Select Summer Faculty
Hollins 2023
Jeffery N. Bullock
Jeffery N. Bullock, associate professor and chair of Hollins’ dance program, began his performing career with the North Carolina Dance Theater following graduation from the North Carolina School of the Arts. He continued his performing career with Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) Seattle, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Sharir + Bustamante DanceWorks (Austin, TX), touring nationally and internationally. Bullock’s repertoire included soloist and principal roles in an eclectic array of works by George Balanchine, Agnes De Mille, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Daniel Esralow, Nacho Duato, Lucinda Childs, Salvatore Aiello, Yacov Sharir, Glen Tetley, and others. He was also a featured performer in the 1986 Paramount Motion Picture The Nutcracker with PNB, and was a featured performer in the 1983 PBS Special Where Dreams Debut: The North Carolina School of the Arts. Bullock’s work At Midnight earned him a Dance Magazine’s Best Choreography Nomination at the 1996 American College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Bullock was a faculty member at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, for 15 years, teaching in the ADF Six Week School and Young Dancers School; and in ADF/Russia (2000), ADF/Korea (2000, 2004, 2006, and 2008) and ADF/Mongolia (2004 and 2005). In 2006, he was named director of the ADF Four Week School. Also, Bullock served as a site visit consultant for Dance Advance of the Pew Charitable Trust located in Philadelphia, PA. He earned his M.F.A. in choreography from the University of Iowa; taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Iowa, and joined the Hollins dance department in 2004; becoming chair in Fall 2009 and director of the Hollins M.F.A. in dance program in Fall 2010, where he continues to teach, serve, and lead. In 2021, Bullock was invited to join the Board of Trustees at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.
Rainy Demerson
Rainy Demerson is a dance artist and scholar invested in intersectional feminism and global decolonial embodiments. In addition to extensive studies in San Francisco and New York City, she trained at L’ecole des Sables in Senegal, Teatro Nacional de Cuba, Escola de Dança da FUNCEB in Brazil, and in collaboration with The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany. She has produced concerts in New York and Senegal and her work has been presented in festivals across the United States and in South Africa. Demerson’s pedagogical praxis is informed by many years of teaching disenfranchised youth as well as formal study in the dance education M.A. at New York University. She also holds an M.F.A. in dance from Hollins and a Ph.D. in critical dance studies from University of California Riverside where she published her dissertation, Decolonial Moves: Re-Membering Black Women in South African Contemporary Dance. She taught at Lindenwood University, El Paso Community College, Crafton Hills College, Scripps College, California Polytechnic University Pomona, and California State University San Marcos before joining the University of the West Indies Cave Hill. Her work has been published in the Journal of Dance Education, Journal of Emerging Dance Scholarship, Critical Stages, Research in Dance and Physical Education, Performance Research, and several anthologies.
Alex Ketley
Alex Ketley is a choreographer, filmmaker, and the director of The Foundry. He has developed pieces from many different creative entry points. Examples of these are: Syntax, an hour-long duet that used the mechanics of language as an organizing mechanism; Lost Line researched how the application of environment affects the generation of movement; Please Love Me jettisoned performing in a theatre and researched how people connect and experience artwork; and the No Hero Trilogy was a multi-year project that explored what dance and performance means to people living throughout rural America. He has been commissioned extensively and has received acknowledgement from the Hubbard Street National Choreographic Competition, the Choo-San Goh Award, the Princess Grace Award for Choreography, four MANCC Residencies, the Eben Demarest Award, the National Choreographic Initiative Residency, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation New and Experimental Works Grant, and the Artistry Award from the Superfest Disability Film Festival. His pieces have also been awarded Isadora Duncan Awards for outstanding achievement in the categories of Choreography, Company, and Ensemble. In 2020 he became a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of the most prestigious honors in the United States recognizing individuals “who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability in the arts.” https://www.alexketley.com/.
