Tal Adler-Arieli
Tal Adler-Arieli was born in 1989 in Israel, where he was trained at the Thelma Yelin High School of the Arts in Tel Aviv. He later graduated with a BFA from The Juilliard School, where he worked with Ohad Naharin, Stijn Celis, Larry Keigwin, and others. Tal has worked as a dancer and teacher on many projects, in the US and abroad, with Andrea Miller’s company, Gallim Dance, and with The Equus Projects, a dance company that creates site specific work for dancers and horses. Tal also dances in Montreal for Danièle Desnoyer’s company, Le Carré des Lombes, and is currently involved in her creation that will open the next Canada Dance Festival in Ottowa. He has worked with Jonah Bokaer since 2011, who sponsors his O-1 Visa for Extraordinary Ability in the Arts. In addition to Occupant, he is also involved with ECLIPSE, which isa collaboration between Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall, which inaugurated the BAM Fisher theatre in 2012. The America Israel Cultural Foundation generously supported Tal from 2004 to 2008.
Brad Beakes
Bradley Beakes is a New York City based dance artist originally from Glendora, California. He attended California State University, Fullerton, where he majored in dance with additional training at the American Academy of Ballet, Limón West Coast summer intensives, and the Ailey School. Over the past decade he has been honored to dance with the Limón Dance Company, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, BARE Dance Company, Julia Ehrstrand Collective, Project 44, NOW-ID, Keith Johnson/Dancers, Naganuma Dance, and Visions Dance Theatre where he was named the 2010 Lester Horton Award Winner for “Outstanding Male Performance”. Bradley has been a member of Doug Varone and Dancers since 2017. He has been privileged to guest teach in over a dozen universities across the United States and in summer intensives by Doug Varone and Dancers, Limón West Coast, Ballet West Academy, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Ballet Lubbock, and New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble. Bradley recently taught for the Dance International Program in Japan to institutions including D.A. Tokyo, Fukuoka School of Music, Nagoya School of Music, D.A. Osaka, and the Tokyo School of Music and Dance. In NYC, Bradley currently teaches for the Limón School and intermittently at Gibney and Peridance. His choreography has been presented at the American College Dance Festival, Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, Palm Desert Choreography Festival, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s ‘Momentum’, INKUBATE Dance Festival, and the Utah Arts Festival.
Emile Bokaer
As a child, Emile Bokaer worked cleaning the aisles at Fall Creek Pictures, a cinema built by his father, and he has always gone to movies for free in his hometown of Ithaca, New York. He and his brothers played in the theater during rehearsals while his mother directed stage productions. In addition to his M.F.A. work at Stanford University, he holds a double degree from Oberlin College in English and pure mathematics. Despite rigorous training in logic, Emile prefers to practice filmmaking from a perspective of openness and uncertainty; he most enjoys making films about things he is still working to understand. At the moment he is deeply interested in mental illness, a subject he believes to be a major frontier of human knowledge. His films have played across the United States and abroad, including at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Media that Matters Film Festival, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2010 he was selected by the San Francisco Film Society and the Consulate General of France in San Francisco as beneficiary of the inaugural From College to Cannes program. Emile speaks fluent Spanish and is proficient in French, Italian and Portuguese. He is working to learn Arabic, and hopes eventually to study Judeo-Arabic. He has led filmmaking courses and workshops at the Deerfield Academy Summer Arts Camp, the MAD Factory in Oberlin, the Palo Alto Art Center, and Stanford University.
David Rafael Botana
A Cuban-American artist and improviser living in Brooklyn. Currently performing in Sleep No More, Botana was a member of the Repertory Understudy Group for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He has also worked with Jonah Bokaer, performing in FILTER, which premiered at Les Hirvernales in Avignon, and On Vanishing in the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda. Botana makes and performs work alongside Leslie Satin in New York and New Mexico.
Kimiye Corwin
Kimiye Corwin is an actor, dancer and choreographer. She earned her dance degree at Juilliard and then danced with the Jose Limon Dance Company for five years. earned her MFA in Acting at Brown/Trinity. NYC theater credits: Red Bull Theater, La MaMa, Ars Nova, National Asian American Theatre Company, NYTW Next Door, Ma-Yi. Regional theater credits: Syracuse Stage, Actors Theater of Louisville, Studio Theatre in D.C., Hartford Stage, TheatreWorks Palo Alto, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Guthrie, McCarter, Two River Theater. Film/TV credits: One Life to Live, Blacklist, The Family, The Michael J. Fox Show, and Five Dances (feature length film directed by Alan Brown). Choreography credits: Dallas Theater Center, Guthrie, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, National Asian American Theatre Company. She resides in both Brooklyn and Connecticut with her husband and two daughters. Member of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers.
Maximilian Cappelli-King
Max Cappelli-King, raised in Madison, Wisconsin, has a deep love for both classical and modern forms of dance. Cappelli-King began formal training at the age of 12 at the Madison Professional Dance Center, and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy. Now studying in his second year at Juilliard, he plans to continue his work as a performer as well as an educator. He trained in the techniques of ballet and modern, and has performed classics by George Balanchine, Martha Graham, José Limón, Ohad Naharin, and Jiri Kilian. Mr. Cappelli-King was recently an attendee at the summer workshop held by Hubbard Street Dance Company (HSDC) in Chicago, where he had the opportunity to work with the directors of the company, Glenn Edgerton and Taryn Russell. The summer prior, Mr. Cappelli-King received scholarships to attend summer programs with The Martha Graham Dance Company, The School of American Ballet, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and The School of Ballet Chicago. In 2010, Cappelli-King was one of eight dancers chosen by Juilliard to participate in an educational outreach program that was aimed at giving local high school and middle school students a better understanding of dance.
CC Chang
CC Chang was born in Taiwan, and currently lives and works in New York. Chang received her MFA in dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a resident at Dance Omi International Dance Collective, an Outer/Space Artist in Residence at New York Live Arts, a participant of the international Summer Program at Watermill Center, and received a Swing Space Residency from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and she has received the LMF Dance Fund from Cloud Gate Dance Theatre. Chang has worked with Robert Wilson, Kirstie Simson, Daria Faïn, Hong-Kai Wang, and many others. She has been working with Jonah Bokaer since 2009.
Liz Chang
Elizabeth Chang, violinist, enjoys a multi-faceted career as performer, teacher, and arts administrator. Her performing career has taken her to more than twenty countries and her chamber music appearances have included collaborations with many of today’s leading artists. She is currently professor of violin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the violin and viola faculties of the Pre-College Division of the Julliard School
Carmen Delavallade
Carmen de Lavallade was born of creole parents in New Orleans and raised in Los Angeles by her aunt. She studied dance as a young child, and at 16 received a scholarship to study with Lester Horton. She joined the Lester Horton Dance Theater in 1949 and was a lead dancer from 1950 to 1954.
