattan Neighborhood Network. She is a member of Feminists for Free Expression, The National Coalition Against Censorship, Visual Aids, and the artist/art professional caucus that produces Day Without Art each December 1 st. In addition, she is a founding member of FEVA (Federation of East Village Artists) the producer of The Howl! Festival of the Arts.

Irma Arce Kundala

Director of the company Arabeando y Gitaneando Agustito. She is a cultural promoter, dancer and Arab Dance teacher. She has studied modern dance, jazz and Caribbean rhythms. She is Bachelor of Communication Sciences and takes on an important labour, promoting Arab Dance in Mexico City (south), organizing seminars and performances by important genre artists such as Saida, derbakist Oswaldo El Beryewe Brandan, Ansuya, Amar Gamal, Fahtiem, Yousry Sharif (Egypt), Amir Thaleb (Argentina), Jillina, derbakist Issam y Virginia. She has studied Arab dance with important international figures such as Princess Maiada, Zahra Zuhair, Nourhan Sharif, Aziza, Rania, Mario Kirlis, Saida, Fahtiem, Yousry Sharif, Amir Thaleb and Jillina (Bellydancer Superstar director).

Kundala's choreographic style is a fusion, a mixture that combines the passion and strength proper of gypsy dances, the beauty of its technique and the spirit of modern dance, as well as a costume design that is dominated by style fusion. She has worked as promoter of the Gran Certamen Nacional e Internacional de Danza Árabe, under Hibat Alsouriti Productions and under Share: Centro de Espéctactulos' organization.

Erika Arévalo / Rodanza

She graduated from Universidad de las Américas Puebla in 2004. She has studied Release, Graham, Laban, and Improv, among others. She has been awarded grants and supports like Apoyo a Humanidades 2000-2001, given by UDLA; as well as a state scholarship from 2000-2003. In 2001 she worked on a modern dance and live music project called Hay que caminar soñando. During the summer of 2002, she taught a workshop called Body Conscience at Córdoba, Veracruz. In 2002 she created two pieces, Sin nombre and Un nuevo espacio, with original music. She has been recipient of the 2006 FOESCAP grant, under the category of Young Artist. She is currently Co-Director and Choreographer of the group Rodanza.

Armstrong/Bergeron Dance Company (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.

David Beadle

David Beadle is a performer, teacher, and choreographer working as an independent movement artist for the past twenty years. As a performer, he is dedicated to the development of improvisation as a vital and viable theatrical form. As a teacher he is committed to creating new methods for training dancers using relevant information from current research in human movement potential. His work as a movement educator brings a broad-based sensibility to his students- helping them discover their own movement vocabularies and innate dancing abilities.

Gilad Ben Ari

After finishing his dance training at M.A.S.P.A. at June 2003, Gilad joined the Batsheva Ensemble under the artistic directorship of Ohad Naharin. There he worked as a dancer for 2 seasons preforming more than 300 times, 7 different pieces of Naharin, across Israel and abroad. When leaving the company in August 2005, Gilad worked with choreographer Dana Ruttenberg on two projects, which were preformed in Tel Aviv. During this year he flew to Europe to research possibilities to develop his artistic career and decided to focus on enriching his influences and dedicating time to develop as a maker. For this purpose Gilad enrolled in 2006 to a two year study program at P.A.R.T.S.(Brussels, Belgium) under the artistic directorship of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

Gilad graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in June 2008. During this time his main works were a collaboration with American dancer Sarah Beth Percival called Pockets, a 15 min duet, and his graduating solo called Them, a 50 min piece, which he is showing in Mexico this April at the Performatica Festival. In summer 2008 Gilad received a summer residency at the DanceWEB Europe Scholarship Program, in Vienna. Gilad is a founder member of "Embassy of..", an umbrella organization for the collaboration of freelance contemporary dance artists, that was funded that summer by the DanceWEB 2008 members. Gilad is the initiator of "Running Into the Political Equator" project, which is an "Embassy of fast bicycles collaborations" project.

Robert Bingham

Robert Bingham is Visiting Artist in Residence in Dance at Alfred University. He received his MFA 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 has incorporated into dance technique classes and choreography.

Katharine Birdsall

KatharineBirdsall has a BFA from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, is a founding member of The Zen Mokey Project, has completed her 200 hour RYT (registered yoga teacher) and is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique. She has a private practice teaching Alexander Technique and yoga in Charlottesville, Virginia where she also makes dance pieces and improvises with many talented people.

Mirta Blostein

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 City.

She teaches 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

Kathleen Byrne

Kathleen Byrne received a Master of Fine Arts in Dance Choreography and Performance from Florida State University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ballet at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She began her dance training with Martha Mahr in Coral Gables, FL and attended New World School of the Arts in Miami. While at FSU, Ms. Byrne performed in works by Martha Graham, Dan Wagoner and Gerri Houlihan as well as choreographed and taught various levels of technique classes. Ms. Byrne was a member of the New York Theatre Ballet for five years performing in New York as well as throughout the United States and Europe. During her tenure there, she danced principle roles in works by Anthony Tudor, Frederick Ashton, Sallie Wilson, Keith Michael, Agnes de Mille, José Limón and Donald Mahler. Ms. Byrne was honored to be the recipient of the Suzanne Farrell Fellowship at Florida State University and was asked by Ms. Farrell to dance with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center for their 2007 season. Ms. Byrne has also performed with Dance Repertory Theatre, Miami Ballet, and The Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble. She is currently a lecturer in dance at Texas A&M University where she choreographs and teaches various dance classes.

María del Carmen Valdez Almada

(Navojoa, Sonora, Mexico, 1969)

Bachelor of Children's Psychology from the Universidad del Noroeste. Family and Couples Psychotherapist from the Instituto de Psicoterapia Integrativa del Noroeste. Since 1990 she has taught at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate levels in the Social Sciences area. She has served in different institutions teaching workshops, and giving lectures. She got her Master's Degree in Education at the Universidad del Valle de México. She practices privately Psychotherapy since 1992. She is currently co-head of the Psycho/Pedagogic Area at the Centro de Educación Artística José Eduardo Pierson (from Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes); she teaches Physical Expression at the same institution, and is also a teacher at the Universidad del Valle de México.

Francisco Carrera / Arte Escénico ELEUSIS

Born in Mexico City, he commences his artistic studies at INBA's Centro de Educación Artística Frida Kahlo, where he studies Arts and Humanities. He gets his BA at INBA's Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral. He also receives a degree in Dancistic Creation at the Centro de Investigación Coreográfica, also a branch of INBA's.

He has worked as teacher, actor, director, choreographer, assistant director, dancer and lightning designer. He has taken up courses in Pantomime, Lightning, Butoh, Humphrey-Limón Technique, Release, Functional Anatomy, Street Theatre, among others. He was member of Productora Teatral Innombrable, En dos partes Company and Caída Libre Danza Contemporánea. He's been a guest dancer at the company Pata de Cabra. He is guest actor at the company ABCdidáctico and is member of the company Yúmare Arte Escénico. He has taught courses at the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Teatral and at Universidad Veracruzana's Faculty of Dance.

In 1996 he founded Arte Escénico ELEUSIS, an artistic project in which he explores the possibilities which scenic arts can bring, and where he fuses elements of diverse artistic branches; with this project he has participated in the staging of works for dance and theatre as well. He has premiered four choreographies at the Centro Cultural Los Talleres A.C. One of those works was selected to be performed at Sololoquios y Diálogos Bailados.

He has done two Artistic Residencies at The Banff Centre for The Arts in Canada, within the Aboriginal Dance Program. In it, he had contact with many cultural manifestations of traditional and contemporary art of communities in Canada, Alaska, United States and New Zealand. He also participated in the staging of two choreographic works, using traditional indigenous elements and choreographic stuctures, merging tradition and modernity.

He has worked at Carlos Rivera's artistic project called Yúmare Arte Escénico, whose main objective is to present new scenic proposals that fuse traditional and contemporary elements. He is currently directing ELEUSIS and is also collaborating with Integrarte and Fundación Voz de Libertad, which generates cultural projects for the social readaptation of people who have been secluded. He is also professor and director at INBA's Centro de Educación Artística Luis Spota Saavedra.

He currently directs Arte Escénico ELEUSIS. His work aims for finding a physical language that comes from a total control of energy.

Sergio Castro

He begins his music studies at the age of 5, with the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil de La Magdalena. At age 15 he is part of the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Juventud de la Ciudad de México, receiving instruction as conductor from his father, Sergio Castro Acosta and from Roberto Durán.

He studies a BFA in Music at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla and graduates Cum Laude. Among his conduction teachers, there can be mentioned Oleg Proscurnya and Leonid Korchmar, José Luis Castillo, Juan Hermida and Ronald Zollman. In the area of choir direction he is instructed by Gisela Crespo.

His piano instruction has been under the hands of Misa Ito and Fausto Díaz. Viola and Violin instruction under Javier Montiel and Julio Saldaña. Transvere Flute with Diana López. He was student of Puebla's first edition of Instrumenta Verano and volunteered for the second edition.

He is part of several orchestras in Mexico such as Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil, Orquesta Sinfónica de Coyoacán, UDLAP's Orquesta de Cámara and Coro de Cámara. He has also worked twice as artistic director for the Festival de Música de Cámara Cameralia, in its 2005 and 2006 editions. He founded the student association called Symphonia, in which students of diverse areas of the university gather to form an orchestra. Currently, he is Conductor of UDLAP's Orquesta Symphonia, and works as teacher in the Arts Department.

