|
| |
2009-2010 PERFORMANCE |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
Bios |
|
| |
 |
Asimina Chremos has a long history of exploring dance-as-art from a number of perspectives. She brings her experiences in movement improvisation, yoga, ballet, continuum movement, contact improvisation, awareness practices and release techniques into her dances. She began her professional career with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in the mid 1980's, then went on to earn a BFA in Dance, summa cum laude, from Temple University. From that time she has contributed to the field as a dancer, administrator, instructor, choreographer and collaborator. Chremos has worked in various guises with Links Hall, Lou Conte Dance Studio, Time Out Chicago and many other companies, projects and organizations. |
|
| |
 |
Rachel Damon performs, creates, designs, and manages dance and performance. She is a founding member and the Artistic Director of Synapse Arts Collective, online at www.synapsearts.com. She has performed and presented in Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, North Carolina, and Canada, making appearances with Synapse and as a former company member of Breakbone Dance Company and the Anatomical Theatre. Rachel currently works as a Production Manager and Collaborator with Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak, and Production Manages Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab projects with artists such as Darrell Jones, Ayako Kato, and Nadia Oussenko. Her work with Choreographer/Director Erica Mott delves into dark subjects, and she finds illumination when designing lights for contemporary and aerial dance, video, plays by the Neo-Futurists, and shows at Links Hall where she is the Technical Director and Production Stage Manager. Rachel also teaches movement classes with the Chicago Park District through the Chicago Moving Company. Featured in Dance Spirit Magazine for her self-made career which bridges onstage and backstage, Rachel is a recipient of the Crosscut Grant (with her collaborator Dan Mohr), the Albert P. Weisman Memorial Foundation Award for Choreography and Direction, and was awarded a Stagecraft Apprenticeship by The American Dance Festival. While a three-time Resident Dance Lab Artist at the Chicago Cultural Center, Rachel was commissioned by Redmoon Theatre to create the critically-acclaimed First Sound, a voice and movement installation. Her ventures in blending the voice and moving body continue as a Links Hall Artistic Associate and Co-Curator of collision_theory. |
|
| |
 |
Adriana Durant has a MFA in Choreography from The Ohio State University and a BFA in Performance from Emerson College. She has performed professionally as an improvisational dance artist, dancer for many independent choreographers, and as a member of Mordine and Company Dance Theatre in Chicago. Adriana currently teaches and performs nationally as a member of Like You Mean It, an improvisation trio focusing on group composition in performance. Adriana’s choreography has been performed in Chicago, NYC, Boston, Washington DC, Columbus and Athens Ohio, where she was Visiting Assistant Professor at Ohio University, teaching ballet, modern, composition, and improvisation for the past two years. |
|
| |
 |
Lisa Gonzales is an independent choreographer and improviser. She moved to New York City in 1999 where she was based until 2004 and presented work in such venues as Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace at St. Mark’s Church and Joyce Soho among others. She has also shown her work in spaces around the United States and internationally in Taiwan, Russia, Finland and The Dominican Republic. She credits many artists with whom she has worked as being influential to her own art making including Peter Schmitz, Penny Campbell, Susan Sgorbati, Andrea Olsen, Deborah Hay, Angie Hauser, Chris Aiken, Paul Matteson, K.J. Holmes, Amy Chavasse, Deana Acheson, Pam, Jen and Katherine of the Architects, musicians Michael Chorney and Arthur Brooks, and others. She currently lives in Chicago and is full-time faculty at Columbia College Chicago. |
|
| |
 |
Sam Goodman is a composer, dancer, performer, and improviser. He was born in Wichita, KS and has lived in Chicago since August of 2009. He received his B.A in Music Composition from Oberlin College, where he was first introduced to dancing through Contact Improvisation. Quickly thereafter he became very active as a dancer, performing both as an improviser as well as in numerous student and faculty choreographed works. Since moving to Chicago, he has built his bedroom, performed with Opera Cabal, co-founded (with Lisa Frank, Teddy Rankin-Parker, and Jake Wise) the music-theater-dance-improv performance company OosImaginary, and curated/performed in numerous performances at the Archer Ballroom. With Lisa he has co-taught workshops at Southwestern Michigan College as well as at the Archer Ballroom in Chicago. Together, they also teach creative movement to children at multiple public schools in Chicago. |
|
| |
 |
JulieAnn Graham has been moving around Chicago for over 19 years. In recent years, her explorations in study and performance have all been based in improvisational work. Her most recent collaborators have been Asimina Chremos and Julia Mayer. Her work has been shown recently at The Other Dance Festival, Links Hall, and the Epiphany Dance Experiment. She has also started an improvisational lab in the community and teaches Movement for Actors at Columbia College. Her most amazing project so far is her daughter, Nora Audrey Lerner.