Albert Drake
Albert Drake was born in Houston and came to Dallas as a BFA student in Dance Performance at SMU Meadows School of the Arts. As a founding member of BWDP, he has been featured in 19 of Bruce Wood’s works. One of his favorite experiences was performing in Wood’s world premiere, Hide Me Angel, commissioned by TITAS for the 2014 Command Performance. Drake also has danced with the Dallas Metropolitan Ballet, Chamberlain School of Performing Arts, Collin County Ballet Theatre, and Dallas Repertoire Ballet. He has restaged four works from Wood’s repertoire, and is an emerging choreographer. He was an artist-in-residence for the Dance Council’s 2014 and 2015 Youth Dance Company, creating a work for 70+ middle and high school students. He is currently an adjunct professor at SMU. Drake created his first world premiere, Whispers, for BWDP’s 5YEARS celebration in June 2015. Drake is excited to be apart of the EDC family and to help push young artist to the next level.
Carlye Eckert
Carlye Eckert is a dance artist based in New York and a graduate of the Juilliard School (Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, 2009). Ms. Eckert’s work uses environmental and communal choreographic experiences to cultivate platforms for an exchange of ideas and dialogues surrounding social and personal axioms. She works with artists from many different mediums, such as actors, non-dancers, video artists, set designers, and experimental composers. For many years, Eckert has facilitated public, private, educational, traditional, and non-traditional presentational and non-presentational platforms for experiencing and engaging with movement-based practices. Her choreographic work has been presented in Portland, Oregon at A-WOL and the West Linn Theater; in New York State’s Hudson Valley Region at Garner Arts Center, Chapman Steamer Arts, The Ritz Theater, and in New York City at Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, Triskelion, CAVE, CUNY, Dance New Amsterdam, West End Theater, Dixon Place, Location One, DUMBO Dance Festival, Green Space, The Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Lincoln Center, and The Juilliard School. As a performer, Ms. Eckert has worked and collaborated with Tino Sehgal, Jonah Bokaer, Jack Ferver, Boris Charmatz/Musee de la Danse, Luke Murphy Dance, Yara Travieso, Lucie Baker, Esme Boyce Dance, The Equus Projects, and appeared as a guest dance artist with Aszure Barton & Artists and Keigwin+Company. Ms. Eckert has been a member of the Brian Brooks Moving Company since 2013.
Holley Farmer
Holley Farmer is originally from Fresno, CA. She would most likely be a cook if she wasn’t a dancer. She loves to engage with ingredients and technique; the what and how of making things, she’s enjoying a lengthy international and varied career as a dancer, and educator. She started casual dance training for her fifteenth birthday, and regular weekly classes at sixteen. Holley first worked in ballet companies and musical theater: The Theatre Ballet of Canada, Oakland Ballet, and Phantom of the Opera, Toronto cast, 785 performances. She earned her BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts, and MFA in Dance from The University of Washington, focusing on critical theory. She then moved to NYC and performed with Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1997-2009, receiving the New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement. Her performances with MCDC include a repertory of over fifty dances, and thirteen original roles created for her by Cunningham, with multiple seasons at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Paris Opera, Théâtre de la Ville, the Barbican, and venues in 23 countries. After Cunningham’s passing in 2009, in 2010, she danced on Broadway originating the principal role of Babe in Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away, for which she received an Astaire Award Nomination. In 2011, she began staging the work of Cunningham, and creating her own choreographies. Her solo work has appeared at New York Live Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design, LaMama, the Joyce Theater, and Jacob’s Pillow. For the last eight years, In higher education, she has taught theory and practice courses, and has served on the faculty at Mills College, Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College, Nassau Community College, and CSU Long Beach, among national guest teaching and lecture engagements including Stanford University, and Southern California Institute of Architecture, focusing on technology and the body. She dances with Molissa Fenley and Dancers, and continues to teach at City Center Studios in NY for the Cunningham Trust. This year, she is heading the BFA in Dance Program at CalArts and serving on Faculty.
Yebel Gallegos
Yebel Gallegos is a dance artist from El Paso, Texas. He earned his BFA in dance, both from the University of Texas at Austin and from the Mazatlán Professional School of Dance, directed by Delfos Dance Company. Yebel played an important role in the founding of Cressida Danza Contemporánea in Yucatán, MX. During his time in Cressida Danza he served as dancer, company teacher, rehearsal director, and academic coordinator for the Yucatán Conservatory of Dance. Yebel recently concluded a six-year tenure working full time with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. While in Utah, he also involved himself in projects with local artists, as well as teaching various population groups in the community. He has performed work from artists such as; Twyla Tharp, Doug Varone, Ann Carlson, Netta Yerushalmy, Claudia LaVista, Joanna Kotze, Michael Foley, among others. Yebel has had the fortune to travel internationally as a performer and educator to countries such as; South Korea, Mongolia, France, Austria, and Chile.
Chris Garneau
Chris Garneau (born November 5, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Since releasing his debut album, Music for Tourists, Garneau has toured throughout the United States, Canada, Brazil, Europe, and Asia.
Anthony Goicolea
Born in 1971 in Atlanta, Georgia, Anthony Goicolea is a first-generation Cuban American artist now living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His extended family immigrated to the United States in 1961, fleeing Cuba soon after Castro came to power—a fact that underpins many of the artist’s works. Employing a variety of media, Goicolea explores themes ranging from personal history and identity, to cultural tradition and heritage, to alienation and displacement. His diverse oeuvre encompasses digitally manipulated self-portraits, landscapes, and narrative tableaux executed in a variety of media, including black-and-white and color photography, sculpture and video installations, and multi-layered drawings on Mylar. Best known for his powerful, and often unsettling, staged photographic and video works, Goicolea made his artistic debut in the late 1990s with a series of provocative multiple self-portrait images. These early works featured groups of young boys on the threshold of adolescence, acting out childhood fantasies and bizarre rituals of revelry and social taboo in highly staged domestic or institutional settings or dense, fairy-tale forests. Revealing a playful self-consciousness, they often consisted of complex composites of the artist himself, in all manner of poses and guises. Soon thereafter, Goicolea garnered international attention with his ambiguous, yet strangely compelling, landscapes, ranging from dream-like woodland environments to vast, unforgiving urban and industrial wastelands. The artist has created several series of digitally composited, and heretofore uncharted, topographies, often populated by bands of masked and uniformed figures. In recent series, many of the images are devoid of humans, although the landscape reflects an anonymous and increasingly tenuous human presence. In these works, primitive lean-tos and crudely constructed shanties coexist in an uneasy union with the technological vestiges of an industrialized society. Suggesting a world on the brink of obsolescence, these chilling images further cement the pervasive undercurrent of human alienation—from one another as well as the natural environment—that can be traced throughout the artist’s work. In a marked departure, Goicolea trained his unflinching eye on his own personal history in a highly acclaimed body of work exploring his roots and family heritage. These poignant, sometimes cinematic, images and installations are characterized by a fervent search for ancestral and social connections to a mythical homeland, Cuba—at once revealing nostalgia for a past that the artist never actually experienced, as well as a pronounced sense of cultural dislocation and estrangement. Remarkably prolific and inventive, Goicolea continues to intrigue his viewers with meticulously crafted, thought-provoking works. The artist has exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia—notably at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the International Center of Photography, New York; Postmasters Gallery, New York; Haunch of Venison Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Berlin, Germany; the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea is the first major traveling museum exhibition devoted solely to his work. Goicolea’s art is held in many public collections, including those of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; as well as the Yale University Art Collection, New Haven, Connecticut; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; and Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia. To date, Goicolea’s work has been the subject of four books. It has been featured in ARTnews, Art in America, Art Forum, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune, among many others. The artist’s grants and awards include a Cintas Fellowship (2006) and the BMW Photo Paris Award (2005) and the Joan Mitchell Fellowship Foundation. Goicolea holds a B.A. in art history, with a minor in romance languages, and a B.F.A. in drawing and painting—both earned at the University of Georgia, Athens, in 1992 and 1994, respectively. He received an M.F.A. in sculpture and photography, from Pratt Institute of Art, New York, in 1997.