Ángel Díaz Miranda
Ángel Díaz Miranda is an associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Hollins. He received his doctoral degree from Emory University. In 2014, he was Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Agnes Scott College. His research focuses on contemporary Mexican and Chilean poetry and literature and their relations to violence, trauma, and memory from Modernismo to the present. Díaz Miranda has published journal articles on Mexican and Chilean poetry and fiction. He contributed the chapter “Octavio Paz and Poetic Institutions” to the Cambridge History of Mexican Poetry to be published in 2023. He is the guest editor for a special issue of Trasatlántica: Poetry and Scholarship, on Incurable (1987) by David Huerta. His book project Archives of the Wound traces the cruel modalities of psychological wounding and bodily harm in Mexican and Chilean literature and visual arts from Modernismo to the present. He has presented his work nationally and internationally. Díaz Miranda is also a poet. His books Catálogo de inconsistencias and Escala Richter are forthcoming by Editorial del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and Ediciones Acapulco, respectively. He is one of the cofounders of distropika.com, a space for Puerto Rican and Latin American poetry.
Amanda DiLodovico
Amanda DiLodovico is a teacher, writer, and dancer. She is currently a lecturer in critical writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in Dance Studies and Disability Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in dance studies from Temple University in 2017. Prior to her doctoral work, she received a B.A. in dance and English literature from Marymount Manhattan College and an M.A. in performance studies from NYU. She has previously taught in the dance departments at Temple University, Marymount Manhattan College, and Swarthmore College. Her current research focuses on the labor of disabled bodies in contemporary dance practice through the lens of crip theory as a way to reflect upon and rearticulate a history of dance and Western culture invested in progress, innovation, and ability. In the classroom, she hopes to create a space for learning and creative practice that is accessible, supportive, equitable, and interdependent. In addition to teaching and writing, DiLodovico currently dances with the Philadelphia-based dance collective, BollywoodTechPhilly.
Eliot Gray Fisher
Eliot Gray Fisher is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, whose practice bridges overlapping layers of technology with performance. As a codirector of interdisciplinary performance group ARCOS (arcosdance.com), he creates interactive video projections, music, and text, as well as performing in transmedia productions. He has composed music and designed sound for film, theatre, and dance, for which he was awarded a commission from the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to collaborate with musicians in Tbilisi, Georgia. Fisher has also conducted documentary video fieldwork, recognized by an award from the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, including in Sonora and Yucatán, Mexico; Minas Gerais, Brazil; and Victoria, Australia. He has built interactive installations selected for Currents New Media Arts festival and commissioned by the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology. He has also written and directed over 10 full-length theatrical productions with music at the Santa Fe Playhouse and Engine House Theater in Madrid, New Mexico. Fisher has participated in artist residencies including Ucross Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Signal Culture; designed curricula and taught on faculty at the College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Preparatory School, and University of Texas at Austin; served as a guest artist at institutions such as University of Michigan, Colorado College, Texas State University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Texas A&M University; and published in USITT’s Theatre Design & Technology journal and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy. He has an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College and is currently a doctoral student in performance as public practice at the University of Texas at Austin.
Christian Matheis
Christian Matheis is faculty in community and justice studies in the Department of Justice and Policy Studies at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. Matheis specializes in scholarship and practice that bridge social and political philosophy, ethics, public policy, and direct-action organizing. In particular, his work emphasizes how both philosophy of liberation and practical strategies enacted in liberatory movements can play a key role in addressing contemporary ethical, political, and economic problems. His research and teaching concentrations include topics such as solidarity, refugees, feminism, race, indigeneity, power and policy, and global justice. In addition to his regular teaching and research, he provides training in areas of human relations facilitation, intergroup dialogue, grassroots direct-action organizing, and on other topics. Matheis is co-editor of Migration Policy and Practice: Interventions and Solutions (2016), and editor of Transformation: Toward a People’s Democracy (2021).
Stephanie House-Niamke
Stephanie House-Niamke is a doctoral student in sociology at West Virginia University and a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow. She has guest-lectured on Critical Race Theory (CRT) at Virginia Tech and American University. Since arriving in Morgantown, she has worked with Dr. Katie Corcoran as a summer graduate research assistant and has been invited to speak at workshops addressing systemic racism in business and technology fields. She has three papers under review, one with Dr. Corcoran concerning multiple church attendance in the United States, another with Dr. Chris Scheitle about advisor-student relationships and demographic matching across race, gender, and religious identities, and with Dr. Josh Woods concerning the athlete’s self-concept and self-branding via social media. Most recently, she has published her first single-authored article, “Hannah’s Suffering: The Power of Voice” concerning womanist interpretation of a popular Old Testament scripture and its implications for minoritized women. Broadly speaking, her research interests concern power, access, and choice, across the areas of race, gender, and religion. This includes anti-racist pedagogy and identity development for melanin-dominant communities and women who participate in religious institutions. Additionally, she has published work on BIPOC teachers’ resistance to CRT in curricula. She has also published work focused on incorporating Critical Race Theory into graduate policy programs as well as general policy-making. She serves as the Student Section Chair for the North Central Sociological Association. Her master’s thesis, which focused on the impact of the White Jesus Phenomenon on Black Protestant women and men, was funded by The Joseph H. Fichter Research Grant through the Association of Sociology of Religion, the Korie Little Edwards Grant, the Student Research Grant from the Sociology of Religion section of the American Sociological Association and WVU’s prestigious Carl del Signore Scholarship. Most recently, she taught an amazing group of BIPOC, first generation, low-income students at Princeton University via the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America’s 2022 Summer Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. The course curriculum focused on utilizing leadership skills and knowledge of social movements/activism to create and facilitate broader social change.