Chung-Fu Chang

Chung-Fu Chang is an associate professor in the Dance Division of Colorado State University and directs the CSU Tour Dance Company. He has received an Outstanding Faculty Award from CSU Mortar Board. Born in Taiwan, he danced there professionally with the internationally renowned Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and the Kaohsiung Contemporary Dance Company. Since 2002, his solo dances have been performed nationally and internationally, most recently at Covarrubias Theatre of the University Cultural Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City. His choreography has been performed throughout the US and in Argentina, Cyprus, England, Greece, Taiwan, and has received choreographic commissions from Aspen Dance Connection, Ballet Nouveau Colorado, Dancing Wheels, Ohio Ballet, MOMENTA, Solar Site Dance Company and many others. A full evening of his choreography was presented as the closing program of the IX Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporanea Avant Garde 2008 in Mérida, Mexico. Chung-Fu was a Chancellor's Fellowship recipient from the University of California, Irvine, where he completed his MFA in Dance in 1998. Prior to joining CSU, Chung-Fu taught at the University of Florida and Kent State University in Ohio. He has also taught as a guest artist at major dance companies, institutions and festivals throughout the United States and in Canada, Mexico and Taiwan.

Colectivo Juana (see also Cinthya Oyervides and Felipe Noriega)

Founded by Cinthya Oyervides and Felipe Noriega. They began their professional relationship in 2006, in a choreography made for an exam. Since then, they have worked together in diverse choreographies premiered in venues at Centro Nacional de las Artes (CNA) and at the Ollin Kan Multiforum. In 2008 they founded Colectivo Juana, which looks for the promotion of new dynamics of interdisciplinary improvisation mixed with new technologies.

colectivo t o m a t e

Colectivo tomate was founded by three architects in 2004, Puebla Mexico to create a more plural architecture, closer to other disciplines. We offer creative solutions erasing the existing territorial lines between the arts to generate projects that include dance, visual arts, interior design, graphic design; elements that help us create a more emotional architecture. we design . we deliver.

colectivo tomate currently works on different projects at the same time, that gather efforts of dancers, editors, architects, and graphic designers. Recently we have worked on a research project that hope to create a construction module for building facades made of plastic residual material in order to erradicate the pollution that plastic bags from the supermarket create. Aditionally, we are working on a eco-friendly architectural design of a camp ground for company reunions and children that currently develops an area of tree-houses as well as the web and graphic image of Agite y Sirva, an international dance- for screen festival.

This year, for performatic 2009, Mauricio Heredia ( graphic designer),Paola de la conca (architect), Ximena Monroy (director of Agite y Sirva), Denisse Cardenas ( dancer) and Lourdes Roth ( dancer) gather their know-how to produce B y C, El intervalo, a piece that uses contemporary dance as a common denominator. The piece speaks of relatinoships: the constant tug of war of dependancy, strife, love and loss with a touch of eroticism and eery ambience.

Paulina Colmenares

Born in Mexico City and raised in Oaxaca. She graduates from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla with a BFA in Dance, with the creation of a dissertation called Interrupción. In 2005 she participates in Vienna's ImpulsTanz Festival, while in the summer of 2006 and 2007 receives a scholarship to attend the American Dance Festival. In November 2006 she goes as an independent choreographer under the name of DAK Danza Moderna, and performs at the Festival Internacional de Puebla. Since then, she has collaborated as dancer and choreographer with Ímago Producciones, creating multidisciplinary shows aimed for young audiences, such as El Beneficio del Locutor, La Cosa más (---) del Mundo and TV Utopía. In September 2008 she becomes founder of the project Malva Danza Compañía/Laboratorio Móvil de Danza y Creación. She premieres the evening-lenght work Espacios Abiertos/Sueños Compartidos, in collaboration with dancers/choreographers Denisse Cárdenas, Doménica López and Gabriela Pérez Montero. During Fall 2008, in New York City, she attends Limón Institute's Intensive Training in Limón-Humphrey Technique. She also takes on several technique, improvisation, composition and management workshops in venues like Movement Research, Dance New Amsterdam, Mark Morris Dance School and The Field. Her repertory work includes the pieces Dulce Infierno, Migración, Entre la Niebla y el Resplandor and Violento Índigo. She is currently managing Malva Danza, whose main goal is the creation of a moving space, dedicated to choreographic research and to the opening of spaces for emerging and established dancers and choreographers.

Compañía FL Danse / Fabienne Lacheré & Miriam González

Miriam González received her Bachelor's as Dancer from INBA's Academia de la Danza, where she specialized in ballet and modern dance. She has danced with diverse dance companies. In 2001 she is part of Contempodanza, under Cecilia Lugo's direction. In 2002 she is invited by the Ballet Ecuatoriano de Cámara to be part of the company, under the direction of Rubén Guarderas. From 2004 until 2007 she is part of the company Ballet Independiente, under José Rivera Moya's direction. In 2008 she begins work with Compañía FL Danse.

She is currently part of the Compañía Mexicana de Danza Contemporánea, in a project for Diego Rivera's anniversary, under Guillermo Arriaga's choreography and Rodrigo González's artistic direction. She has served as ballet mistress and modern dance theater at Pachuca's School of Arts, in Hidalgo, Mexico. Also as ballet mistress at Venezuela's Escuela de las Artes de Caracas, under the direction of Osvaldo Marchionda. From 2005 until 2007 she was appointed as Ballet Independiente's ballet mistress. In 2008 she serves as counsellor for the project Niños en la Danza, alongside DIF's Casa Hogar Pas. Her interests lie in the proposal of matters of social interest within dance.

Compañía México en Movimiento / Amalia Viviana Lasanta Hernández

Amalia Viviana Lasanta Hernández, founder. She has studied Ballet and Modern Dance with teachers such as Nellie Happei, Socorro Larrauri, Carlos López, Guillermina Bravo, Rosana Filomarino, Alvin Nikolai, Murray Louis, Alvin Ailey and Hania Holm. She was Ballet Folklórico de México's first soloist and has been certified in England by the Modern Dance Theatre Faculty. She also worked in Canada with the company L'Sortilege. She founded México en Movimiento four years ago and since then, the company has performed in Madrid, Chicago and in many festivals of Mexico such as Festival Internacional de Danza de Oaxaca, Festival Franciscano de Guerrero and Festival Internacional de Danza en Tehuacán, as well as several theatrical runs at the Teatro de la Danza, in Mexico City.

Shawn Copeland

Shawn Copeland continues his inquiry into musical performance beyond the completion of his Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Shawn is a founding member of Relevents Wind Quintet, the Bellwood Trio and Una Voce, all chamber ensembles based in North Carolina. He has presented recitals and premiered works throughout Europe, the United States , Ireland and Japan. He is currently principal clarinetist of the Fibonacci Chamber Orchestra and performs with the North Carolina Symphony, the Carolina Pops, the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and the Winston-Salem Symphony as well as many other local orchestras throughout the region. As an accredited teacher of Alexander Technique and a specialist in the application of anatomy and physiology called body mapping, Shawn maintains an active teaching schedule in North Carolina's Piedmont-Triad region.

Kate Corby

Kate Corby is a contemporary choreographer, educator and performer. Her dance theater works have been presented in Wisconsin, Illinois, California, Taiwan and Hungary, where she carried out choreographic research in Budapest as a Fulbright Fellow from 2006-2007. Recently, Corby has been presenting work in Chicago with the LIVE ANIMALS Performance Collective at Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Hamlin Park Fieldhouse, Link's Hall and Around the Coyote Gallery, and independently at the Dance Center of Columbia College. From 1999-2004 Ms. Corby was a San Francisco, California-based choreographer and dancer and established Kate Corby & Dancers in 2001. The ensemble performed in many San Francisco venues, including five self-produced events from 2001 to 2003, and received grant support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, CA$H of Theatre Bay Area, and Meet the Composer. Ms. Corby received a BA in Dance and Women's Studies from Beloit College and an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was an instructor and performed with numerous faculty and student choreographers. She has served on the faculties of the Dance Center of Columbia College, Beloit College, and the Pedagogy Department of the Hungarian Dance Academy. Ms. Corby joined the UW-Madison Dance Program in Wisconsin as an assistant professor in 2008.

Donna Costello

Donna Costello, described by the New York Times as having a "calm authority" on stage, is a dancer, performer and teaching artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is a founding member of Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance and has created and collaborated with Ms. Hummel for over 10 years. She is also inspired by her ongoing relationships performing for Mollie O'Brien/Mob productions, Jimena Paz and Jill Sigman/Thinkdance. Ms. Costello has had the pleasure of working with a diverse group of choreographers in NYC including Barbara Mahler, Stephan Koplowitz, Melissa Briggs, Naomi Goldberg, Juliette Mapp, Kelly Bartnik and Pele Bauch among others. Recently, she has created dance works for the camera with GK1 productions and Anna Brady Nuse. Her own work has been presented by Dixon Place, DanceNow/NYC, SWEAT dance series, Williamsburg Art Nexus, New Dance Space in Charlottsville, VA and James Madison University. She has had numerous residences at JMU where she received her BA in Dance and Speech Communication. Ms. Costello has taught at Queesnborough Community College, Poly Prep Country Day School, and in residence with Cora Dance and Jill Sigman/Thinkdance. She currently teaches for Lincoln Center Institute, Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Dance New Amsterdam.

Cari Cunningham

Cari Cunningham is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and writer living in the high desert of Northern Nevada. Cari received an MFA in dance from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a BA in dance from the Robert D. Clark Honor's College at the University of Oregon. She is currently Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Nevada, Reno where she is developing a Dance major. In the summer of 2000 Cari was an intern at the prestigious Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts and continued her work in dance administration at the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation in New York City.

As a performer, Cunningham has danced for many artists including Susan Marshall, Kevin Wynn, David Capps, Gabe Masson, Marilyn Dannitz, Onye Ozuzu/Skeleton Dance Project, Minh Tran, and Pam Geber. She is currently the artistic director and founder of Belle Contemporary Dance Company, based in Reno, Nevada. Her choreographic works have been performed out West in Oregon, Colorado, and Nevada as well as back East in New York City at City Center "On the 6th Floor," The Ailey School, La Mama Experimental Theatre, and the John Ryan Theater as part of the 2008 DUMBO Dance Festival.

An avid writer, Cunningham served as the dance critic for The Daily Camera in Boulder,Colorado (2004-2006) and has been published in Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance Spirit and Dance Teacher magazines.

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.