Mary Lyn Graves
Mary Lyn Graves is a dancer and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently in process with with Megan Williams Dance Projects and has recently performed with Chandler Dance Initiative, NOW-ID (Charlotte Boye-Christensen), Sue Bernhard DanceWorks, and Kathryn Alter. From 2012-2018, she was a member of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Salt Lake City, UT. With RWDC, Mary Lyn toured extensively, including tours to Mongolia and South Korea as part of DanceMotionUSA. Over her six seasons with RWDC, Mary Lyn originated over 25 roles in works by Daniel Charon, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Ann Carlson, Raja Feather Kelley, Joanna Kotze, Doug Varone, Kate Weare, and Netta Yerushalmy, among others. Mary Lyn has also performed the works of Alwin Nikolais, touring to the Joyce Theater in 2016 and France in 2018. From 2016-2017, Mary Lyn worked extensively with Molly Heller to develop, perform, and tour Molly’s work very vary. As a dance educator, Mary Lyn has led master classes at Wichita State University, Chosun University, Mongolian State University of Arts & Culture, the National High School for the Traditional Korean Arts, the University of Oklahoma, and Colorado State University, among others. She has been a faculty member of numerous festivals, schools, and studios, including Ballet Tech in Manhattan, NY and Ririe-Woodbury’s Professional Summer Intensive. Mary Lyn has facilitated creative movement classes in schools, community centers, youth shelters, and arts conservatories across the United States and internationally, with an emphasis on working with elementary age children. Mary Lyn is originally from Tulsa, OK. She began her formal training at the Tulsa Ballet Center for Dance Education, where she was also a member of Tulsa Ballet II. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Oklahoma.
Wendell Gray
Wendell Gray II started his journey in the arts at a young age of 7. He attended Dekalb School of the Arts where he studied music, dance, drama and media. He also attended DanceMakers of Atlanta under the direction of Lynise Heard and Denise Latimer. In 2015, Wendell graduated with honors from University of the Arts with a BFA in Dance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield. He has had the opportunity to perform in the works of Sharon Eyal, Netta Yerushalmy, and Doug Varone. He has attended San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, Movement Invention Project, and Launch:10 with Northwest Dance Project. Upon graduating, Wendell received the Pennsylvania Ballet Choreography Award. He was a choreographer for the 2015 Reverb Dance Festival and also the 2016, ACE Awards. Wendell is thrilled to be performing for Jonah Boaker.
Zoltan Grecso
In 2001 he graduated from the special curriculum drama department of the Szentesi Horváth Mihály High School. In September 2002, he began his studies at the Anton Bruckner Universitat. From June 2007 he was a dancer of the Frena Pal Company for two years. In July 2008, he set up his own weekly improvisation studio, which became known as the Improvisational Dance Theatre. Since 2009, she has been working as a dancer with the Duda Eva Company. In 2011 he began his teaching career as a contemporary dance teacher at the University of Theatre and Film Arts. This year he worked with such eminent dancers as Nigel Charnock and Lionel Hoche. Also this year, they launched their evenings with his brother Krisztián Grecsó, the grecsó evenings of the most popular all-art. From September to October 2014, he was invited to the Novi Sad Theatre as an applied choreographer.
Sally Gross
Sally Gross is a New York based choreographer and performer who has been a dynamic presence in the dance world for over forty years. Sally Gross was born and raised in the Lower East Side of New York City during the late 1930’s and 1940’s. She was the last of eight children born to a Polish-Jewish immigrant family with little money and often helped her father sell fruit and vegetables from a horse-drawn wagon. As a native Yiddish speaker, she acted as a translator for her parents who hardly spoke any English. Sally’s life was very much shaped by the history of the Jewish Settlements in the Lower East Side. At the age of 13, she discovered dance during a summer camp sponsored by the local settlement house, Grand Street Settlement, whose mission was to foster and invigorate Jewish life. She then went on to study dance at Henry Street Settlement Playhouse located in the Lower East Side where she studied with celebrated choreographer Alwin Nikolais. There she discovered improvisation, one of the foundations for her dance style.
Stefano Guiliani
Stefano began dancing at a very young age. In elementary school, he quickly realized that his real passion was dance and he decided to audition for the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp at the age of 11. Jazz dance and ballet classes are the basis of Stefano’s classical training. His hard work and professionalism was rewarded and it was sure he was ready for the world outside the safe walls of the ballet school. Now, Stefano is a very popular dancer and choreographer for workshops in different dance schools in the Benelux!
Laura Gutierrez
Laura Gutierrez graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA) and received her BFA in Contemporary Dance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She was a recipient of a 2009-2010 William R. Kenan Jr., Performing Arts Fellowship at the Lincoln Center Institute. Gutierrez has appeared at the Menil Collection (Tino Sehgal), Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (Joan Jonas), Fabric Workshop Museum, Philadelphia (Jonah Bokaer), and SCAD Museum of Art (Jonah Bokaer). Gutierrez’s own choreography has been seen at Lincoln Center Institutes, Clark Studio Theatre, Evenlyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center, and Dance Source Houston’s, The Barn. She is one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch in 2014”.