Elizabeth Poliner
Elizabeth Poliner is the author of the novel, As Close to Us as Breathing (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown & Co.), winner of the 2017 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in Fiction, finalist for the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award in Fiction, and an Amazon Best Book of 2016. She’s also the author of Mutual Life & Casualty, linked stories, and What You Know in Your Hands, poems. Her writing has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, The Common, Colorado Review, and TriQuarterly, among other journals. She’s been a fellow at MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, the Wurlitzer Foundation, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference. She recently taught in the M.F.A. and undergraduate creative writing programs at Hollins, where she was an associate professor of English and creative writing.
Orfeas Skutelis
Orfeas Skutelis is an award-winning cinematographer/producer from Novi Sad, Serbia. Skutelis graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad with a degree in cinematography and received an M.A. in media studies from The New School in New York, where he is based. Apart from documentary films, over the course of the past 20 years, he has also authored and produced TV programs, theatre performances, exhibitions, experimental and short films, and music videos. He is currently teaching at The New School in New York.
Gregory Youdan Jr.
Gregory Youdan Jr. performed with the NY Baroque Dance Company, Sokolow Theatre/Dance, and Heidi Latsky Dance, where he now serves as a board member. Other company credits have included David Parker and the Bang Group, HT Chen and Dancers, Catherine Gallant/DANCE, and Gloria McLean and Dancers among others. Currently, Youdan is a visiting research scholar at Brown University and adjunct lecturer at Lehman College. He is a Westheimer Fellow through Mark Morris Dance Group’s Dance for PD program and is a teaching artist in their Dance for PD en Español program. He was a 2021 National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures Advocacy Fellow and 2021 Latin Impact Honoree. Youdan is a human movement scientist specializing in dance science and a certified Pilates teacher. He serves on the development committee for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS), the research committee for the National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH), and the advisory council for Dance Data Project. He holds dual master’s from Teachers College, Columbia University in motor learning and applied statistics.
Plovdiv, Bulgaria 2023
Carla Bottiglieri
Carla Bottiglieri is an independent researcher in movement studies, with a background in dance and somatic practices. Her dance education and performing practice has been influenced by the encounter with artists such as Lucia Latour, Lisa Nelson, Steve Paxton and Claudia Castellucci. Her somatics and movement analysis studies owe much to the teachings of Hubert Godard. Trained as practitioner and teacher of Body-Mind Centeringand practitioner of Rolfing/Structural Integrationmethods, she explored a variety of somatic approaches, including Feldenkrais, Continuum, and Ideokinesis.She holds a BA in Classical Humanities and Aesthetics from the University of Salerno (IT) and a MA in Performing Arts/Dance from the University of Paris 8 (FR). She is currently based in Faenza (IT), where she founded, together with Thomas Greil, “minima somatica”, a nucleus of research and practice at the intersection of care and the arts of movement.
Adrian Heathfield
Adrian Heathfield writes on, curates and creates performance. He is the author of Out of Now, a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh, editor of Ally and Live: Art and Performance and co-editor of Perform, Repeat, Record. His numerous essays have been translated into ten languages. He conducted the three-year European Union funded creative research project Curating the Ephemeral (2014-2016) on immaterial art and museal practices. He was co-director of Performance Matters, a four-year AHRC funded research project on the cultural value of performance (2009-2013).He co-curated the Live Culture events at Tate Modern, London (2003) and a number of other performance and durational events in European cities over the last eighteen years. He was curator of Doing Time, the Taiwan Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), a curatorial adviser and attaché for the 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016) and an artistic director with the collective freethought of the 2016 Bergen Assembly, Norway. Heathfield has worked with m a n artists and thinkers on critical and creative collaborations including film dialogues, performance-lectures, dramaturgy, writing and workshop projects. He was President of Performance Studies international (2004-2007) and is Emeritus Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London.