Agnieszka Dmochowska (see also agnieszka&agnieszka)

Born in 1981 in Warsaw and graduated from the Warsaw Ballet School. She finished her master studies at the Dance Department of IDA (Institute for Dance Arts) in Linz, Austria. For two years she has been dancing in the Austrian post graduated company X.Ida, and then decided to become a freelancer in Brussels where she now lives and works. Agnieszka has been performing among others with Anna Tenta, Rose Breuss, Elio Gervasi, Filip Van Huffel, Cezary Tomaszewski, Catherine Guerrin. Recently she dances with the american choreographer Androsem Zins-Brown and does her own work as part of agnieszka&agnieszka.

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.

Sally Doughty

Sally lives in Leicester, England, UK. She is an independent dance artist, Subject Leader for Dance and Programme Leader for the MA Dance and Professional Practice at De Montfort University (DMU), Leicester. She has been making and performing work internationally for live performance and screen since the early 90s. Her writings are published internationally and she regularly gives papers (both traditional and performative) at a range of conferences and seminars.

She graduated with BA (Hons) Dance in 1989 and worked with some of the UK's leading dance artists, including Laurie Booth, Sue MacLennan, Claire Russ and Rosemary Lee, as well as co-running her own dance companies. Eager to understand more about her choreographic process she undertook an MA by Independent Study in Improvisation as a creative tool in the rehearsal process in the late 90's. Two published articles evolved from that research, one in Theatre Insight from the University of Texas. Sally's fascination with improvisation has more recently shifted from using it in rehearsal to generate movement, towards working with it as a performance mode. She has recently completed a year long cross art form improvisation project which culminated in a range of improvised performances, including with the London Improvisation Orchestra.

Sally's approach as independent dance artist, academic and researcher creates a synergetic and holistic underpinning to her work. Her specialist area of research is improvisation. She has received funding from the Centre for Excellence in Performance Arts at DMU to undertake a research project which focuses on developing critical and reflective skills in those who are engaged in improvisation. She has developed a framework for teaching and learning improvisation that encourages improvisers to develop greater awareness of their decision-making processes. Findings have been published in Research in Dance Education. She invited Kent De Spain to act as consultant on this project, and they have since co-taught a workshop for professional dance artists, effing the ineffable at DMU in 2007. Sally's fascination in documenting improvisation has culminated in a solo show (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) titled A dance for radio which evolved out of her research into parallels between improvisation and photography. A dance for radio has been performed at a range of conferences and festivals, including in Latvia, Paris, Texas, London and Nottingham.

Alex Escalante

Alex Escalante is from Los Angeles, CA. Since moving to New York his choreogaphy has been presented at Danspace Project, DTW, La MaMa E.T.C., DUO Theater, Dixon Place, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Joe's Pub, Here Arts Center and abroad at Ponec Theater in Prague, Czech Republic as part of MRX. His last piece, Clandestino, was chosen by Time Out NY as one of the best of 2008 and is currently creating a new evening length work to premiere at The Kitchen in February 2010. He is a 2007-2008 Movement Research Artist in Residence. Additionally, Escalante has performed with Donna Uchizono Company, Jennifer Monson/Birdbrain, Doug Elkins, Doug Varone, David Neumann, Gerald Casel and the Metropolitan Opera. Escalante also works as a freelance photographer and is an avid surfer. alex@alexescalante.com

Ami Garmon

Ami Garmon, american, lives and works between Berlin and France.

She creates most often one woman shows for theaters and museums. She collaborates with visual and sound artists to create performance installations that are intense poetic and immersive atmospheres for her writings, her voice and her dances. She has collaborated with Nadia Lauro, Nicolas Losson, Olivier Zol and Christiane Hommelsheim. She improvises and performs in collaboration with her own group productions or as a performer for others (P. Droulers, D. Cieslak, Mark Tompkins, Steve Paxton, A. Maurs, Philippe Jamet, Julia Jarcho, Steve Paxton...). Her interest has always been on emotion and nostalgia and surfaces both real and projected. Her focus on writing and performance and precision of movement means that her works stretch over diverse fields and mediums. Her latest work Take me home with you proposes a threefold project that is a piece, a book and an audio cd. revealing a desire to enlarge the experience of her work into the private sphere of one's own time and home. Her works are mutable collections of expression and reflection. She was a member of the Improvisation Ensemble of Politics of Ecstasy Festival at HAU- Berlin directed by Jeremy Wade and Meg Stuart. Her current project Another fucking solo, a duo plus live music is planned for Feb 2010.

Elena Giannotti

Italian born Elena Giannotti currently lives and works in Ireland.

She studied ballet with Marina Sophie Van Hoecke, modern techniques, theatre-improvisation and yoga in Italy and later post modern releasing techniques and improvisation in Europe and New York. In 1994 she started working in Operas and Dance-Theatre productions and joined in 1996 the Dance Theatre Company L'Ensemble of Micha van Hoecke touring extensively in Italy. She joined in 2000 Virgilio Sieni Dance Company touring in Europe and South America. Further, she danced in SOHK with Yoshiko Chuma, touring in Japan. In 2002 through an artistic residency in Lexington Art Centre (NY) she presented her first solo-work Portrait number 2. In the following two years she performed her works Sisifo and Big eye, Small Window at LaMaMa Umbria International Festival, Italy. Since 2002 she has been collaborating intensively with British choreographer Rosemary Butcher, dancing in performances and films (the film Vanishing Point has premiered at ICA, Institute of Contemporary Art, London; the last film 4Dance has been screened on Channel Four, British TV). She has been performing the most recent Butcher's solo-work Woman and Memory in venues such as Tate Modern in London, La Villette in Paris, Tanz Quartier in Vienna, Place des Arts in Montreal, Muffathalle in Munich, Kampfnagel in Hamburg amongst others. In 2003 she has been Guest Artist at Laban in London for a year. From 2006 to 2008 she has also worked with Daghdha Dance Company in Ireland, performing Michael Klien's repertoire and a collaborative solo-work Sense & Meaning, touring in Japan, China, England, France and Australia. In the last six years she has been focusing in dance research and improvisation, recently promoting her long term project and solo-work Body of Osiris, performed so far in Ireland, UK, Italy. She holds a certificate as Leading Host in Social Dreaming and is currently collaborating with founder professor Gordon Lawrence in a performance project involving SD and Dance. Besides her career as a dancer she has been teaching workshops in Europe, Japan and Australia. From 2006 to 2008 she acted as teacher and mentor in the Daghdha Mentoring Program in Choreography and Dance in Ireland. She is currently Guest Teacher at the MA course in Dance and Performance at Limerick University.

Ladys González

Body Expression Teacher. She works at the Escuela de Teatro y Conservatorio de Morón. She has capacitated teachers from the City of Buenos Aires and Morón. She has taught Esferodinamia at the Centro Cultural Borges, Universidad Nacional de Artes, Festival Internacional de Improvisación de Contacto en Buenos Aires and Brasilia. She has been part of the Festival de Música Contemporánea, Jornadas sobre Música en el Siglo XX at the Universidad de La Plata.

She majors in Arts, specializing in Combined Arts at the Faculty of Philosohpy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires. In 2003 she began investigating about movement and the audiovisual image. In 2006 her dance video called Haedo en llamas was part of the 8th Festival Internacional Videodanza BA, at the Centro Cultural San Martín, Festival Internacional de Video Danza de Cuba, at Uruguay and Chile, Foro No Violencia, amongst others. Her paper called La videodanza se significa, se manifiesta, se entrelaza was selected for the Symposium Pensar en la Videodanza, within the 9th Festival Internacional de Videodanza BA, at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. In June 2007 she was invited to program Ciclo Videodanza en el Municipio de Morón, within the Cuban Cinema Cycle, and in November she worked with the Festival Internacional de Videodanza BA within the Environmental Cinema Cycle and within the French Cinema Cycle. In October 2008 she directed an installation called Frontera danza at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. Currently, she promotes dance video at Morón, through the project "Morón: Nuevas Tendencias".

Good Foot Dance Company (see also Emily Oleson, Matthew Olwell and Meg Madden)

Emily Oleson, Matthew Olwell and Meg Madden began working together in 2004, and immediately uncovered a shared love of traditional and contemporary dance that has given birth to an ever-growing number of exciting performances and a shared repertoire of dances ranging from Irish and Canadian step dance, to Appalachian clogging, to hip hop and rhythm tap.

Together, they have over thirty years of performing and teaching experience, and have danced with traditional and contemporary musical acts including The Chieftans, Lunasa, Eileen Ivers, Liz Carrol and John Doyle, John Whelan, The David Munnelly Band, Matapat, John Skelton, Billy McKomiskey and Solas.

Good Foot Dance Company appeared in "A Charlottesville Wunderkammer: an Arts Extravaganza" in the summer of 2006, and "Shen Tai" in 2007, and has been regularly self-producing concerts since 2005, including Robin Hood, an evening length Irish dance drama.

Miguel Ángel Guzmán

Miguel holds a BFA in Theatre from Universidad de las Américas Puebla, studying and working with renowned teachers and directors such as Susana Wein, Ileana Azor, Alejandro Velis, Peter Goldfarb and José Raúl Cruz. He graduates Magna Cum Laude in 2008. Currently he studies a second BFA in Dance, at the same institution, under the tutorship of teachers and choreographers like Mayra Morales, Bertha Gómez, Zap McConnell, Alicia Marván, Pedro Beiro, Ruben Ornelas and Ray Eliot Schwartz. In the area of Music, he has been instructed by teachers Emilia Ismael, Gisela Crespo and Armando Mora.

As actor and dancer, he has participated in several national and international festivals, among them there can be mentioned the Encuentro Nacional de los Amantes del Teatro 2006 in Mexico City; Performática 2007 and 2008 in the City of Puebla; Danza Extrema: IV International Festival of Contemporary Choreographic Art 2008, in the City of Xalapa.

A certified Pilates instructor, he also serves as translator for various languages. Since 2005, he works in Mexico City under the direction of Claudio Valdés Kuri at the renowned theatre company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes.