David Hallberg
David Hallberg was born in South Dakota. He began his formal ballet training at age 13 with Kee Juan Han at the Arizona Ballet School, and continued his studies at the Paris Opera Ballet School. Hallberg attended American Ballet Theatre’s “New York Summer Intensive” in 1999 and 2000 as an ABT National Training Scholar. He joined ABT’s Studio Company in September 2000, joined as a member of the corps de ballet in April 2001, was promoted to Soloist in January 2004, and to Principal in May 2005. In September 2011, Hallberg joined the Bolshoi Ballet as the first American premier dancer. He played the Prince in Sleeping Beauty in the first ballet performance that took place on the renovated Bolshoi Theater. He later appeared in a live telecast of the Ballet, which was seen in theaters around the world. In May 2012, he performed in the Bolshoi’s first performances of George Balanchine’s Jewel. His repertoire of full length ballets with ABT include leading roles in Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, Don Quixote, La Bayadere, Othello, Le Corsaire, The Nutcracker, Cinderella, Sylvia, La Sylphide, The Bright Stream, Lady of the Camellias and Raymonda. He performs shorter works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Kurt Jooss, Antony Tudor, Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, Lar Lubovitch, Jiri Kylian, Frederick Ashton William Forsythe and Twyla Tharp. Alexei Ratmansky created roles for Hallberg in three of his world premieres, On the Dnieper (2009), Seven Sonatas (2009), and The Nutcracker (2010). He will also dance the lead role in John Cranko’s Onegin and Kashhei, and Alexei Ratmansky’s work, Firebird, during ABT’s 2012 Metropolitan Opera season. Hallberg has made been a guest artist with the Mariinsky Ballet, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, Bolshoi Ballet, Kiev Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Opera di Roma, Georgian State Ballet, and The Australian Ballet. He toured Russia in 2008, 2009, and 2011 with the ensemble, Kings Of The Dance, in which he danced Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits, originally created for Sir Anthony Dowell. He has performed in a work by Jonah Bokaer, Curtain, which was performed at the Festival de Avignon and the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Sleeping Beauty, with Gillian Murphy at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires(2012), Gala performances in Buenos Aires, and performances with the Australian Ballet (2012). In 2010, Hallberg won the Benois de la Danse Prize for his performance as Albrecht in Giselle with American Ballet Theatre. He was also honored with the “Rising Star Award” from Georgian State Ballet and Nina Ananishvili, the Princess Grace Fellowship, and the Chris Hellman Dance Award (2002-2003). He created the David Hallberg Scholarship at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of American Ballet Theatre, to mentor a young aspiring male student that chooses dance as a career. He has also created The Innovation Initiative at ABT, which facilitates emerging choreographers in the field of dance.
Suzushi Hanayagi
Suzushi Hanayagi (1928-2010), was a Japanese dancer and choreographer. She taught and choreographed classic Japanese dance forms, and contemporary collaborative multimedia performance works. She collaborated with Robert Wilson from 1984 to 1999. She studied dance with her aunt, Suzukinu Hanayagi,who taught her the Hanayagi style, a traditional Kabuki school of dance. At the age of twenty, she became a natori. She studied with Takehara Han and Yachiyo Inoue. She studied modern dance in Tokyo in the early 1950s, and presented her first modern choreography concert, with music by John Cage and contemporary Japanese and European composers, in 1957. After that, she studied at the Martha Graham School. She participated in the performance experiments happening with Fluxus and at the Judson Dance Theater. She collaborated with Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Heiner Muller, Ishmael Reed, Netty Simons, David Byrne, Takehisa Kosugi, Hans Peter Kuhn, and visual artists Hirata and Yasuo Ihara.
Meg Harper
Meg Harper danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1968 – 1977, and with the Lucinda Childs Dance Company from 1979 – 1990. She began teaching at the Cunningham Studio in 1968, and was Chairman of the Faculty from 1991 – 1998. In 1994, she reconstructed Sounddance with Chris Komar for the first time since its creation in 1974. Harper began performing in Robert Wilson’s work in 1998, and most recently danced in the 2010 production of Kool – Dancing in My Mind, co-directed by Jonah Bokaer. She is currently working with video artist, Seline Baumgartner, choreographer, Marianna Kavalieratos, and theater director, Charles Chemin. She has been asked to reconstruct Sounddance for the Ballet de Lorrain, and is working with former Cunningham dancer, Thomas Caley, on this project. Harper currently teaches Qigong at senior centers throughout New York City under the sponsorship of Presbyterian Senior Services.
Hristoula Harakas
Hristoula Harakas is a contemporary dance artist and teacher based in New York. She is a 2006 Bessie Award recipient and an A. Onassis Foundation scholar (1996–99). Her longtime collaboration with Maria Hassabi dates back to 2002. In recent years she has had the pleasure of working with such inspiring artists as Donna Uchizono, Jodi Melnick, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chamecki/Lerner, and Levi Gonzalez, among others. Hristoula is currently on the faculty at Movement Research, NY
Katharina Illnar
Katharina Senk is an Austrian dance-artist based in Vienna. She performed in the works of Doris Uhlich, Liz King, Florentina Holzinger, Georg Blaschke, Elio Gervasi, Anton Lachky and many more. In her personal artistic practice Katharina looks for ways to join her interests in in Post-Humanism, Feminism and Social Justice with her knowledge from the fields of Dance, Martial-Arts and movement. Together with her colleague Tanja Erhart she researches pleasureful and intersectional practices of dancing and creating together.
Yuki Kawahisa
A native of Japan, immigrant with an artist green card, is an actor, theatre creator, performing artist based in New York. In 1998, Kawahisa visited Vancouver, Canada as an ESL student, and ended up becoming an actor/playwright. She has toured Canada with her original one woman-show “The Kimono Loosened” (directed by Maureen Robinson) and received very positive reviews throughout Canada and in New York. In 2003, she joined the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre’s Abroad Program and traveled to Bali, Indonesia to study Balinese dance, Mask dance and Wauang Kulit (traditional shadow puppet theatre). She moved to New York in 2005 and has beena actively performing in New York and internationally, her own works and others ever since. She has studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, completed the two-year certificate program. She has also studied Nihon Buyo (Japanese classic dance), Butoh (Japanese post-war-contemporary dance), clowning, martial arts. She combines these materials to create her own unique form of dance and theatre.
James Koroni
James Koroni is the founder of the Enforced Arch Dance Community and has completed 12 multimedia concert dance pieces. Koroni has worked with Madonna, Son Of Kick and Icona Pop. Koroni has appeared in numerous stage and film productions under the direction of Riley Thomas and Daniel Armando. He is an alumni of Broadway Dance Center and resides in Brooklyn, NY where he teaches dance. Koroni began working with Jonah Bokaer in 2014.
Logan Kruger
Logan Frances Kruger was born in Atlanta, GA, where she began her dance training with Annette Lewis. She received a BFA from The Juilliard School and has toured internationally with Shen Wei Dance Arts, Adam H. Weinert and Michelle Mola/The Troupe, of which she is a founding member. Logan is currently a member of the Limón Dance Company. She has guested with Jonah Bokaer since 2011.