Boyan Manchev
Boyan Manchev is a philosopher and professor at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia) and at the HZT – UdK (Berlin). He is also former director of program and vice president of the International College of Philosophy in Paris. His actual research, which proposes the perspective of a radical materialism, is focused on the fields of ontology, philosophy of art, and political philosophy. Manchev has lectured widely at European, North-American, and Japanese universities and cultural institutions. He has organized and/or collaborated on a number of projects, congresses, and public forums dealing with philosophy, art, and politics at the CIPh (Paris), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Tanzquartier (Vienna), Apexart (New York), CND (Paris), BAK (Utrecht), UTCP (Tokyo), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), among others. He curated the exhibition Out of Time at the Sofia City Art Gallery (March – April 2011). He has participated as theorist, dramaturge, or performer in theatre and contemporary dance projects, including Tim Etchells and Adrian Heathfield’s The Frequently Asked, Boris Charmatz’s expo zero and Poster session “Mouvement” for the Festival d’Avignon, and Ani Vaseva’s Frankenstein, A Dying Play. Manchev is the author of seven books and more than 100 book chapters, catalogues, and other publications in various languages. In the last years he has appeared in Logic of the Political (Sofia: Critique&Humanism, 2012); Miracolo (Milano: Lanfranchi, 2011); L’altération du monde: Pour une esthétique radicale (Paris: Lignes, 2009); La Métamorphose et l’Instant – Désorganisation de la vie (Paris: La Phocide, 2009); Rue Descartes 64: La métamorphose, ed. by B. Manchev (Paris: PUF, 2009); Rue Descartes 67: Quel sujet du politique?, ed. by G. Basterra, R. Ivekovic, and B. Manchev (Paris: PUF, 2010). His book The Body–Metamorphosis (Sofia: Altera, 2007) deals extensively with contemporary art, performance, and dance.
Ani Vaseva
Ani Vaseva was born in 1982 in Sofia. She graduated in theatre studies and theatre directing at NATFA, Sofia. She is a theatre director, the author of theatre plays of critical and theoretical texts on dance and theatre, and holds a Ph.D. in performance studies from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Among her visual projects are Still Here. On The Meteor Arhcipelago (together with Georgi Sharov, Museums Night, Plovdiv, 2015), Gorgons In The Depot, or Apocalypse Now (exhibition curated together with Monika Vakarelova and Boriana Rossa, part of The Other Eye project of Maria Vassileva at the Sofia Municipal Gallery, 2013), In-Out (installation, part of the Love exhibition, curated by Maria Vassileva, Raiko Alexiev gallery, 2012), Power Fridge Points (together with Natalia Todorova and Ivana Nencheva, Tanzquartier Wien, 2011), The War Of The Little Girls (together with Ivan Donchev and Boyan Manchev, Vaska Emanuilova gallery, 2010) etc. Among her last performances are A Play For Us (2018), Roadtrip to Hell (2017), The Murderer And The Whore (2017), Lovecraft (2016), Total Damage (2016), Maldoror (2015), A Play for You (2014). Her book What Is Contemporary Dance (2017) explores the complex processes and conflictual ideologies that stand behind the concept of contemporary dance. Between 2015 and 2018 she has been teaching history and theory of theatre and literature at New Bulgarian University and the Luben Groys Theatre College, where together with Leonid Yovchev she was leading an acting class in 2017-18.