Amanda Hamp

Amanda Hamp is waking up, softening, getting caught, and going at it again. She works at Luther College, facilitating and developing the Movement Fundamentals curriculum along with its inceptor, Jane Hawley. She also teaches and co-teaches various courses inside and outside the Theatre/Dance department. Before returning to the valleys of Iowa, she did projects with dance companies and artists in Tucson, Arizona, which she holds dear. There she also began practicing Skinner Releasing and aerial dancing. All of this immediately followed 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), and right now she's so glad to be in Mexico.

Megan Harrold

Megan Harrold is originally from Annandale, Virginia and a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's department of Dance and Choreography. Her work has been presented at Greenspace in NY, The Tank in NJ, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts 25 Annual Choreographer's Showcase in MD, and at Henrico High School where she was a guest artist for the spring semester. She has preformed in the repertory pieces of Keith Thompson, Doug Varone, Lar Lubovitch, Robert Battle, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Ashley Anderson, Mariah Maloney and Laura Dean. She is also the scholarship recipient for the Carpenter Foundation, and the Phi Kappa Phi Wayne C Hall Arts Scholarship. Megan is currently a dancer as well as the Director of Growth and Development at the Latin Ballet of Virginia.

Keira Hart-Mendoza

Keira Hart-Mendoza oscillates between Charlottesville and Arlington, Virginia. She has been teaching dance at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and recently moved to the DC area. Keira received her MFA in Dance from Arizona State University. She graduated from ASU with academic honors. Before that she was at James Madison University in Harrisonburg Va, where she received degrees in both Dance and Media Arts & Design.

Working interdisciplinary and collaborating with artists in all fields is an essential aspect of Keira's work. She has worked with musicians, filmmakers, engineers, actors, fashion designers, and dancers. Keira envelopes her choreography a variety of elements including video and multimedia, elaborate costumes, and fantastical sets to visually stimulate and provoke the audience to look and see beyond the dance. Her work often times oscillates between dance-theater and visual design/shape based work. She uses color, light, movement, video, word, and sound to metaphorically and symbolically challenge the audience to think differently about various aspects of the human condition.

Keira has attended many dance and film festivals including the American Dance Festival in Durham North Carolina, Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston Maine, Breaking Grounds Dance Festival in Toronto Canada, an Independent Dance Summer Study in London England, The M.E.L.T. Festival in NYC, and the Dance for the Camera Film and Video Festival in Salt Lake City Utah. She also won "Best Student Work" for her video piece entitled Seeing is... at the American Dance Festival's Dance for the Camera Film and Video Festival 2005. Last year Keira established UpRooted Dance Theatre Co. and currently works with professional dancers from Charlottesville and Washington DC.

Kathy Harty Gray

Artistic Director, Founder and Choreographer of Kathy Harty Gray Dance Theatre. She is a native New Yorker, a graduate of the Juilliard School, and holds a MED from the University of Virginia. She was trained by some of the great teachers and choreographers of the 20th century including Martha Graham, José Limón, Charles Weidman, Anna Sokolow and Antony Tudor. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Festival of Two Worlds Spoleto, Italy, Wolf Trap Farm Park, the Kennedy Center and theaters and institutions worldwide. With over 30 years experience in teaching, choreographing and directing dance companies, she has accepted her calling to keep modern dance alive. She created the innovative "History of American Modern Dance" series - narrated concerts, which educate and entertain viewers about this unique American art form. She has choreographed for TV, trade shows, musicals and conventions. She has taught at many colleges, universities and studios and continues to teach master classes in traditional dance styles. She is presently an adjunct faculty member at Northern Virginia Community College Alexandria Campus, where over 140 ethnic backgrounds are represented. In 1998 she was awarded the Jean C. Netherton Award of Excellence for outstanding service by the College. KHGDT has been company-in-residence at NVCC Alexandria since 1995.

Jane Hawley

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.

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 and perceptuo-motor training, facilitated through practices of alignment and function; range and efficiency; and vocabulary and intention. This dance curriculum has been presented at the National Dance Educators Organization Conference in 2002, the Motus Humanus, Laban Institute of Movement Analysis Conference in California, June 2006 and most recently at the International Association for Dance, Medicine and Science, October 2008. Hawley remains most enamored with collaborations featuring the work of artists within diverse art forms--among them being, her four boys in Iowa.

Kristin Heavey

Kristin Heavey founded Element Dance Theater in 1998 after completing her masters in Dance Education at Stanford University; the mission of the company is to produce engaging dance works that explore the physical and emotional effects of contemporary culture on the body, using a range of styles and mediums. Element Dance Theater has used video, animation, aerial dance, and theatrical staging to create performances that are at once intimate and political, full of emotive gestures and arresting images.

Kristin has studied with Angela Capinegro, Elizabeth Streb, Bill T. Jones, Stephen Petronio, June Finch, Beth Sole and Diane Frank. Her work has been selected to appear in concerts produced by the San Francisco International Arts Festival, Dancer's Group, Venue 9, Dance Repertory/SanFrancisco, Dance Brigade, ODC Theater, and Stanford University, as well as other venues throughout the Bay Area. Her work has also been performed in Serbia, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York. Element has received grants from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Theater Bay Area CASH Grant, and San Francisco Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission and the piece Scale was developed through a Residency at ODC Theater.

Kristin has performed with Dandelion Dance Theater, Hummingbird Dance Collective, and Beth Sole. She was recently commissioned to choreograph a production of The Faith Project at the Mondavi Performing Arts Center at the University of Californa Davis, and created a full-evening multimedia and dance performance, The Mapping Project, in collaboration with Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater and visual artists Chris Lanier and Ilya Noe.

Kristin has been a guest lecturer at Stanford University and a guest artist at CSU Hayward, University of Nevada Reno, and Evergreen Community College. She has taught Gyrotonic classes at the San Francisco Dance Center for the Lines Pre-Professional Program, and currently works through out California with school districts, Arts Councils and foundations to build quality arts programs for California youth. Her writing has been published in In Dance, The Teaching Artists' Journal, and the CDE Press.

Lol-Beh Hernández / Rodanza

Graduate from Bellas Artes' National School of Dance. She has danced with companies like Contempodanza, Producciones La Manga and Contradanza, among others. Her work has been showcased both nationally and internationally. She was head of Iztacalco's Foro Cultural, where she promoted cultural projects that benefited directly people from that area. She was recommended as Best Performer by the State's Culture Secretariat and represented Puebla in the National Jazz Ensemble that was presented in Morelia, Michoacán. She is a teacher at Sisti Dance Place and Co-Director and Choreographer of the group Rodanza. She is an avid aerial dance practitioner and is currently under the support of the Beca FOESCAP.

Rachel S. Hunter

Rachel Susanne Hunter began dancing in Cookeville, TN at the Dance Arts Center and continued training at the Cumberland Dance Academy. After receiving her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Dance and Choreography, Ms. Hunter gained experience working as a performer and stage manager for Starr Foster Dance Project, K Dance in association with "Yes, Virginia Dance," Ground Zero Dance Company, Amaranth Contemporary Dance, Dim Sum Dance and, Project Project. In addition to working as the New Student Coordinator for VCU School of the Arts, she is also currently teaching for Village Dance Studios. Hunter co-founded R Squared with fellow alum Rachael Shaw with the goal of providing a supportive environment to create and view art.

www.rsquareddance.com

Juan Crisóstomo Izaguirre Ruiz

Born 1967 in Sonora, México. A Linguistics Major from the Universidad de Sonora (UNISON). Art Instructor specialized in Dance, from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL). He has been teaching art and social sciences for over 20 years. He worked as modern dancer and choreographer for over 15 years. For the last five years, he has designed a research program which focuses on two lines of work: semiotics, aesthetic and dance critique; the culture of the body within teaching and the learning of scenic arts: beyond cartesian dualism. Some results of that program have been promoted in superior education institutions like Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional and INBAL.

He currently works as teacher at UNISON and at INBAL's Centro de Educación Artística "José Eduardo Pierson". He is also completing a Master's Degree in Education at the Universidad del Valle de México.

Kirsten Johansen

Kirsten Johansen is a dancer, choreographer and veteran of numerous community colleges, San Francisco State University and Tisch School of the Arts, NYU (BFA 1998, MFA 1999). Her works have been presented in New York City at The Flea Theatre, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BRIC Studio, St. Mark's Church, Williamsburg Art Nexus, DanceNow/The Festival (2000-2004), and Dixon Place. A member of Gina Gibney Dance from 2002-2004, she participated in the Women@Work program, bringing dance to survivors of domestic violence and homeless teens. She served as Assistant Director for Another Theatre Company working on Macbeth and The Seagull, and choreographed for American A**hole at St. Marks Theatre and Lady Convoy, which was presented by the NYC Fringe Festival. Kirsten was an adjunct professor at Riverside Community and Chaffey Colleges in California from 2006-2008, and has also worked with artists J Mandle Performance, Marc Jarecke, Antonietta Vicario and Jason Akira Somma. For fun, she waits tables in the East Village.

Jennifer Keller

For the last nine years, Jennifer Keller has been developing solo and duet repertory, drawing on the influences of technology, improvisation, contact improvisation and her experiences as an eight year company member of Mark Taylor & Friends (NYC) and the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy. Her repertory earned a spot on Pittsburgh's 2002 top ten dance list by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and received the Harry Schwalb Excellence in the Arts Award from Pittsburgh Magazine. Additionally, she was recognized with an award by the Pittsburgh Foundation as an artist living and working in the Pittsburgh Area. An Associate Professor at Slippery Rock University of PA, she received the SRU President's Award for Creative Achievement and the Zuzak Teaching Artist/Scholar Award from the College of Humanities, Fine and Performing Arts. She holds an MFA from Arizona State University, a BA from Connecticut College, and is a certified Pilates instructor. She has studied extensively "Articulating the Solo Body" and "Ensemble Thinking" with Nina Martin.