Reed Lapau
Reed Luplau is currently a dancer for Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. Born in Perth, Australia, Reed began training at his mother’s studio, Jody Marshall Dance Company, studying jazz, tap, acrobatics, ballet and musical theatre. At the age of 15, Reed was accepted into the Australian Ballet School (ABS), where he continued his training. After graduating from the ABS in 2004, Reed was invited by past Artistic Directors Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon to join Sydney Dance Company. Other choreographers include Stephen Petronio, Meryl Tankard, Narelle Benjiman, Raphael Bonachela and Aszure Barton. In 2009, Reed was awarded the Australian Dance Award for “Most Outstanding Male Dancer” and the Helpmann Award. Since moving to NYC in 2010, Reed has danced for Aszure Barton and Artists, Stephen Petronio Company, and Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and worked with choreographers Sonya Tayeh, Cherice Barton, Lisa Shriver, Sean Curran, Brian ‘BT’ Thomas. Reed made his acting debut playing the role ‘Theo’ in the film Five Dances, as well as the Green Hornet in Signature Theatre’s production of Kung Fu, directed by Leigh Silverman. Other credits include Maos Last Dancer, Jimmy Fallon’s stunt, NBC’s Superstars of Dance, Teen Nickelodeon, The Last Goodbye (WS), Fighting Gravity by Sonya Tayeh and PHISH at Madison Square Garden.
Sal LaRosa
Salvatore LaRosa is a founding designer of B Five Studio. In addition to his work as an architect and designer, he was Treasurer of The Architectural League and taught at Parsons School of Design. He has written three books and has received numerous awards for his art.
Douglas Letheren
Doug Letheren is an American dancer. He trained at St. Paul’s School, the Conservatoire de Rennes, and the Juilliard School. He is currently a member of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s new company. He has worked with Aszure Barton, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance, and the Batsheva Dance Company. He has participated in dance outreach projects in New York City, Peru, and Kenya. He is a recipient of the 2007 Movado Future Legends Award.
Callie Lyons
Callie Nichole Lyons is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, writer and aspiring filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to working with Jonah Bokaer, she has worked with Mike Esperanza, Allyson Green, Chad Michael Hall, Holly Johnston, Ryan Heffington, Pamela Pietro, Crystal Pite, Damon Patrick Rago, Will Rawls, Sonya Tayeh and Nathan Trice. Callie began working with Bokaer in 2014.
James McGinn
James McGinn is a contemporary performer and choreographer, working in and between dance, theater, and performance. He was born and raised in Sarasota, Florida, and received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Eugene Lang College/The New School. McGinn has been greatly influenced by performing in works by Jonah Bokaer (2009-Present), Wally Cardona, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, John Jasperse, Jen McGinn, Judith Sánchez Ruiz, and many others. His choreographic work has been shown by various institutions throughout the United States, and was presented in the 2011 American Realness Festival. Under the financial sponsorship of Chez Bushwick, James is enrolled in the 2012-14 P.A.R.T.S. Research cycle in Brussels, Belgium, under the direction of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.
David Miko
After Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy (BCDA) David furthered his studies in Salzburg at SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance). He has been working with choreographers such as Matej Kejzar,DiegoGil, Eleonore Valere, Jonah Boaker, Mate Meszaros, Jozsef Trefeli and Ferenc Fehér. David has given workshops in Hungary, China, Germany and Austria, the pure physicality, dynamic partnering, intensive floorwork and precise armwork – due to the 4 years of practicing Kung-Fu – what inspires him most. Adrienn Acs, Peter Juhasz and David created the Budapest based SUB.LAB Collective in 2012. They are the organisers of IDW Budapest, where David works as a co-founder and teacher.
Irena Misirlić
Irena Misirlić is an Independent artist, performer, professional dancer pedagogue, and choreographer who lives and work in the Netherlands. She studied in Sarajevo under the leadership of Edina Papo. She attended the Ballet Studio of Croatian National Ballet of Split, and successfully graduated High School of Arts & High School for Classical Ballet in Zagreb. She received a first prize study grant by the Stichting Dansersfonds ’79 in 2001,and was nominated for ‘most talented young Croatian’ through the Vecernjakov citizenship 2009 Award. She graduated in 2002 from the Rotterdamse Dansacademie-Codarts. For 9 years, she worked for Dance Works Rotterdam company as one of the leading dancers under artistic direction of Ton Simons. She collaborated with Ton Simons, Jonah Bokaer, Rafael Bonachela, Leina & Roebana, Pascal Touzeau, Phillip Adams, Doug Elkins, Bruno Listopad, Stephen Petronio, Sjoerd Vreugdenhil, Andre Gingras, Lucy Guerin, Sanja Hasagić-Maier, Ruta Butkus, Samir Calixto, and others.
Rashaun Mitchell
Rashaun Mitchell is a choreographer, performer and teacher living and working in NYC. He is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2012 New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer.” His choreography has been presented by New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, Baryshnikov Arts Center, REDCAT, ICA Boston and Summer Stages Dance, La Mama Moves Festival, Mount Tremper Arts, Skirball Center at NYU, the Museum of Arts and Design, The Lab, ODC, and at numerous site-specific venues and universities. With his ongoing collaborator, Silas Riener, he received a 2014 City Center Choreographic Fellowship, was selected for LMCC”s inaugural Extended Life Development Program, and was a Wellesley College Artist in Residence. Their work together has been presented by BAM/ Next Wave, EMPAC, The Walker Art Center, MCA Chicago, On The Boards, SF MoMA, and MoMA PS1. Other awards include a 2007 Princess Grace Award: Dance Fellowship, a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Art “Grant to Artist,” and a 2011 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award for “Sustained achievement in the work of Merce Cunningham 2004-2012.” He is a Cunningham Trustee and licensed stager of the repertory. Since graduating with a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, Mitchell has worked with artists Anne Carson, Stephin Merrit, Carla Fernandez, Chantal Yzermans, Donna Uchizono, Pam Tanowitz, Risa Jaroslow, Sara Rudner, Jonah Bokaer, Richard Colton, Deborah Hay, Rebecca Lazier, Jodi Melnick, Sara Mearns, Moriah Evans, The Bureau for the Future of Choreography, Charles Atlas, Xavier Cha, Davison Scandrett, Phillip Greenlief and Claudia LaRocco. Mitchell has taught master classes throughout the country and is currently the associate Chair of the Dance department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Catherine Miller
Catherine Miller is an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She is a founding Artistic Director of the dance and performance company, Walking Talking. She has also toured extensively in the companies such asDendy Dance Theater, Doug Varone and Dancers, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, and Shen Wei Dance Arts. This year, she originated the dance role of Thanatos in the premiere of Telemann’s ‘Orpheus’ at New York City Opera.