Visiting and Guest Artists
Hollins 2023
Yvonne Meier
Originally from Zurich, Switzerland, Yvonne Meier has lived and worked in New York City since 1979, where she became a member of the original group around Performance Space 122, regularly collaborating with Ishmael Houston-Jones and many others in the US and Europe. Her work, spanning anywhere from big spectacles to quiet solos, has been supported by three Fellowships in Choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Inter Arts, Franklin Furnace, and Pro Helvetia. The American Master Piece program of the NEA has supported the upcoming recreation of her performance-instillation work, The Shining. She has received three “Bessie” Awards for her works The Shining (1993 and 2011) and Stolen (2009). She has twice been supported through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence program. Meier has been teaching Releasing Technique and Authentic Movement nationally and internationally for the last 30 years. After a life-long commitment to improvisation, she has developed her own improvisation technique known as Scores. Meier also teaches children’s dance classes in NY Public Schools through Movement Research’s Dance Makers program. Meier is a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Wendi Wagner
Wendi Wagner has a background in dance education, a foundation in somatic practices, and an interest in neuroscience. She currently contemplates how yoga might offer support for recovering and re-building resilience in the nervous system. Wagner completed a 200-hour registered yoga teacher training in 2014, a few years after receiving an M.F.A. in dance through Hollins. Yoga studies led to a certificate program in Ayurvedic lifestyle mentoring, in addition to coursework in Exploring the Vagus system. Recently she has traveled to Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Prague, working toward a 500-hour training in yoga therapy. She sees the movement practices of yoga and dance as eternal opportunities to return to the body as a source of wisdom; and the movement class as a field for deepening and sharing that insight.
Clarice Young
Clarice Young is an artist, teacher, choreographer, collaborator, and performer who researches the intersection of African Diasporic dance and contemporary modern dance. Melding elements of Afro-Caribbean, modern, and West African styles, she uses fundamentals from each to uncover ways to stabilize and release the body. Young received her B.F.A. in dance from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and her M.F.A. in dance from Hollins. A Louisiana native, Young was an original member of Camille A. Brown & Dancers and served as an assistant to the director. She was also a member of Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company, acting as their first rehearsal director. She’s collaborated with fellow artist Francine E. Ott in Outta the Box at Dixon Place, performed her solo work i am… at Judson Church, and showcased her choreography re(belle) at the North Carolina Dance Festival. She has been a guest teacher at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee Summer Dance Intensive, American Dance Festival, and Hollins. As a choreographer she’s been invited to set work for undergraduate students at NC State University and UL Lafayette. In 2019 she started The Clarice Young Project to celebrate Black culture and life out loud through the art of dance. Since then, students along with faculty from UNC Greensboro and NC State University, have performed each year at Greensboro Project Space honoring Black History Month. Presently, Young serves as an assistant professor of dance and the director of undergraduate studies at UNC Greensboro.
shani collins
shani collins (SNIC) is crowned “Contemporary Revolutionary” by Thomas Lax in The Studio Museum Harlem Summer Magazine and featured in Dance Magazine as “Warrior Woman” by Eva Yaa Assentawa who says: “ It’s a sure bet that when she takes the stage, she will deliver not only the movement but the core, the bedrock, the very meaning and spirit of a dance.” A “Bessie” New York Dance and Performance Award and recipient of a Martha Myers Choreography Award, she has choreographed and performed in the NYC Off Broadway Production of The Vagina Monologues at New World Stages and has participated, as a choreographer, in the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab. Her dance projects perpetuates women’s healing em(power)ment through performance, intercultural exchange, and community engagement/ dialogue. Her work has been commissioned throughout the East coast and abroad at Performatica’ Dance Festival in Cholula, Mexico, Kaay Fecc Dance Festival in Dakar, Senegal, including special teaching / performance workshops in Seoul, Korea, Dakar, Senegal, and throughout Ghana. Shani is currently Associate Professor and former Chair in the Department of Dance at Connecticut College, where she has served on faculty since 2009.