|
|
| |
 |
Ania Greiner is a performance and video artist who is fascinated with voyeurism, surveillance, architecture and dance. Since 2005 she has worked as one half of 3 Card Molly, an interdisciplinary group that explores history, technology, female strength and vulnerability through the media of performance and video. Their work has been shown at the Chicago Cultural Center, Link's Hall, Millennium Park, and other venues in Chicago, Michigan and Canada. |
|
| |
 |
Ayako Kato is a dancer and choreographer who hails from Yokohama, Japan. She established Art Union Humanscape (AUH) with a double bassist Jason Roebke in 1998. Kato performs extensively in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Her works has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, Joyce Soho, Die Pratze Dance Festival (Tokyo), Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain (Strasbourg, France), The Other Dance Festival and other festivals and venues. Kato has received the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award 2007 and AUH received Crosscut sound and movement grant by Experimental Sound Studio and Links Hall in 2008 with Josh Berman (cornet). Her works also have been supported by Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and Japan Foundation. Her recent video collaboration, Maria's List, with film maker Masahiro Sugano has featured at WTTW Image Union in October. Kato's experimental dance aims at unfolding space of furyu (wind flow), being as it is, through her movements. www.artunionhumanscape.net
|
|
| |
 |
Jennifer Kayle is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, and an independent choreographer, dancer, and improvisational artist. This year, Kayle is co-creating “Virtually Yours,” a meditation on the poetry and politics of crossing the border, performing at Highways, Los Angeles (June), and The Centro Leon in Santiago, Dominican Republic (May). In 2009, she performed with Katherine at The Body/Word Festival in St. Petersburg Russia, and in 2008, premiered works in Chicago, Colorado, and in her first Joyce SoHo season in New York City. Other venues include the Minnesota Fringe Festival, Jacob’s Pillow’s “Inside/Out,” Big Range Dance Festival (Tex.), venues in Russia, Finland, Puerto Plata, D.R., and in the repertories of companies such as New ARTiculations (Tucson) and The Dance COLEctive (Chicago). Recent teaching adventures include Bates Dance Festival/Young Dancers Workshop 2009, co-creating an interdisciplinary improvisation course for dancers, musicians, and actors at U.Iowa, and co-teaching with Lisa at Links Hall, Chicago, and the Fort Wayne Dance Collective in Indiana. Recent teaching and compositional experiments include dancing with the “body of objects,” composing relationships between objects, dancers, and the surrounding architecture, (spaces that are “installed,” pre-existing or accidental). Jennifer is grateful to all her teachers, and also to continue her main improvisational research with The Architects, including composer/musician Michael Chorney, and designer Kathy Couch. |
|
| |
 |
Colleen Leonardi is an independent choreographer, writer, and teacher. Her work values what a dancing body/mind can do and the information that emerges from its doing. As a dance-maker, her processes look at how a rigorous movement and language-based inquiry allows for the form and content of a dance to emerge. As a writer, she aims to question the role of language in the dance-making process. Leonardi’s choreography has been presented at Links Hall, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and PS122, among other venues. In 2008-2009 she was an Outer/Space Artist-in-Residence with Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City. Many of the artists with whom she has studied have greatly influenced her work, including Levi Gonzales, Tere O’Connor, Jeanine Durning, Juliette Mapp, Susan Sgorbati, Dana Reitz, Bebe Miller, and Susan Rethort. She has been an NEA Fellow at the Institute for Dance Criticism at ADF, and a visiting artist at St. Mary’s College, Antioch College, Kenyon College, Ohio Wesleyan, and The Ohio State University. Leonardi holds a B.A. in Dance and Creative Writing from Bennington College and an M.F.A. in Choreography and Dance Writing from The Ohio State University. |
|
| |
 |
Dan Mohr received his BA in composition and voice from Bennington College in 2000 and has studied and performed with Meredith Monk, Lynn Book, Amy Williams, Tom Bogdan, Tobias Picker, Dana Reitz, Allen Shawn among others. An accomplished ensemble singer, he has sung with the New Orleans Symphony Chorus, and toured extensively with Vermont’s Northern Harmony/Village Harmony. He has worked extensively with Split Pillow, an independent Chicago film production company, scoring, writing, directing, and designing for films such as soulMaid (2006, Ariztical Entertainment) and The Christians (2008, Stephen Cone, director). He has performed and collaborated with Asimina Chremos, writer/director Brian Torrey Scott, artist/writer Mary Walling Blackburn, and songwriter Azita Youssefi. As 2007 LinkUp artist, he developed Guns, Aloe — an evening-length one-man performance which spawned his first solo record (2009, DRP). As recipients of the 2008 Crosscut Grant (sponsored by Experimental Sound Studio and Links Hall), he and Rachel Damon of Synapse Arts Collective are touring an evening-length ensemble performance exploring compositional fusions entitled Stridulate: Hybrid Forms in Voice & Movement. He plays with the critically acclaimed Chicago trance-drone collective DRMWPN (Dreamweapon), Relaxation Record, and Box of Baby Birds. He is currently writing his second record, If You Let People Walk All Over You, Do You Become a Place? |