Michelle Mola
Michelle Mola is a choreographer, movement coach, dancer, and actor who has performed with Aszure Barton & Artists, and in Jack Ferver’s Chambre, nominated in 2016 for a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production. Michelle first worked with Mr. Ferver in Rumble Ghost, a “hyper-reality” reinterpretation of the 1982 horror film Poltergeist, performed at P.S. 122 in New York City. Claudia LaRocco of the New York Times described her as “terrifically smart” in a review of the duet Me, Michelle presented by Performa ‘11, performed and co-choreographed with Mr. Ferver. As a choreographer, she has been presented in Montreal at the SpringBoard Danse and Tangente Festival. Michelle was commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble for performance at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and has also presented work at the Museum of Art and Design, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, 92nd Street Y and The Joyce Soho in New York. As a movement coach and choreographer, Michelle worked with actors and 3D special effects artists in the The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). She studied dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts, University of South Florida, and at The Juilliard School. Upon graduating, she received the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Outstanding Choreography, and the 2008 Annenberg Arts Fellowship for Performance and Choreography.
Luke Murphy
Originally from Cork City, Luke is a performer and choreographer based between Cork, New York and Brussels. Luke has danced with Ultima Vez since 2014 touring internationally in productions of In Spite of Wishing and Wanting, Booty Looting and Spiritual Unity and Punchdrunk since 2009, performing leading roles in the original casts of Sleep No More in Shanghai (‘16-‘17), New York City (’11-‘15) as well as productions of The Drowned Man in London and Sleep No More in Boston. In addition he has danced in the companies of Martha Clarke, Kate Weare, Pavel Zustiak and in projects with John Kelly, John Scott, Jonah Bokaer, Erik Hawkins Dance Company and Bill T Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company. Luke’s own work has been supported by various commissions, awards and residencies internationally including Arts Council of Ireland, Cork City Council, CultureIreland, New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, Kaatsbaan International Dance Centre, Pavilion Theatre, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Irish Arts Centre, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, DanceLimerick, Cork County Council, Tipperary Dance Platform, Tribeca Performing Arts Centre, Duo Multicultural Arts Centre and others. He has created and performed four evening length works throughout Ireland, UK and USA (Drenched 2012, Icarus 2013, Your Own Man/Mad Notions 2015, On Triumph and Trauma 2016). Luke founded Attic Projects in 2014 as an umbrella for his various independent projects in dance, film and theatre. Luke is the producer and director of The Catch8 Workshop Series in Cork City. Attic Projects is Company-In-Residence at Firkin Crane where Luke also serves as Dancer in Residence for Cork. Luke trained at Point Park University where he earned his BFA in Dance and English in 2009 and University of Chichester where he earned an MA in Choreography in 2017.
David Norsworthy
David Norsworthy is a Canadian dancer. He studied at the Juilliard School, and trained and toured with the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, Helix Dance Project, and the OIP Dance Company in Toronto. He has performed with Camille A. Brown & Dancers, ZviDance, Embodied Poetry, Jonah Bokaer, Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe, Crystal Pite, David Earle, Danny Grossman, Paul Taylor, and José Limón, among others. He has performed on stages such as the Joyce Theatre, New York City Center,and the Melbourne State Theatre. In 2009, he choreographed pieces for the Tailsaw Theatre Productions in Toronto. In December 2011, he also created an installation in the Glorya Kaufman Dance Studio for World AIDS Day at Lincoln Center. Norsworthy is the founder of FRESH Dance Intensive, which is a dance workshop designed to promote a faculty of emerging choreographers/teaching artists, and he is also the co-founder of TOES for dance, alongside Kristen Carcone.
Banu Ogan
Born in Ankara, Turkey, Banu Ogan grew up in Bloomington, Ind., and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology (with a minor in chemistry). She has taught at the Merce Cunningham Studio since 1997, and has staged several of Cunningham’s works on professional companies and student groups. She joined the Juilliard faculty in 2005.
Tony Orrico
Tony Orrico is a visual artist, performer and choreographer whose work merges the act of drawing with choreographic gesture and bio-geometrics. His works stem from the examination and exploration of his ability to transform his physical and mental endurance into visual compositions. As a former member of Trisha Brown Dance Company and Shen Wei Dance Arts, Orrico has graced stages including the Sydney Opera House, Australia; Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy; New York State Theater; and Théâtre du Palais-Royal, Paris. He was one of a select group of artists to re-perform the work of Marina Abramović during her retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He recently moved back to Chicago after living and working in New York City for the last 10 years. Orrico’s work has been presented and exhibited throughout the U.S., France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands and Spain. He was featured at “PopTech 2011: The World Rebalancing,” as well as at the New Museum, New York, and the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Szabi Pataki
Szabi Pataki is a Hungarian performing artist working with Jonah Bokaer since 2009. As the member of Pécsi Ballet, Dance Works Rotterdam and the dance company of Oper Graz his art was presented in Spain, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Finland, Russia, Cyprus, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Romania, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, France and the United States. Szabi began working with Jonah Bokaer in 2009.
Jimena Paz
Jimena Paz is an independent dancer, teacher, and maker who shares her time, and heart, between New York, Europe, and Argentina. She is currently developing a project on foreignness, and a fictional and portable-landless Argentina. She had the pleasure to work with Vicky Shick, Susan Rethorst, the Stephen Petronio Company Constanza Macras, Iris Scaccheri, Burt Barr, Analia Segal, Virginie Yassef, Antonio Ramos, Todd Williams, and many others. Paz in a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, and is on faculty at the National Danish School for Contemporary Dance, under the direction of Jeremy Nelson. She also teaches internationally.
Sara Procopio
Sara Procopio is a Brooklyn-based dance artist, educator and arts manager. She is a founding company member and former Artistic Associate of Shen Wei Dance Arts (SWDA). From 2001-2012 her work with Shen Wei included originating roles in 10 works, performing and teaching at renowned venues and festivals throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States. Ms. Procopio has taught internationally at the Korea International Dance Festival in Seoul and the Paolo Grassi School of Milan, as well as colleges and universities across United States including Rutgers University, Middlebury College, Hollins University and Marymount Manhattan College. She has served as adjunct faculty at The University of the Arts since 2011 and faculty at the American Dance Festival since 2008. Ms. Procopio has also created choreographic works for young artists at the Florida School of the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Greenville Fine Arts Center. From 2012-2013, she was an Arts Management Fellow through a program of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center in conjunction with the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Professional Development Program. Ms. Procopio has worked with Jonah Bokaer since 2012.
Davon Rainey
Davon Rainey started taking tap lessons in first grade in Memphis, TN. After the director of DanceWorks heard about him in 1996, she gave him a full scholarship to study ballet at her studio. In 2000, after his sophomore year at Central High School, he was given a full scholarship to Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. From there, he went on to the Juilliard School in New York City where he was, once again, given a full scholarship. After two years there, he went on to work with companies and choreographers including, Aszure Barton & Artists, Buglisi/Foreman Dance Company, Bill T. Jones Dance Company, Public Dance Theatre, Sidra Bell Dance NYC, Jonah Bokaer (2006-Present), Michelle Mola, and Company XIV.