Sandra Lacy

Sandra Lacy holds a BA in psychology, is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Dancing in London and a certified Gyrokinesis teacher. 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. She is co-artistic director of Lacy&Shade Solo/Duet Danceworks, 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, The Yes Virginia Dance Festival in Richmond, Virginia The Jacob's Pillow Inside/Outside Series in Lee, Massachusetts and the Maryland Showcase for Choreographers. Ms. Lacy is the recipient of 6 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.

Martín Lanz

Choreographer and dancer graduated from INBA's Centro de Investigación Coreográfica. He is currently on an artistic residency in New York City, with Movement Research. As a dancer, he has worked with DD Dorvillier, Sokolow Dance Theater Ensemble, Luna Roja, in countries such as Mexico, Ecuador, United States, Cuba, Austria, Belgium and Honduras. He has studied improvisation techniques, somatics, contact improv, physical theater, Humphrey-Limón technique and Release, as well as music, massage techniques, philosophy, light design and multimedia.

Katalin Lengyel

At this time, I am working as a residential artist doing the Daghdha Mentoring Programme in Limerick, Ireland. I finished my three years dance studies of Anton Bruckner University in 2008 in Linz, Austria, where I got my two diplomas as a contemporary dancer and teacher. To reach this point, I needed great changes in my life: I left three major studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary (English Literature and Grammar- Hungarian Literature and Linguistics- Comparative Literature) when I got enthusiasm to do the audition in Linz. I finished my studies in Literature and Linguistics in my first year of dance in Linz. In my theoretical literature studies, the most important and exciting part was always for me the comparative sciences, where I had the chance to look at my studies as a global phenomenon, how different sciences had influences on each other, such as literature in connection with movies, music, philosophy, mathematics, biology and so on. My approach how I gather and deal with the information is in a large extent based on the knowledge I collected through these years.

An important step of my personality and, so, technical and artistic development is the teaching and dealing with people. In Linz, I was teaching through one semester the first year students of the university and beginners in workshops until I passed successfully my pedagogy exam. At the moment, I am also working in Ireland with a group of people with learning disabilities. My aim of working is always the research itself: not to force an outside image on the dancers, including myself, or on the choreography but to go through a process; in other words, to be open for the changes given by situation where the process is so important, or even more, as the end product itself.

Rosalía Loeza / Alsurdanza

Graduated from the Centro Estatal de Bellas Artes, majoring in Modern Dance. In 1993 she is part of the Compañía de Danza Contemporánea del Estado de Yucatán, serving as dancer, teacher and choreographer. She has performed in Mexico's most important festivals such as Festival Internacional de San Luis Potosí, Movimiento Confederado in Mexico City, Un Desierto para la Danza in Monterrey, Encuentro Binacional de Danza in Mexicali, among others. She has also been in San José Costa Rica's Festival Internacional de Coreógrafos.

She has been instructed by teachers such as Rossana Filomarino, Javier Romero, Cinthya Paris, Tulio de la Rosa, Pilar Medina, Gerardo Delgado, Victor Lopes, Lourdes Luna, Víctor Ruiz, Clara Carranco, Victoria Camero, among others. She has taught Movement Technique at the Casa de la Cultura in Mérida, Yucatán and also in Cancún, Quintana Roo. She currently works in the modern dance company Alsurdanza, and is teacher of Graham Technique, Choreography and Movement Styles at the Centro Estatal de Bellas Artes.

Doménica López Amezcua

She studies a BFA in Dance at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, graduating Cum Laude in 2008. She begins her studies in classical dance and ballet at the City of Aguascalientes, and continues them in the City of Puebla, at the Royal Academy of Dance, under the tutelage of Alma Porras. She is part of the company Hula Halau Iolani, where she studies Hawaiian, Tahitian and Folkloric dances; with the company she tours to Greece and within the Mexican Republic. At the Universidad de las Américas Puebla she is member of the companies UDLA Danza and Ballet UDLA, receiving her education from renowned teachers and choreographers such as Ray Eliot Schwartz, Mayra Morales, Pedro Beiro, John Mead, Alejandra Ramírez, Rip Parker, Lourdes Peláez and Sunny Savoy (she was also member of Savoy's eponymous company).

In 2007 she participates at the Segundo Concurso Internacional de Danza, in the City of Puebla, as member of Colectivo Z, with whom she obtains recognition for her work as a dancer. In 2008 she is invited to the project Malva Danza, under Paulina Colmenares' direction, in Oaxaca and Puebla. In that same year, she premieres her first evening-length concert called Magenta (...pensamientos afónicos), receiving accolades from audicences, academics and local critics, and is thus invited to collaborate in Performática 2009, in the areas of logistics and public relations. Dancer, choreographer and dance teacher, she thinks of dance as an inner expression of the soul, as a language which does not need to be decyphered and proposes the access to it to all audiences, needless of previous knowledge.

Anadel Lynton

Co-founder and head researcher of INBA's Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información de la Danza José Limón. She also serves as creator and interpreter of artistic actions, as choreographer and as teacher. She gives workshops such as Dancing in Community, Movement/Expression/Communication, Movement Choirs... for indigenous, feminist, community and cultural organizations. She also approaches staging for alternative spaces, by means of popular dances, Laban movement analysis, research, improvisation as a process focused on the scene and on creativity; at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia she teaches dance, theatre and performance research. She is conductor of the program Diálogos de Percepciones entre Públicos y Creadores. She was dancer of Ballet Nacional, Ballet Independiente and Tropicanas, and is currently performing her own pieces and in Iris. Maker of artistic acts, interactive events and socio-political animation with a playful sense. Among her recent production there can be mentioned Ciclos, Aférrate a tu humanidad, Ofrenda por la Paz, Hojas de Nueva Vida, ¿Quién soy yo? ¿Tú quién eres?, Romerías y Romerias Tours, receiving grants and support from instances such as Artes por Todas Partes, FONCA and Performagia. She has been acknowledged by Sociedad Mexicana de Coreógrafos, 6^o Festival de Nueva Danza y Música, and also as co-founder of CENIDI Danza (in its 25th anniversary) and of Ballet Independiente (in its 40th anniversary. Social Anthropologist (ENAH), Artistic Educator and Researcher (INBA's MFA program), Laban Movement Analyst (Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies). She also holds a Ph.D in Education and Dance from Philadelphia's Temple University.

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 Rochester, New York.

Meg Madden

Meg Madden began her Irish dance training with Carmel O'Rourke-Tighe, and has studied Cape Breton step dance with Malke Rosenfeld and Kristin Andreassen. She has been an assistant teacher at the Augusta Heritage Festival, and a frequent instructor for the Blue Ridge Irish Music School, and many other festivals and programs.

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 Cumuna Venezuela, Performatica Puebla Mexico, Fusebox, Austin TX. 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); Recipient of the Manhattan Community Arts Fund/ New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (2004) NPN Residency through a Community Fund presenter Tigertail Productions (2004) NPN performance residency with Women and their Work Austin Texas (2008). She has been awarded the 2007 Miami Dade Choreographer's Fellowship from the Miami Dade Cultural Affairs. Maloney has been selected as an emerging choreographer for Bates Dance Festival 2008. She is Co-Director of InKub8, a south Florida-based open share collective. Maloney holds a BFA from New World School of the Arts. She has taught workshops at New World School of the Arts, Bates College as well as in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela and currently is adjunct faculty at Florida International University.

Nadine Martínez-Sierra

Nadine Martínez-Sierra holds a BA in Dance from the University of North Texas and a MA in European Dance-Theater Practice from the Laban Centre London, UK, where she studied under the tutelage of Dr. Ana Sanchez-Colberg and Dr. Valerie Preston Dunlop. The question of "self-identity" is the main topic of inspiration for Nadine's creations. Borrowing from her Puerto Rican/Caribbean heritage and personal experiences, she creates a fusion within art and culture. Her pieces take form through a collaborative approach within different artistic mediums such as music, theater, and dance. Therefore, creating a performance presentation that allows the audience to be visually and kinesthetically engaged. Nadine has been performing and collaborating with various choreographers such as Despina Sophia Stamos, Martha Bowers, and Kelly Donovan. Some of these presentations included performances at the Merce Cunningham Studio, Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, and various site-specific performances in New York City. As a choreographer, Nadine's works have been showcased at BAAD ASS Women Festival and the Uptown Performances Series New York City among other places. Nadine is also an avid educator. She has worked with the Boston Public Schools, Bronx Charter School for the Arts, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, and the Office of Youth Affairs of Puerto Rico among others.

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.

Analía Melgar

Argentinean dancer, dance-therapist and pedagogue. Formed in Buenos Aires at the Fundación Sonia López-Danza & Danzaterapia, she develops for over 10 years an intense promotion and practice of Dance-Therapy and Creative Dance among children, adults and people with disabilities. She has danced in several theatres and unconventional venues in Argentina and Mexico, being related with the audience and with different objects, both as means to access communication and people's emotivity. In Mexico, she is part of numerous projects that aim for integration.

At the Universidad de Buenos Aires, she receives her Bachelor's Degree in Modern Literature. She is currently editor of the publication DCO Danza, Cuerpo, Obsesión which devotes itself to the body's theoretic studies as well as reflection. She is also a journalist, dedicated to scenic and visual arts. Her articles have been published in specialized magazines, newspapers and other media in Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Ecuador and Spain. In Argentina, she has edited and written the prologue for the book Puentes & Atajos: Recorridos por la Danza en Argentina (COCOA-DATEI). She takes part as lecturer and teacher in diverse seminars, symposiums, workshops and courses dedicated to the culture of the body, giving special attention to adults, children and academics. In the editorial area, she works as editor, corrector and translator, particularly in media dedicated to health, culture and education.

Ixchel Méndez Salmón

Born in 1979, she is a multidisciplinary artist devoted to her work and to avant-garde scenic manifestations as well as to the production and promotion of her own work, collaborating with guest artists for over 5 years and directing the Colectivo Independiente Interdisciplinario Artistas Invitados Señorita Kometa / No No Art, based in Morelia, Michoacán, México. For over 20 years she has been instructed in classical ballet and modern dance. She has also studied Scenography, Production and Direction in Madrid, Spain. Among her teachers, there can be mentioned: Laura Urdapilleta, Pilar Medina, Alicia Marván, Rebecca Bryan, Rubén López Cano, César Villavicencio, and Ricardo Benet.