|
| |
 |
Parallel Process is the trio of Ben Boye (harmonium, Max MSP), JayVe Montgomery (reeds, Max MSP, percussion), and Joel Wanek (bass). |
|
| |
 |
Frank Rosaly is a drummer and composer currently living in Chicago. He has been involved in the improvised and experimental music community for 10 years where he has become an integral part of the Chicago scene, navigating a fine line between the vibrant improvised music, experimental, rock and jazz communities. He contributes much of his time to performing, composing, teaching, as well as organizing musical events, while also touring regularly domestically and internationally. Frank leads a quintet called Viscous, a clarinet sextet called Cicatas Music, a solo electronic/percussion project called Milkwork, and a percussion based singer/songwriter project called Softbeater. He has performed and collaborated with many luminaries of improvised and experimental music, including Peter Brötzmann, Tony Malaby, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Coleman, Paul Flaherty, Marshall Allen, Louis Moholo, Eric Boeren, Ken Vandermark, Michael Zerang, and Walter Weirbos. He coordinates the Ratchet Series, a weekly showcase of creative music at the Skylark. |
|
| |
 |
Charles Rumback
is a Chicago drummer who keeps busy working in many groups with a wide variety of backgrounds. In addition to leading his own quartet, he is also currently a member of Via Tania, The Horse's Ha and Colorlist. Though his role sometimes varies from project to project, Charles can be found accompanying songs, pushing the ensemble in free-improvised settings, or creating sonic landscapes all from behind the drumkit.
Originally from Kansas, Charles relocated to Chicago in 2001 and has ramped up his creative output since then, playing on many recordings as a sideman/collaborator and performing both locally and internationally with several different bands.
Charles' first recording as a leader 'Two Kinds of Art Thieves' was released in 2009 on Clean Feed Records. The quartet recording features Greg Ward, Joshua Sclar and Jason Ajemian. The band has performed in Chicago and in New York at the Clean Feed Festival.
Future plans include shows with his quartet as well as a new recording by Colorlist scheduled for release in January of 2010 on 482 music. Charles is currently working on music to be released in the near future by Leaf Bird, Via Tania and The Zoo Wheel. |
|
| |
 |
Lily Skove is a choreographer, filmmaker and teacher. Skove’s company, Skoveworks, has been presented at the Time To Dance International Contemporary Dance Festival in Riga, Latvia, at The Chocolate Factory Theater in New York City, and at the Governor's Institute in Vermont. Skove has also presented work at The Field, Movement Research, Chashama, Spoke the Hub, The d.u.m.b.o dance festival, and Galapagos Arts Space in New York City, and at The Esquala Popular Cultural Center, The Tremont Arts festival, and The Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Skove has screened her dance films at Dance Theater Workshop in NYC, at Schubas Tavern in Chicago, and at the Wexner Center in Columbus for the Ohio Short Film and Video Showcase 2008. Her music videos made in collaboration with Cinematographer TJ Hellmuth were released for the Chicago based band, The Chandeliers, on record labels Pickled Egg Records in Europe, and Obey Your Brain in the States. Skove is a founding member of The Lower Lights Collective, a group of artists who work in performance, sound, and sculpture in New York City. Skove’s writing on dance for the camera has been published in the Dance on Camera Journal. Currently pursuing her M.F.A in dance and technology at The Ohio State University, Skove holds a Diploma in Dance Studies from the Laban Centre, UK and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. |
|
| |
 |
Ni’Ja Whitson (MFA The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, B.A. Oberlin College) is a transdisciplinary artist, and writer. Her work engages a critical dialogue of personal and cultural collective memory and intersections of body, text, and liberation. Her works include collaborations with international performers and musicians, solo dance and performance works, experimental video, and installation. As an artist and choreographer she has worked with Guillermo Gomez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra, Sharon Bridgforth, and performed alongside Margaret Cho and Julie Atlas-Muz.