Silas Reiner
Silas Riener graduated from Princeton University in 2006 with a degree in Comparative Literature and certificates in Creative Writing and Dance, with a focus on linguistics. As a dancer he has worked with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, and Rebecca Lazier, Wally Cardona, Kota Yamazai, and Moriah Evans; and is currently dancing in projects for Tere O’Connor. He was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from November 2007 until its closure at the end of 2011, and received a 2012 New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for his solo performance in Cunningham’s Split Sides. While performing with MCDC, Riener completed his MFA in Dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (2008). Since 2010 he has collaborated with choreographer Rashaun Mitchell on site-specific dances and immersive theatrical experiences. Riener was the movement designer for the architecture and design firm Harrison Atelier in 2012/2013 and choreographed the site-specific performance/installations Pharmacophore: Architectural Placebo at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and VEAL at the Invisible Dog Art Center. His work has also been curated at Architecture OMI, CATCH, as part of LMCC’s River to River Festival, at Danspace Project, and at the BFI Gallery in Miami. His work with Rashaun Mitchell appeared in Carla Fernández’s exhibition The Barefoot Designer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2014. Riener has taught workshops on performance and technique at Concord Academy SummerStages in Boston, throughout Turkey at several universities, in the Dance Program of Princeton University and Barnard College, and at the Merce Cunningham Trust. In 2013 along with with Rashaun Mitchell he was named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”, and was invited to participate as an inaugural member of LMCC’s Extended Life Dance Development Program. He was a 2014 New York City Center Choreographic Fellow and a Mellon Artist-in-Residence at The Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College, and a 2015 Artist-in-Residence at Gina Gibney Dance Center Dance-in-Process, and at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Betti Rollo
Betti Rollo is a contemporary dance performer from Italy, receiving a degree in Theatre Dance from the Paolo Grassi Theatre Academy in Milan in 2014. She has been working as performer for Jonah Bokaer, Robert Wilson, Mette Sterre, Christopher Knowles, Marianna Kavallieratos and Emanuela Tagliavia, among others. She also works as a trainer and curator of movement for theatre companies and schools. Rollo has interpreted the work of Jonah Bokaer since 2014, and was staged by Bokaer inside a Daniel Arsham installation in the Festival di Spoleto in Italy for 50 solo performances in 2014.
Lilja Rúriksdóttir
Lilja Rúriksdóttir, a native of Iceland, moved to New York in 2008 to study with The Joffrey Ballet School. In 2009, she became the first Icelandic dancer to be accepted into The Juilliard School. She has had the pleasure of performing works by José Limón, Martha Graham, Murray Louis, Raewyn Hill, Eliot Feld, Pam Tanowitz, Nacho Duato, Andrea Miller, and Alexander Ekman, to name a few. Upon graduating from Juilliard, she received the Hector Zaraspe prize for choreography. Most recently, she has worked with Jonah Bokaer (2013-Present), Joanna Mendl Shaw/The Equus Projects, Janis Brenner & dancers, and was featured in Charlie Wan’s dance film Lean on Me. Lilja finds it a great honor to be working with Gregory Dolbashian, and the DASH Ensemble.
Judith Sanchez Ruiz
Judith was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. At the age of eight, she received a scholarship to attend the National Sports School Eduardo Sabory in Havana and continued her studies as a student of the Cuban National Ballet School Alicia Alonso. Her first encounter with modern dance was at the age of eleven when she entered the National Art School Cuba in 1983 where she graduated with a diploma in modern and folkloric dance in 1990. Judith moved from Cuba to New York in 1991 and subsequently relocated to Berlin in 2011. Her professional career spans 27 years in various styles and techniques ranging from classical to modern dance, integrating both release technique and improvisational research. Judith has been choreographing, performing as well as staging her own work since 1993, whilst being simultaneously employed as a company dancer with Danz Abierta Company, Cuba (1991-1996), Mal Pelo Company, Spain (1997-1999), Trisha Brown Dance Company, New York, US, (2006-2009) and Sasha Waltz & Guests, Berlin, Germany (2011- 2014). She has worked with independent choreographers such as David Zambrano (1997), Jeremy Nelson and Luis Malvacias (2001-2002), DD Dorvillier (2002) and Deborah Hay (2012), amongst many others. She was an active member of the independent dance scene in Cuba and New York and currently in Berlin. She is both cooperating with artists as well as creating her own work in which she explores a variety of formats: from “silence solos”, duets, trios and group pieces to complex multidisciplinary performances. For several years, Judith was strongly committed to improvisation as a performance form involving live music. From 1996-2009, she collaborated with my former long-time partner, (2011) MacArthur Fellow composer and drummer Dafnis Prieto on an ongoing investigation into the dynamic interplay between dance and music. Judith has collaborated on several improvisation projects involving live music with innovative composers and visual artists, amongst whom Steve Coleman (1997), Henry Threadgill (2002, 2008), Jonathan Cramer (2002), Stephen Talasnik (2010), Sun K. Kwak (2010), Kentaro Ishihara (2010-2011), Burt Barr (2008), Ian Trask (2011) as well as with photographers Anna Lee Campbell (US), Anja Hitzenberger (Austria), Octavio Tapia (Chile) and Manuel Moncayo (Mexico).
Valda Setterfield
Valda Settefield is a British born dancer, actor, and American citizen. She has worked with JoAnne Akalaitis, Woody Allen, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jonah Bokaer, Boris Charmatz, Caryl Churchill, Merce Cunningham, Graciela Daniele, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, Carmen deLavallade, Brian DePalma, Ain Gordon, David Gordon, Ivo van Hove, Don Mischer, Marie Rambert, Yvonne Rainer, Donald Saddler, Michael Sexton, Gus Solomons Jr, Jeanine Tesori, James Waring, Robert Wilson, and Mark Wing-Davey, at venues such asA.C.T., A.R.T., BAM, Danspace, DTW, The Joyce, Joyce Soho, The Kitchen, Mark Taper Forum, MOMA, NYTW, PS 122, The Public, Soho Rep, and The Tate. She was a member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 10 years, and is a founding member of Pick Up Performance Co(s). She is an Obie recipient, and received three BESSIE, NY Dance & Performance Awards. She received the first in 1984, the second in 2006, and the third in 2010, for her work with Paradigm.
Gus Solomons Jr.