No No Art is: Innovation-Creation-Activation.

Catherine Monnes

Catherine Monnes is an eclectic musician & joyful shadow dancer; she has performed in many venues with bands such as Dumb Dog & Hollow Log, Draw the Kitten, & Magneto, & danced in revues such as "The Stars of Tomorrow" (tomorrow never comes but The Stars opened for the Diving Horse on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City).

She facilitates play through music improvisation and transformative movement through JourneyDance. She has a large & interesting varied mostly menial backround (driving cab, exercising racehorses, flowers, etc.), with training in Guided Imagery & Music, Reiki, & Thai massage (she is also a Certified Massage Therapist). She is an accordion clown, lonesome fiddler, orphan punk, mother, sister, lover, magician & hopeful fool.

Ximena Monroy

Born in Mexico City in 1980. She studies both Dance and Audiovisual Communication. Her dance training is taken in venues such as Mexico City's Ballet Teatro del Espacio, Puebla's BUAP and UDLA, and Buenos Aires' IUNA and UBA's Centro Cultural Rojas. Graduated from UDLAP as Bachelor in Communications, with the documentary Bajo Buenos Aires, filmed in Argentina and post-produced in Puebla. In 2006 she takes Silvana Szperling's dance video workshops in Buenos Aires and joins the staff of the Festival VideoDanzaBA. That year, she coordinates the second stage of the Dance Video Research Lab Argentina-UK. She is also invited to perform at the opening night of Centro Cultural de San Martín Buenos Aires' Culture and Media program. In 2007 she manages Circuito Videodanza Mercosur's Artistic Residencies. Together with choreographer Daniel Vulliez, they create (bis), which was selected for the Ciclo de Videodanza, during the French Cinema Week at the municipality of Morón, Buenos Aires; also in MoA.ar, Ciclo de Videodanza Argentino; at the 9th Festival Internacional VideoDanzaBA in Buenos Aires; at Samples in Puebla-Oaxaca-Mexico City and at Rio de Janeiro's Dança em foco. (bis) was broadcasted nationally in Mexico at Canal 22's program Corto Circuito. In 2008 she premieres the video installation called Frontera Danza, alongside Ladys González and Colombia's Culpable Films. She coordinates the 1a Muestra VideoDanzaBA Itinerante Mexico 2008, together with Marianna Garcés, and the 2009 follow-up Agite y Sirva Festival Itinerante de Video Danza en México.

Christina Müllenmeister

A Ruhrgebiet-Berlin based freelance performer, choreographer and teacher. She has received her studies in contemporary dance at the Rotterdam Danceacademy(NL), the School for Performing Arts in Berlin and in New York at Movement Research. During the last years she has worked for choreographers and directors like New York's Jennifer Monson and D.D. Dorvillier; and Germany's Be van Vark, Britta Pudelko and Yvonne Hardt, amongst others. Her own work has been shown throughout Europe. Christina is committed to researching dance/movement through/of the body and has a strong interest in the crossing over of contemporary art forms. She has been researching on different aproaches to movement, dance, choreography and performing. In her own work she is deeply interested in relations and the diversity of processes of improvising moving bodies. Most recently she has been focusing on communicating and articulating contemporary dance.

Dahlia Nayar

Dahlia Nayar is a first generation American born to immigrant parents from the Philippines and India. She has trained in Western and South Indian dance forms. Her contemporary choreography explores connections between her heritage and her present context. In 2007, she was chosen as an Emerging Choreographer in New England for the National Dance Project Dance Lab. In 2008, she received the Javits Fellowship to attend the Hollins University/American Dance Festival MFA Choreography program.

Felipe Noriega (see also Colectivo Juana)

Born in 1982 in Mexico City. In 2001 he begun the Major in Composition at the Centro de Investigación y estudios de la Música AC (CIEM), where he took classes with Ma. Antonieta Lozano, Tomás Barreiro, Enrico Chapela, Alejandro Velasco "Kavindu" and Víctor Rasgado, with whom last year finished the Analysis of Contemporary Music and Composition Workshop. In 2006, he received his Bachelor's in Compositional Techniques by London's Trinity College, as well as a Bachelor's in Theoretic Music, Analysis, Critique and Musical Literature. Among his premiered compositions, there's Un instante para tomar aliento for double bass, and Telúricas for a string quartet, both premiered at the Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez (2007 & 2008). Since 2006, he has composed music for dance, premiering work at the venues of the Centro Nacional de las Artes and at Ollin Kan's Multiforum.

Mamela Nyamza

I started dancing at the age of 8 at the ZAMA Dance School in Gugulethu, Cape Town. Currently, I am employed by the University of Stellenbosch, coordinating a project under MOVE 1524 addressing social issues such as HIV / AIDS, Domestic violence, Drugs etc. Move 1524 is a dynamic approach to promote interpersonal communication to change social norms through a diffusion model resulting in social upliftment.

I studied dance at the Pretoria Dance Technikon and received the National Diploma in Ballet in 1996.

1998 I was chosen for a one-year-scholarship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre, New York. On my return to South Africa, I joined the State Theatre Dance Company, Pretoria, performing with them nationally and abroad until its closure in 2000. I also worked with the International company MBT Dance Theatre. Worked with most of the critically acclaimed South African choreographers, the likes of Alfred Hinkel, Vincent Montsoe, Adele Blank, Christopher Kindo, Gregory Maqoma, Moketsi Koena, David Matamela, Ina Wichterich, Sbonakaliso Ndaba Natalie Fisher. Afterwards, I became one of the lead dancers in the internationally successful musical African Footprints. Worked with the Freeflight Dance Company and performed work such as Blood wedding, Angels in Strip. I also did lots of commercial work from 2000 -2008. In 2001, I won the award for the Most Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer at the FNB Dance INDABA for my solo The Dying Swan. In 2004, I was one of the leading dancers of the original cast of The Lion King in Den Hague, The Netherlands. Since then, I have been involved in different dance projects. In 2007, I worked as the Resident Choreographer at ZAMA Dance School in Gugulethu, choreographing two pieces for the school. I also taught at differnt schools in the community, eg. Likwezi Dance Project, Jikeleza in Imizamo Yethu, also teaching Jazzart Dance Company temporarily.

I am currently promoting a self-choreographed solo-dance piece, called Hatch, which was recently staged for the first time at on Broadway. Hatch is a dance piece that seeks to convey challenging issues of culture, tradition, and women's evolving sexuality within and outside the customary rites and rituals of marriage, starting from the time a girl-child is born until she realises her true identity after years of hardships in loveless marriage. Won a scholarship to study in Vienna part of the International Dance Festival 2008 for the period of 6 weeks, working with critically acclaimed dance makers in the world, the likes of Suzanne Linke, Ishmael Ivo, David Dorfman etc. It was a life-time experience made possible by Mrs. Wendy Ackermans, University of Stellenbosch and Debbie Goodman.

I was one of the choreographers of the live broadcast dance show So You Think You Can Dance 2008. I was invited to perform my one woman show in the Netherlands for the World Population Foundation on the 10th & the 11th of November 2008.

Emily Oleson

Emily Oleson received her BA in Theatre and Dance from James Madison University, where she was a member of the Virginia Repertory Dance Company, and presented work at the American College Dance Festival. She currently teaches Irish step dance, ballet and hip hop, and she is the artistic director of Shenandoah Irish Dance Arts. She has studied and performed with members of the Zen Monkey Project, Charlottesville-based choreographer Jesse Laurita-Spanglet, and, after having a daughter in winter of 2008, is now delighted to be doing contemporary dance again with fellow JMU alumna Keira Hart of UpRooted Dance Theatre Co.

Matthew Olwell

Matthew Olwell studied with some of the finest teachers in traditional dance, including Donny Golden, Eileen Carson, Benoit Bourque, The Fiddle Puppets, and Liam Harney. He danced for nine years with the Maryland based Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, with whom he toured Scotland, Wales, Canada, Finland and the United States, as well as appearing in the London production of Riverdance. He also plays flute and percussion, and performs with Danny Knicely, John Skelton and James Leva and Pergatory Mountain.

Ruben T. Ornelas

Ruben T. Ornelas has presented his choreography at venues in the Americas and East Africa. He has taught at universities and professional schools in the USA, Mexico, Guatemala, England and Uganda. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of Dance at State University of New York, Geneseo.

Jazmín Ortiz

She graduates with a Psychology Major from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

She has always been interested in the study of arts and in the relation they have with the study of consciousness. Throughout her career she devoted herself to the analysis of works of art and of its authors from a semantic and psychoanalytic perspective but, she realized that even though art theory was interesting, it was certainly not enough so as to arrive to an appropriate comprehension of the aesthetic phenomenon, thus deciding not only to enter the mental world but also the vivid action within art, and she then discovered music as one of her drives and passions and that the closest way to be in contact with it is through dance. She begins then to introduce herself in the world of the body, not only in dance but in diverse disciplines such as yoga, kung fu, tai chi, aerial dance, Hindu dance, Arab danc and break dance. In this manner she obtains a wider perspective not only of art but of its study, and this leads her to reset a new psychology of art. She is currently devoted to dance and movement investigation, theorically and practically. She is reasearcher of Art Psychology, dancer and choreographer, focused on Arab dance, with the academy Racks Alam. She continues to update herself in seminars taken both nationally and internationally with respected people of the areas.