dana e. fitchett
dana e. fitchett, founder of Movement for Liberation, is a multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary artist whose practices are grounded in utilizing creative process to cultivate healing, access wisdom, and develop new languages in service of alignment, integrity, and freedom. fitchett works in, and in conversation with, the expressive legacy of the African diaspora. In addition to her movement and visual art practices, fitchett writes and edits for individuals and community organizations working for transformation and justice by way of truth and reconciliation. fitchett holds a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and a Master of Fine Arts in interdisciplinary art, and spends most of her time in Oakland, Boston, and Brooklyn. Instagram: @mvmt4liberation
Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy, M.F.A., Ph.D., is a dancer, writer, choreographer, activist, healer, and teacher. Raised in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory in Canada, he has lived in Yelamu/San Francisco since 1982 and tours internationally. Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental, motivated by anti-racist, queer-feminist, and decolonial movements. With a focus on the poetics and politics of relationship, Keith’s recent collaborators include Ishmael Houston-Jones, Peiling Kao, Snowflake Towers, Brontez Purnell, Nathaniel Moore, Ryanaustin Dennis, Sarah Crowell, and Gerald Casel. Awards include Guggenheim, USArtist, NY Bessie, and Bay Area Izzies. Hennessy directs Circo Zero and was a member of Sara Mann’s Contraband, 1985-1994. His writing is widely published in both artist and academic contexts. Additionally, Keith is an affordable/anticapitalist housing advocate focused on community land trusts. Www.circozero.org
Britt Juleen
Originally from Miami, Florida, Britt Juleen spent most of her 20-year performance career in Europe at the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam and as a first soloist in Germany’s SemperOper Ballet’s exquisite Opera House. She has taught extensively across the San Francisco Bay Area including the company and schools associated with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Oakland Ballet Company and ODC Dance Company. Juleen’s approach to teaching and choreography is greatly influenced by alternative studies of experiential anatomy. Somatic approaches to movement exploration allow her to enrich her teaching of traditional ballet technique with a contemporary sense of authentic expression and kinesthetic development. Credentials include: Studied at the School of American Ballet, New World School of the Arts, Pacific Northwest Ballet School and Houston Ballet Academy, Studied Somatic Movement Education through the School for Body-Mind Centering®, Served as the Artistic Director for Berkeley Ballet Theater, Assistant Professor at San Jose State University, University of Iowa, East Carolina University, Saint Mary’s College and Hollins University, ABT Teacher Certified. Career highlights include: Performed with Ballet Arizona, Ballet Gamonet, and the contemporary dance companies iMEE, Jacoby&Pronk, and SFDanceworks and performed in works created by leading classical and modern/contemporary choreographers such as Marius Petipa, William Forsythe, George Balanchine, David Dawson, Krzysztof Pastor, Rudi van Dantzig, Jiri Kylián, Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, John Neumeier, Uwe Scholz, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Paul Taylor, Léonide Massine, Mikail Fokine, Jerome Robbins, Frederic Franklin, Jimmy Gamonet, Peter Pucci, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Neta Pulvermacher, Victoria Marks, Michael Uthoff, Mauro Bigonzetti, Ashley Page, Danielle Rowe, Maurice Causey and Alexander Ekman.
Jason Schadt
Shortly after earning an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa in 2008, Jason Schadt began working as Artistic Director of the UI Youth Ballet and Community Dance School. Through appointments as Visiting Assistant Professor and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UI Department of Dance, he has taught Ballet Pedagogy, Dance Kinesiology, and ballet classes from Beginning Ballet for non-majors to Majors Ballet 1, 2, and 3. Jason teaches concert dance technique with a pedagogical approach rooted in sensory awareness, imagery, anatomy, and rhythm. His research focuses on the mechanics of movement and injury prevention, and these emphases are central to the courses he designs. Through Jason Schadt Movement Arts, Jason teaches nuanced dance classes to adults who currently range in age from 25-75. From 2010 to 2015, Jason was an Instructor in the Department of Kinesiology, Allied Health and Human Services at the University of Northern Iowa, where he taught modern dance, ballet, floor barre, choreography and dance history. In that role, Jason supervised over 100 student choreography projects for presentation locally and at academic conferences, shaping the program by integrating Critical Response Process for sharing supportive feedback. In addition to venues throughout Iowa, Jason has presented his choreography in regional festivals in Minnesota and Utah. jasonschadt.com
Ming-Lung Yang
Ming-Lung Yang was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1994-1999 and was the Artistic Director of Dance Forum Taipei Dance Company from 2002-2005. His choreography has been presented by numerous venues across Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States. Mr. Yang served as an Assistant Professor of Taipei National University of the Arts from 1999-2004 and 2010-2012, and a Visiting Associate Professor in the Dance Department at the Ohio State University from 2006-2010. He taught at the American Dance Festival summer school from 2000-2013 and is currently teaching at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Plovdiv, Bulgaria 2023
Marcus Berger
Marcus Berger is Australian, Brussels-based artist and experimental filmmaker (whose films are available in the German film archives of Arsenal, Light Cone and National Librarv of Australia) with life-long experience in collective sound poetry practice through the famed AF ARF; Myriam Van Imschoot is a Brussels-based artist working with voice and ecology across mediums like performance, film and installation. Together they have been performing and teaching sound poetry workshops in Montpellier (Exerce), India (Shristi), Brussels (PARTS), Vienna (Impulstanz), Lisbon (Alkantara), Sidney (University) and Cairns. They were resident artists at Akademie Schloss Solitude, issued the series Schloss Songs, two films and the performance Yoke, where light, voice and shadow intertwine in magic (Belgrad 2021, Sofia 2022).