Dancer and choreographer Gus Solomons jr was born on August 27, 1938 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Olivia Stead Solomons and Gustave Solomons, Sr. He attended Cambridge High and Latin School before enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956, where he studied architecture. During this time, he began studying dance as a student of Jan Veen and Robert C. Gilman at the Boston Conservatory of Music. Upon graduation, Solomons moved to New York City to dance in Oscar Brown, Jr.’s musical Kicks and Company, with choreographer Donald McKayle. Solomons joined McKayle’s company shortly after, and began taking classes at the Martha Graham School. Solomons’ interest in postmodernism developed further at Studio 9, where he shared space with other modern dance colleagues and worked with avant-garde experimentalists, some of whom went on to form the Judson Dance Theater collective. While at Studio 9, Solomons caught the attention of Martha Graham’s student Pearl Lang, who cast him in Shira in 1962. In 1965, postmodern choreographer Merce Cunningham asked Solomons to join his company. There, Solomons created roles in How to Pass Kick Fall and Run, RainForest, Place, Walkaround Time, and partnered with Sandra Neels in Scramble. In 1968, Solomons left Cunningham’s company after sustaining a back injury. He then collaborated with writer Mary Feldhaus-Weber and composer John Morris on a dual-screen video-dance piece entitled CITY/MOTION/SPACE/GAME at WGBH-TV in Boston, produced by Rick Hauser. Solomons went on to found his own company, The Solomons Company/Dance, creating over 165 original pieces. He became known for his analytical approach and incorporation of architectural concepts as well as his exploration of interactive video, sound, and movement, as depicted in the piece CON/Text. In 1980, Solomons began writing dance reviews, which were published in The Village Voice, Attitude, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 1996, he founded PARADIGM with Carmen de Lavallade and Dudley Williams. Solomons also worked as an arts professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts until 2013
Ryan Steele
Ryan Steele is an American dancer and actor. He was born and raised in Walled Lake, Michigan on August 3, 1990. Coming from a family entirely involved in the art of dance, Steele trained all through his elementary school years. He was offered to study dance from many institutions, including The Juilliard School. He studied concert dance and ballet extensively. This proved to be a highly essential asset he used for his film debut in Five Dances (2013) where his leading role character Chip Daniel is an aspiring ballet dancer who moves to New York to train. He played as Lost Boy Curly in the live-action stage version of the Disney classic Peter Pan in Peter Pan Live! (2014). Steele also was performed as a dancer during the 2015 Academy Awards ceremony. In 2017, Steele had a dancing role in the musical short On the Road (2017).
Ryan Tracy
Ryan Tracy is a writer, composer, performer and scholar. His critical writings on art and performance have appeared in a number of publications including Derrida Today, JAm It!, PANK, The American Reader, The New York Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Mouvement (France), Performa Magazine, and The Gay and Lesbian Review. His poetry has appeared in The New Engagement, California Quarterly, CafeMo, and Calliope. His fiction has appeared on KGB Bar Lit.
Andrea Weber
Andrea Weber was a dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2004 – 2011, performing roles in over 25 works. Andrea is on faculty of the Merce Cunningham Trust, teaching Cunningham Technique® at New York City Center and the Joffrey Ballet Trainee program. She has also taught at SUNY Purchase, Brown University, Skidmore College, the American Dance Festival, Salem State College and Dance New Amsterdam. Andrea has staged Pond Way for Ballett am Rhein in Dusseldorf, Suite for Five for the CNSMD in Lyon, RainForest for the Stephen Petronio Company, and Sounddance at UNCSA. Andrea has also danced with Coleman & Lemieux Compagnie, Dance Heginbotham, Jessica Lang Dance, Cornfield Dance, Jonah Bokaer, Charlotte Griffin and as the Marchesa in Queen of the Night.
Adam H. Weinert
Adam H. Weinert was born in New York City. He began his training at The Royal Ballet School in London, and continued to The School of American Ballet, Vassar College, and The Juilliard School, where he was awarded Scholastic Distinction and the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Outstanding Choreography in 2008. Adam has danced with Shen Wei Dance Arts, The Mark Morris Dance Group, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, and has worked as an Artistic Associate to Jonah Bokaer from 2006-2012, with whom he still continues to tour. In addition to his performance work, Adam has been published in the New York Times, the Juilliard Journal, and as a featured profile in New York Magazine. Weinert is the producer and choreographer of an award-winning collection of dance film shorts screened nationally and abroad, and his creations for stage have toured to four continents. In 2013, with the help of Jonah Bokaer and Chez Bushwick, Adam was honored to receive a Creative Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation to create an evening-length work at CPR – Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY.
Bashaun Williams
Bashaun started dancing at the age of 16 in Texas with Ballet Lubbock under Yvonne Racz-Key, Artistic Director. As a Junior and Senior, he was captain of his Basketball team and a member of Ballet Lubbock’s pre- professional Company. Bashaun attended the University of Utah of both academic and artistic merit scholarships, in the department of ballet. While at the U, he danced Principal and Soloist roles in the department’s resident company. Throughout his career, Bashaun has had the pleasure of working with renowned choreographers such as Eddy Toussaint, Stevan Novakovich, Edward Truitt, Val Caniparoli, Rick Tija, Johannes Weiland, Bill T. Jones, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Doug Varone and Daniel Charon, among others. Bashaun is forever grateful for the opportunity to dance and grow alongside such a wonderful community of people.
Alexandra Bradshaw Yerby
Alexandra Bradshaw-Yerby is a Canadian American dance artist currently based in Seattle, Washington. From 2011 to 2017, Alexandra danced with Salt Lake City-based Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Touring annually throughout the United States and Europe, she performed dance works by Daniel Charon, Doug Varone, Johannes Wieland, Alwin Nikolais, Ann Carlson, and Bill T. Jones, among many others. Prior to 2011, Alexandra worked as a freelance dance artist in Israel and California. Alexandra has most recently taught dance and yoga at The Royal Ballet School/Tumbuka Dance Company in Harare, Zimbabwe; the University of Wyoming, Laramie; the University of Mississippi, Hattiesburg; and the University of Georgia, Athens, among many others.
Melissa Younker
Originally from Southern California, Melissa Younker is a movement artist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is a collaborator with Heartland Collective, a multi-disciplinary collective directed by Molly Heller. Recently, Melissa joined the faculty at Utah Valley University and serves as Co-Artistic Director of their Contemporary Dance Ensemble (CDE) and an adjunct instructor in the Department of Dance. She was a dance artist with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company from 2014-2020 under the direction of Artistic Director, Daniel Charon. In 2018, Melissa travelled to Mongolia and South Korea as a cultural ambassador, participating in DanceMotion USA, a cross-cultural exchange partnership between the Brooklym Academy of Music in new York City and the US Department of State. She has had the privilege of embodying an array of works bu choreographers Ann Carlson, Raja Feather Kelly, Joanna Kotze, Alwin Nikolais, Kate Weare, Doug Varone, Netta Uerushalmy, among others. Melissa holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach. She has a multifaceted dedication to dance; training in many movement forms, teaching extensively within a multitude of communities, touring nationally and internationally as a performing artist, designing costumes, and collaborating in a range of mediums. Her current choreography projects include a movement=based film “Deliquesce” with And Artists, as well as a short film “The Ladies Room” with Marta Reeder and, EMMY award-winning director, Amanda Stoddard. Through very aspect of her work, Melissa stays thoroughly curious.