Cinthya Oyervides (see also Colectivo Juana)

She studied classical dance with Irma Cuevas, Oscar Ruvalcaba and Enrique Alamillo, amongst others. In the field of modern dance she received her education from several Mexican teachers and at the Hoger Instituut voor Dans, in Belgium. She complemented her studies with a degree in Dance Teachings and Investigation and also with a special training in Physical Psychotherapy of Integration. In 2001 she attented Laban Center's Summer Workshop and received a scholarship for the 2008 José Limón Workshop. As a dancer, she has worked with different choreographers such as Irma Cuevas, Oscar Ruvalcaba, Magdalena Leite and Magdalena Fernández, amongst others. In 2007 she served as representative for the Major in Dance at the International Dance Day, where she also presented her work Autorretrato en Amberes, with which she was finalist at the Segundo Concurso Estudiantil de Composición Coreográfica de Xalapa 2007. She is currently studying her Senior Year, majoring in Choreography at the Escuela Nacional de Danza Clásica y Contemporánea.

Lisa Parra

Lisa Parra is a New York based choreographer and performer, who is currently living in Madrid, Spain. She received a Bachelors degree in Dance from the University of California at Irvine, Masters degree in Dance/Movement Therapy from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a Certification in Movement Analysis from the Laban Institute in New York City. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally: at New York's Dixon Place, the Oasis Festival at Chashama, the Williamsburg Art Nexus, the D.U.M.B.O Dance Festival and the Cool New York Dance Festival; in San Francisco at the West Wave Dance Festival; and in Spain at the Maratón Festival in Barcelona. She also performs in works by Claire Porter/Portables. Currently, she is working on a video animation piece with new media artist Sophie Kahn, which has been awarded a commission and residency at Experimental Media and Performance Art Center in Troy, NY.

María José Pérez-Castro

BFA in Dance at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla with a minor in Philosophy. Her dissertation: Ser Cuerpo y Metáforas: the creation of a ritual dance through an experimental process and a reflection on our physical condition. She currently teaches movement and creativity workshops and is part of Cooperativa Nidopermita, creating scenic projects and in the field of research as well. Independently, she develops Placentero y Nutritivo, a multidisciplinarian artistic process with the company Escaldrafa. Between 2005 and 2007 she developed a project on ritual dances which was presented in diverse spaces like colleges an community forums, such as Ibero-Puebla, Performática 2007, Arte-Con, La Ofrenda a la Madre Tierra and others. She currently practices Polarity Therapy to bring her work to life with diverse groups of women. She investigates dance as a ritual that interweaves its functions of artistic expression, social connection, way of harmonization and also a way of self-transformation towards a biocentric consciousness. Her research has been enriched by masters such as Pol Pelletier (Dojo method), Diego Piñón and Akira Kasai (Butoh); as well as with the constant study of Somatic Movement with Constanza Herrera and Body-Mind Centering with Margaret Guay. As dancer, she has worked in projects with Laura Ríos (2008) and Rip Parker (2005). She was member of the company UDLA Danza (2001-2005), Sunny Savoy Dance (2005) and Compañía de Danza Bruja (2001).

Denise Posnak

Denise Posnak 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.

Amira Ramírez

Amira Ramírez was born in Xalapa Veracruz and resides in Puebla. She majors in Dance and Plastic Arts at UDLA, and is currently in her Senior Year. She begins studies in Afro Dances with José Luis Ruiz in Xalapa; and in Puebla with Jaira América Rosado, Karina Gutiérrez, Karim Keita and ACAP. In 2003, she attends Maxwell International School in Victoria, Canada, to study modern dance and paint. Since 2005 she has developed personal projects mixing dance, improv, body paint, visual arts and music. In the summer of 2006 she becomes part of Harbour Dance Center in Vancouver, Canada. She has been part of Performática: Foro Internacional de Danza Contemporánea y Artes del Movimiento in all its editions. She has worked with choreographers and dancers like Rubén Ornelas, Ray Schwartz, Paulina Colmenares, Domenica López, Leilani Maciel and Zap MacConell. She records the dance video Dunas, in Chachalacas Veracruz. In April 2008 her dance video Long Take is selected at Samples: Primer Encuentro de Video. She participates at the Primer Encuentro Laban 2008 in Mexico City. In December 2008 she collaborates with artist Paulina Rucarba in the video/theatre/dance/installation project Polvo Somos. She is currently working on a dance and video project called Urbanos.

Tim Rehborg

Tim Rehborg is a performer, choreographer and writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He graduated Cum Laude with a BA in dance and English from St. Olaf College in 2008. He also attended the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina in 2007 and 2008. He has had the privilege of working with teachers and choreographers such as Ishmael Houston-Jones, Anthony Roberts, Jennifer Bader, Heather Klopchin, Janice Roberts, Anne Von Bibra, Cathy Wright, Julia Langenberg, Miguel Gutierrez, Adriane Fang and Brad Garner. He also studied Bharatnatyam with Arunduti Patwardan in Pune, India. His work explores the ways performance can comment on both the geo-political structure of our world and the innermost motivations that make us human.

Susan Rieger

Susan Rieger, now in her second year as Artistic Director of the 940 Dance Company of Lawrence, Kansas, has been a visible force in modern dance in the Midwest since 1987, when she presented her first piece of choreography. In the last 21 years, she has toured throughout the Midwest teaching and performing for all ages; training professional dancers; and developing and presenting innovative choreography. She was one of the founders of aha! dance theatre, which had a 14 year history in Kansas City. Rieger was the Artistic Director from 2002-2007. Rieger has choreographed over 40 unique works, many of which have received critical acclaim. In 2004, she was honored with a Kennedy Center Award for Achievement in Choreography (ACTF Region V for the original play Lost at Rockhurst University). Rieger's choreography has been selected to be a part of the Mid-America Dance Network showcase numerous times. Her work has also been reviewed in Dance Magazine, the KC Star and e-KC, an on-line journal. Rieger holds a Bachelors of Art in Dance from the University of Iowa and a Masters of Social Welfare from the University of Kansas. She currently teaches dance as well as directing the 940 Dance Company at the Lawrence Arts Center. She has been a resident teacher/choreographer at various universities.

Rosario Romero Moreno

Graduated from the Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán in 2007. She has studied improvisation, Release and Contact Improvisation with Andrew Harwood (Canada), Mijail Rojas (Cuba), Vladimir Illich Rodríguez (Colombia), Fray Faust (France), Alberto Pérez (México), among others. Since 2002 she dances with dance-theatre company Arte Acción: Teatro de Movimiento, which integrates the work of people with different abilities on stage. She is currently working on personal and collaborative projects that tackle improvisation and multidiscipline.

Lourdes Roth

Lourdes was born in Mexico City, in 1983. She began her BFA in Dance at Universidad de las Américas Puebla in 2003, with an Excellency Scholarship. Since then, she has worked as dancer with modern dance choreographers like Rip Parker, Sunny Savoy, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Jan Erkert, John Mead, María de Lourdes Peláez, Mayra Morales and Ray Eliot Schwartz; and in classical ballet with Pedro Beiro as well as with Cuban theatre director Boris Villar.

During the first edition of Performática, in 2007, she presented her work Hunahpulou, as well as working in other choreographers' pieces. In that same year, during April, she premiered her choreographic work called El Proceso Delicioso, an investigation about physical memory in relation to the origin of man and his evolution. This work was part of UDLA Danza 2007 and was presented in diverse venues of the city, including the Universidad Iberoamericana. In 2008, choreographer Ray Eliot Schwartz creates a solo for her called Falling Slowly, and is successfully presented in many stages within the city. That same year, she is invited to participate in Danza Extrema: IV Festival Internacional de Arte Coreográfico Contemporáneo, at the City of Xalapa, dancing a piece by artist Mayra Morales, called De la A a la Z: Mil años madrugada.

She is currently working on her dissertation, teaches music and body expression several schools and collaborates with violinist Julio Saldaña in Música Esperanza, teaching dance and expression for professional musicians and kids of limited resources. She now focuses on the theoretical/practical investigation of her project called Metáforas Orgánicas, which is an experimental process that tackles on problematics of silence and physical conscience within a mechanized daily life.

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.

Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz (see also agnieszka&agnieszka)

Polish born dancer and performer, who quit the studies of Anthropology of Culture at the Warsaw University in order to dance at IDA (Institute for Dance Arts) in Linz, Austria, where she finished her Master's degree in 2008. She graduated from the Dance department at the University of Paris 8 St-Denis, in Paris, where she now lives and works. She has been working with Superamas, Cabula6, 1000 Plateaux associes, Cie. SB. She has been a Dancewebber in 2008 and is the cofounder of agnieszka&agnieszka.

Luis Javier Santiago Sierra

Luis Javier holds a BM in Professional Music from Berklee College of Music, Boston where he specialized in Music Performance and Music Business. A composer, producer, and performer; Luis has collaborated in various choreographies in New York, London, and Puerto Rico. Luis is currently the Director of the Puerto Rico Army National Guard Band in San Juan, PR and the Berklee City Music Program of Puerto Rico.

Mary Williford-Shade

Hailed by the Washington Post as "the dancing equivalent of Edvard Munch's The Scream" Mary Williford-Shade became known as a principle 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, Jose 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 in the past few years include The Out of the Loop Festival in Addison, Texas; The Toronto Fringe 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.

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. Rachael has a background in aerial dance, including directing the aerial portion of Shentai, an arts carnival. Currently, Rachael is producing, choroegraphing, and dancing for R Squared, as well as dancing with inFluxdance.

David Silva Carreto

Born in Puebla, Mexico, David's 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 and co-director of Festival Internacional Rodará, which focuses on pantomime, dance, circus and clown. He also works as choreographer and director of Herejes Danza Interdisciplinaria, which merges physical theatre, dance, circus and clown. In 2005, he received FONCA's State scholarship, participated at the XXIII INBA-UAM's Award, and has helped on the production of Grupo Alas' Lazos Rotos, in Bayamo Cuba, Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia; he has participated at Oaxaca's International Dance Festival, Intercambio Cultural Puebla-Bayamo, Cuba; was invited to the Festival Mujeres en la Danza, and other festivals as well. The work which he is 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.