Jonathan Burrows
Jonathan Burrows danced for 13 yeas with the Royal Ballet in London during which time he also performed for experimental choreographer Rosemary Butcher. He has since created an acclaimed body of performance work including The Stop Quartet (1996) and Weak Dance Strong Questions (with Jan Ritsema 2001), as well as his long series of collaborations with composer Matteo Fargion including Both Sitting Duet (2002), The Quiet Dance (2005), Speaking Dance (2006), Cheap Lecture (2009), The Cow Piece(2009), Body Not Fit For Purpose (2014) and Rewriting (2021). Burrows and Fargion are co-produced b PACT Zollverein Essen and Sadler’s WellsTheatre London. Burrows is a founder visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S Brussels and has been Guest Professor at universities in Berlin, Gent, Giessen, Hamburg and London. He is the author of A Choreographer’s Handbook (Routledge 2010) and has recently published a new book of talks and fragments of writing called Writing Dance (Varamo Press 2022). Burrows is currently Associate Professor at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University.
Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva
Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva is a freelance art historian and curator based in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She holds a master’s degree in art history (2003) from the National Academy of Arts, Sofia and a PhD (2015) from the National Academy of Sciences in Sofia. Svetlana Kuvumdzhieva has 10-vears experience in working as chief curator of Credo Bonum Gallery in Sofia. From 2007 to 2013, she worked as a columnist for visual arts at the Kultura Weekly. She worked as a senior expert at the State Institute for Culture – an Associate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later as chief expert at the Cultural deparment of Plovdiv Municipality. She was a member of the jurv of the award for new Bulgarian art “Gaudenz B. Ruf” from 2011 to 2014. he attended various residencies and curatorial courses- Biennial of Contemporary Art, Gwangju, South Korea, Curatorial Intensive, Fall 2010 of Independent Curators International – New York, International Studio and Curatorial Program – New York, Goethe Institut – Berlin, International residency program for writers KulturKontakt – Vienna. From 2015 t o2021, Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva was the artistic director of Bulgaria’s first European Capital of Culture Plovdiv 2019.
Sergiu Matis
Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer born in 1981 in Cluj-Napoca. He received his dance education at the Liceul de Coregrafie in Cluj and the Mannheim Academy of Dance, and began his career at Tanztheater Nuremberg. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2008, creating his own works such as Keep It Real (2013), Explicit Content (2015), Neverendings (2017), Hopeless. (2019), UNREST (2021), DRANG (2022) and Blazing Worlds (2023). He has led workshops and educational activities at a range of institutions worldwide. In 2014 he completed his masters in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Inter University Centre for Dance (HZT) / Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). His dance practice could be considered a relentless search through corporal and digitalized archives, in orderto place acritical lens on what has been filedaway,salvage what was presumed lost, and reinvent what was undocumented. The accumulation of history serves as an old map, which becomes a departure point towards the revelation of a new imagining of dance. His work provokes intense experiences which fracture accepted ideas and reflect the turmoil of our times.
Boryana Rossa
Boryana Rossa is an interdisciplinary artist andcurator who works in the fields of video, film, bio-art, performance, and painting with a focus on body, gender, and technology. In 2004 together with filmmaker Oleg Mavromatti, Rossa establishes ULTRAFUTURO – an international art-collective engaged with issues of technology, science, and their social implications. In 2012 has finished her Ph.D. on Post-Cold War Gender Performances, Rensselaer, Troy, NY. She is also a director of Sofia Queer Forum, together with philosopher Stanimir Panayotov. Associate Professor in the department of Film and Media Arts, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Boryana Rossa has shown work at Brooklyn Museum, NY and National Gallery, Sofia.
Angel Simitchiev
Angel Simitchiev is a musician, composer, and Sound Art lecturer at the National Academy of Art, Sofia. Beyond his solo music practice, his work is developed through collaboration with video art, film, art installation, ads, fashion, theatre, contemporary dance, and performance. Angel Simitchiev is a PhD in Musicology and 1⁄2 of the experimental label and booking crew Amek Collective.