As an interdisciplinary artist Whitson exhibits and performs installation and performance work in public sites, designed environments, and transformed spaces. Whitson’s solo installation and performance work, DisPlacement was featured in the Margaret Burroughs Gallery at the South Side Community Art Center where she was the featured artist for 2008 Chicago Artist Month, opening to strong reviews and taking history as the first exhibition of its kind in the space. Whitson is currently designing an evening-length solo performance installation entitled root shock scheduled to debut December of 2010. She has performed or exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Hyde Park Art Center, the Vic Theater, the Historic Y Hall in Tucson Arizona, and The Art Institute of Chicago. Awards include a 2009 3Arts Visual Artist Award Nomination, 2008 Columbia College mini-grant, 2007 Performance Network INCUBATION! Nominee, 2007 MFA Fellowship Award, and 2001 Mellon Research Fellowship. She is an ongoing lecturer and presenter exploring feminism and anti-oppression, Black/African diasporic critical thought, and contemporary art practices. She is currently teaching at Chicago State University and Columbia College Chicago. |
|
| |
 |
Zachary Whittenburg Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Zachary's career began with the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, where he was a company member until 2001. Since then he has danced for North Carolina Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance in Asheville, NC, and BJM Danse Montréal. In Chicago he has collaborated with Lucky Plush Productions, Same Planet Different World Dance, and Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak. His choreography has been presented in Chicago and Canada, most recently by Thodos Dance Chicago and Mordine & Co. Dance Theater. Zachary is the Dance Editor at Time Out Chicago magazine and has contributed to Dance Teacher, The Windy City Times, SeeChicagoDance.com and other print and online publications. He also maintains a blog on dance and performance at trailerpilot.com. image by Erich |
|
| |
 |
WUMMIN
"Implicitly heavy, cerebral but not at the cost of intuition, Anita Chari and Andrew Royal are vanguards of form; symbiotic symbologists, well-versed in Western and non-Western musics alike. Echoes of John Cale and the Flower Travellin’ Band resound with umbilical tension and surface like birth pangs, pulsing like Can and coursing like Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. WUMMIN might serve as Morton Feldman for the cough syrup-swigging youth; acoustic, operatic, noisy poesy in the service of cosmogonical possibilities, tense, deep, and psychedelic in the etymological sense of the word." - Mark Trecka |
|
| |
 |
TV Pow is a trio of composers and free improvisers first organized in Tokyo 1995 by Michael Hartman and Brent Gutzeit, and later joined by Todd Carter in the move to Chicago in 1996. They employ samplers, percussion, invented instruments, synthesizers, turntables, tape manipulation, computers and multi-speaker surround-sound systems in a constantly evolving soundscape of sparkling electronics, ambient drones, minimalist techno, and cinematic field recordings. Creating through live performance something both new and recombinant, TV Pow has toured throughout Japan, Europe, and the United States. |
|
| |
 |
ZELIONOPLE is a Chicago-based three piece Zelienople have been around for quite a while now, and in that time have become staples in the underground music architecture. Percussionist Mike Weis has appeared on recent recordings with alt-folk legend Scott Tuma; Weis, Tuma and guitarist/vocalist Matt Christensen form the band Good Stuff House. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Harding completes the trio, which has forged its most essential work to date with Give It Up—a record which succeeds as a perfect summation of their progress in the last few years.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