Tania Solomonoff

Art of Body-Dance-Cultural Management

Modern dancer and Cultural Manager in Mexico, Canada and Italy. She has participated with theatre and dance companies is Mexico, Italy, United States, Japan and Québec. Her training includes Butoh with Natsu Nakajima, Ko Murobushi, Nike Minotau and Kinya "Zulu" Tsuruyama; Cunningham with Roberta Garrison; Feldenkrais with Rebeca Sitt; Yoga Iyengar with Georgina Martínez; Improvisation with Bárbara Diley; Contact with Andrew Harwood; Dojo with Pol Pelletier; Continuum Movement with Linda Rabin, and many others. Since 2005 she has been in constant development under teachers like Lutz Forster, Joanne Madore, David Zambrano and Andrew Harwood. She has worked in the companies Corpus Rhésus Danse, Azul Casi Transparente, La Choconda, Teatro de la Rendija, En Boca de Lobos, "Yan-Shu" Fisherman's Art Factory, Dragon Dance Theatre and Mitrovica.

As dancer and creador, she has participated in Croisées en Espace Tangente (Montréal); Centro Cultural Sublavarden y La Vieja Usina (Argentina); el Festival de Danza "Dance ga mitai!" (Japan); III Festival Invertebrados en Casa de América, Festival Alcarrer de Viladecans (Spain); Festival Buskers de Ferrara, Festival de Danza e Mussica di Caprarola, Festival de Teatro del Trastevere (Italia); Festival Internacional de la Poesía (Québec); XXII Festival del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México, Festival de Improvisación (DF), Festival Infantil de Oc'-othic (Mérida), Festival la Serpiente (Michoacán), Festival Internacional de Puebla, Jornadas Teatrales de la Universidad de Toluca.

As producer and organizer she is founder of Dos Sobre Dos Producciones and manages Japan's YAN-SHU Butoh Dance, in collaboration with the Japan Foundation, Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México and other cultural organizations; she also manages Pol Pelletier's and Bernard Fontbuté's international workshops. Co-founder of Ceropuntocero collaborative along artists Taniel Morales and Maud D'Angelo. Supported by FONCA's Programa de Residencias México-Argentina (2007-2008), Fomento a Proyectos y Coinversiones Culturales (2004-2005) and Ejecutante (2003). She has been part of several short films and Mexican dance video projects, among them is Mariana Arteaga's Destierro.

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.

Nora Stephens

Nora Stephens is a multi-city based artist. She was born in Dublin, Ireland grew up mostly in Boston, MA and most recently has been living in Brooklyn, NY and Mexico City, Mexico. Her dance works have been presented in NYC at the 92nd St. Y, The Brooklyn Museum, in DancenOw/NYC, at Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dixon Place, Mulberry Street Theatre, Dance SpaceCenter (now DNA), Construction Company, Chashama and AUNTS at BS248 among other venues. Her dances have also been performed in Boston, MA, Mt. Tremper, NY, Madison, WI, Los Talleres and the UNAM in Mexico City, Mexico and at the WUK in Vienna, Austria. Stephens video works have been screened/installed at the Brooklyn Public Library and at AUNTS at BS248 in Brooklyn, NY, the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, Quinto Festival Internacional de Video Danza in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, NY. Stephens received her BS in Dance with a Certificate in InterArts and Technology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 and completed her MFA in Dance as part of the Hollins University/American Dance Festival program in 2008.

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.

Gina T'ai

Gina T'ai studied at the California Institute of the Arts and completed her BA in Dance from Hollins University in 2002. She has danced with annlivyoung dances (NYC), and was a member of Bopi's Black Sheep/Dances by Kraig Patterson (NYC), and has worked with Li Chiao Ping, Andrea Woods, Karinne Keithley, Sam Piperato and many others. In addition to making her own work for the stage and site-specific spaces, Ms. T'ai makes dancing for the camera films and videos with her collaborator Joe Kirschling and their award winning video Lumiere d'Ampoule has been shown in festivals around the world. She completed her MFA in Dance from Hollins University/The American Dance Festival in 2008. She has recently presented her work at the WUK in Vienna, Austria, at The American Dance Festival and at Danceworks' ScreenDance and Causing Effect concerts.

Santiago Turenne

Modern dancer and creator. He has performed in various festivals from Uruguay and Argentina. Selected by the Dance Web Scholarship to participate at the ImpulsTanz, in Vienna, Austria. In 2008, he is given a grant for the creation and promotion of his piece Señal by Paraguay's Fondos Concursables para la Cultura del Ministerio de Educación y Cultura.

Allison Waddell

Allison M. Waddell is a yoga teacher, dancer, improviser, choreographer, and teaching consultant who has traveled nationally and internationally facilitating the movement arts. A North Carolina native, she is a graduate of Meredith College, the Virginia School of Massage, Yoga Works 200hr Teacher Training, and the 300hr Kaya Yoga Advanced Teacher Training with Kristin Leal. Allison has also worked closely and studied extensively with Yogiraj Alan Finger at Ishta Yoga in New York. She has performed and made work with several dance companies and choreographers such as the Zen Monkey Project, Even Exchange Dance Theater, Laura Dean, Amy Chavasse, and she is a founding member of the contact improvisation-based quartet THEM. She has been on faculty and guest faculty teaching dance, yoga, improvisation, and choreography at many schools, universities, and institutions in the United States and abroad, including Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, Turkey and Universidad de las Américas in Cholula, Mexico. With gratitude, Allison honors all her teachers/friends and friends/teachers who have been instrumental in her artistic and spiritual development particularly Alan Finger, David Beadle, Kristin Leal, and the Zen Monkey Project.

Taja Will

Taja Will, born in Chile, raised in Iowa, currently lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Taja's artistic endeavors explore a fusion of interdisciplinary art, as she is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, composer, vocalist, and activist. The content of her work is formed by the context of society to communicate experiences, ideas, and emotions and probes questions around social consciousness to gain a better understanding of societal patterning. She aims to investigate the performative body as vehicle for social activism, through the techniques of dance, music, and theatre.

Taja has performed, shown work, and choreographed at her alma mater Luther College in Iowa, where she is known for her innovative choreography for opera and musical theatre. She has also been an artist with the Black Earth Collaborative Arts Company, Cedar Rapids Opera, with Dance Art Group's Seattle Festival for Dance Improvisation, and at Performatica 2008 where she was a featured panel presenter, and had the world debut of her solo from THIS IS(yoursixo'clocknews). Now in Minneapolis she has performed and shown work at 9x22 Dance/Lab, Kinetic Kitchen, and the Southern Theatre. Taja is also active at Zenon Dance School, and works at the Brave New Workshop, a leading company and institute of sketch comedy and improvisation.

In addition to her college mentors, Taja has found the work of many established and internationally know artists inspirational in her career and has worked with Nancy Stark Smith, Roni Koresh, Melecio Estrella, Andrea Olson, John and Anna Dixon, Morgan Thorson, Kristen Van Loon, Mary Reich, Eva Karcgaz, Yoshito Ohno, and Miguel Gutierrez among many other established and emerging artists. Taja often creates work with the collaborative ensemble she founded, The Vehicles of Peace. They are currently working on a site specific series here THERE everywhere which is presented over four weekends each performance at a contrasting space, the intention is to examine our usual or even mundane actions in these spaces. What is routine or acceptable?

Maida Withers Dance Construction Company

Maida Withers, born in Kanab, Utah, is the founder and artistic director of Maida Withers Dance Construction Company (1974) and is a Distinguished (Columbian) Professor at The George Washington University, Washington, DC. Maida has created over 80 groundbreaking performance art works and dances for stage, sites, video and film. She is the founder of the DC International Improvisation Plus+ Festival now in its 14th season. She and the Company have toured to over 18 countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe. Her dance films have been shown in festivals in Australia, the USA, and Germany. In 2008, she was a Cultural Envoy for US Department of State, Nairobi, Kenya. She received the 2007 Dance Place Lifetime Educator's Achievement Award. In 2006 Maida and the Company received MetroDC Dance Award, Outstanding Overall Production-Large Venue. She received the 2005 DC Mayor's Arts Award Excellence in an Artistic Discipline. Withers is known for her ongoing work in art as activism through her performances for stage, site specific work, and film.

Jose Zamora

Jose Zamora began his training as a traditional Mexican and Latin American folklórico dancer in La Joya, Texas. After graduating high school, he relocated to Denton, Texas and trained in post-modern dance for four years, receiving his BA in Dance Studies from Texas Woman's University in 2004. After receiving a degree in dance, Jose pursued a teaching career in Texas between the years of 2004 to 2007. During his career he became District Director of Dance for the Donna Independent School District and later the Co-Director of dance for LakeView Centennial High School's Dance Magnet program. In 2007, Zamora was accepted into the graduate program at Texas Woman's University, where he is currently working on the Masters of Fine Arts Degree. In August of 2008, Zamora was awarded a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded by the US Department of Education in selected fields of study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. It is a prestigious award for students who have demonstrated superior academic ability and achievement and exceptional promise. Only 30 people were awarded this fellowship in the United States in 2008-09. With this award, Jose is producing his first evening-length contemporary dance concert titled CholoRock, a work inspired by Mexican-American pop-culture and traditions. He is interested in culture and its influence on contemporary dance choreography. After the premiere of CholoRock in November of 2008, Jose plans to organize a series of lecture demonstrations in which he discusses the importance of Latinos pursuing higher education, using an innovative aesthetic strategy in dance as a tool. Zamora strives to establish his professional dance company and to become a dance professor.

Zen Monkey Project

For over 10 years, the Zen Monkey Project has been consistently exploring the boundaries of somatic practices and contemporary dance forms. Our style is rigorous, experimental, and alive. Investigating the body, developing dynamic presence, and supporting curiosity are hallmarks of our distinctive synthesis.

Miguel Ángel Zúñiga Solórzano

Graduated from INBA's SNEPD in 1991. Since then, he has been director and choreographer of the company Frecuencias Alteradas, with which he has developed diverse modern dance projects, as well as aerial dances and performances. He has presented his work in the most important venues as well as public institutions and private enterprises. Other credits include the projects Tajín 2000, Disney's Dream is a Wish and Apocalypto.

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