Myriam Van Imschoot
Myriam Van Imschoot is a Brussels-based artist working with voice and ecology across mediums like performance, film and installation; Marcus Berger is Australian, Brussels-based artist and experimental filmmaker (whose films are available in the German film archives of Arsenal, Light Cone and National Librarv of Australia) with life-long experience in collective sound poetry practice through the famed AF ARF. Together they have been performing and teaching sound poetry workshops in Montpellier (Exerce), India (Shristi), Brussels (PARTS), Vienna (Impulstanz), Lisbon (Alkantara), Sidney (University) and Cairns. They were resident artists at Akademie Schloss Solitude, issued the series Schloss Songs, two films and the performance Yoke, where light, voice and shadow intertwine in magic (Belgrad 2021, Sofia 2022).
Netta Weiser
Netta Weiser works at the intersection of choreography, experimental radio and discursive practice. She was trained as a dancer in Israel and holds a master’s degree in interdisciplinary arts from Tel-Aviv University. She currently lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been presented internationally, in art venues such as the Akademie der Künste and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Villa Medici in Rome, The Israeli Centre for Digital Art; in d a n c e festivals and performing arts venues such as Tanzquartier Vienna, Sophiensaele and Tanznacht Festival in Berlin, Diver Festival for Contemporary Dance Tel Aviv; as well as in sound and radio contexts such as KONTAKTE Festival for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art in Berlin, WDR, Tonspur Micro Sound Museum at the MuseumsQuartier Vienna, and reboot.fm. In 2019 she established the artistic research project Radio Choreography, since then the project has been supported by various institutional collaborations, grants and residencies, namely, the N W Dance Research residency for international artists in 2020, and a fellowship at the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste in 2021. Moreover, Weiser is co-director of the “777 Projekt” – a collaboration between MaC Master in Choreography program of HZT and Klangzeitort Institute for New Music Berlin, as well as a docent at the University of the Arts Berlin.
Leonid Yovchev
Leonid Yovchev is one of the most renowned Bulgarian actors. He has performed and toured nationally and international with Metheor’s productions, as well as continuously working on the big theatre stages and in major film productions. Leonid Yovchev is one of the few actors who develop extensively both their text/speech/classical theatre approaches and contemporary Physical techniques/body practices. Besides his work as part of Metheor, he has been part of the ensembles of The National Theatre, The Army Theatre a n d The Little Theatre Off the Channel, a s well as working freelance and appearing on the stages of various other theatres. In 2017-2018 Yovchev was acting professor, leading an acting class in Theatre College Lyuben Groys, together with Ani Vaseva. He gives workshops and lectures and participates in different educational, experimental formats.
Sigal Zouk
Sigal Zouk is a dancer/artist working in Berlin since 1997. She received her training at the Emek Izrael Dance School and joined the Bat Sheva Ensemble 1994-96. After moving to Berlin and working with artists such as Luc Dunberry and Juan Cruz Dias de Esanola, she became a member of Sasha Waltz and Guests 1999-2004. In 2005, she began her collaboration with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods; first as a dancer and then as choreographic advisor/outside eye for the work of Stuart and Gehmacher as well as Stuart’s following works. In 2007, she began her long time collaboration with Laurent Chetouane in which she created 10 dance and theatre works for the stage. She has worked with other artists such as Boris Charmantz (Musee de la Dans), AWST &Walter, Zeirkratzer, Simone Aughterlony, lan Kaler, Antje Shupp and Shanon Conny. During the past few years she has begun to develop her teaching practice where she guides professional dancers to locate their feeling body to a presence that has the potential to navigate in and through any situation. She teaches in several European dance departments and institutions including Tanzfabrik Berlin, ,ZZT Hochschule für Music und dance Köln, DDSKS Copenhagen, DOCH Stokholm, Cullberg Ballet Stokholm, Akademie for dance in Bukarest and Ponderosa. Zouk accompanies artists and choreographers such as Jared Gradinger/Angela Schubot, Meg Stuart, Sheena McGrandles, Antje Shupp, The progressiv wave, Tamara Rettenmund, Mor Demer and Moritz Majce on their artistic journey, helping them to work with their limitations and their potentiality. She was awarded the best performer in Dortmund Festival 2010 as well as dancer of the vear from Tanz Magazine 2011.