ann and alexx make dances
ann and alexx make dances is Ann Robideaux and Alexandra Shilling. Ann and Alexx began making dances in unusual spaces together in 2004, after uniting over biscuits and coffee while on staff at the American Dance Festival; the two recognized their shared interest in leaving the proscenium stage. Previously based in NYC, Ann and Alexx now make work on both coasts of the United States (in L.A. and NYC) as well as in venues throughout the U.S. and abroad. Alexx is an MFA candidate at UCLA’s World Arts & Cultures/Dance Dept.
ann and alexx make dances are inspired to take their work outside of the traditional concert space to present dance theatre that at once challenges convention and invites an audience to step into, taste, sense and become immersed in the intimate experience of performance. Their works have been created for and performed at: the Tender Lilac Steamship (Manhattan’s Pier 40), Eldridge Street Synagogue, The Sun Times Building (now DNA), the Lightship “Frying Pan” (Manhattan’s Pier 65), amid light sculptures at Gallery MC, in the pool at Galapagos Art Space (Brooklyn), the storefronts of Chashama in the seats of the Bushwick Starr, Moviehouse Anatomy Riot (Los Angeles), Yeshiva University’s Museum (New York, NY). www.annandalexxmakedances.com
Catherine Mueller
Catherine Mueller is an interdisciplinary artist, actor/creator and educator working in performance, image, language, movement and music. Since 2005 she has been a CoArtistic Director/performer with The Glass Contraption, a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit physical theater company (www.glasscontraption.org). Her original works have been presented at Dixon Place, IRT, Chicago’s Single File Festival and many others. She directed Dwellicle as part of the 3B Development Series at IRT and was part of the ensemble-devised work BlindSight featured in the 2011 Women CenterStage Festival at the Living Theater. She has studied physical comedy, clown and its related forms since 1999 with many teachers, including Philippe Gaulier, Jane Nichols, Richard Crawford, Felix Ivanov, Per Brahe and most notably Christopher Bayes, currently Head of Physical Acting at Yale School of Drama, with whom she apprenticed. She has been granted developmental residencies with MAKEHOUSE (NJ), Earthdance (MA) and the FuseBox Festival (TX) and participated in the 2011 Director’s Lab Chicago. She leads workshops/residencies in Clown/Physical Theater, Improvisation, Character and/or Collective Creation at universities, secondary schools, community arts organizations and professional actor training programs throughout the country. She is the Orchard Project Core Company Master Teacher and adjunct faculty in the Theater Department at Drew University in Madison, NJ. She has been associated with the 52nd 1999 and writes regularly about independent theater for New York Theatre Review. Education: BA in Theater from Hofstra University, with minors in Dance and Creative Writing. MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts candidate, Goddard College. www.mywonderchamber.com.
Nandini Sikand & Andy Smith
Born and raised in New Delhi, Nandini Sikand is a filmmaker, Odissi dancer and anthropologist. Sikand’s documentary and experimental films have screened and won awards at over a 100 domestic and international film festivals. Her work has aired on PBS and has been awarded grants from The Jerome Foundation, the Center for Asian American Media and she is two-time awardee of New York State Council on the Arts. Her films include, The Bhangra Wrap (1995), Don’t Fence Me In (1998), Amazonia (2001), In Whose Name? (2004), Soma Girls (2009) and Cranes of Hope (2011). She also produced the documentary Mahasweta Devi: Witness, Advocate, Writer (2001). In television, she has worked as a producer and director on projects for Channel Four: UK, Ovation: the Arts Network, HBO, Oxygen, and The History Channel. She served on the board of directors of Women Make Movies, a non-profit feminist media distribution organization from 1997-2006. She was on the Fulbright IIE National Selection committee for film and video for 2008-2011. Nandini is an Assistant Professor of an interdisciplinary film and media studies program at Lafayette College, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. She also choreographs and performs with her neo-classical Odissi dance company, Sakshi Productions. www.sakshiproductions.org
Andy Smith (Co-director) is the Chair of the Film and Media Studies Program at Lafayette College where he teaches courses in cinema, literature, and interdisciplinary subjects. He has made documentary films about 9/11 and visual culture, and on local food production and sustainability. His current projects include a documentary on the cultural and environmental impact of dam removal in the Delaware River watershed, and an experimental film on the disabilities of vision and touch.
Carrie Rohman (Dancer & Choreographer) is Assistant Professor of English at Lafayette College and former faculty member at Contemporary Dance Theater in Cincinnati, Ohio. She considers modern dance performance, choreography and teaching her life-long avocation. Before accepting her first academic position in literary studies, Carrie was an independent performer and choreographer in Cincinnati, where her work was featured at such venues as the Aronoff Center for the Arts, the Performance and Time Arts Series, and the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art. Throughout her dance career she has placed a special value on collaborative work with poets and musicians.
Zena Bibler
Zena Bibler is a Brooklyn-based artist and co-founder of The Movement Party and Fleet Moves Dance Festival with Katie Schetlick. She is interested in improvisation structures and site-specific performance, using movement as a means of experiencing diverse environments—uncovering their histories, secret meanings, serendipities, and previously unimagined possibilities. Her dances have been shown at Movement Research @ Judson Church, Dixon Place, NADA Hudson, Gibney Dance Center, and Yale University, as well as at dance film festivals in the US and Latin America. www.zenabibler.com
Loren Groenendaal & Nicole Bindler
Loren Groenendaal is the founder, artistic director, and choreographer for Vervet Dance. She holds an MFA in Choreography at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a BA in dance and visual arts from Oberlin College, and is a Certified Movement Analyst Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals. Loren is particularly interested in building unique movement vocabularies drawing from her experience with modern, Balinese, social, breakdance, and contact improvisation, investigating the community building possibilities of live art, the spectrums between improvisation and composition, ritual and performance, and visual art and dance. Her artistic work has been performed in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and presented by various organizations including the Abington Art Center, the CEC including the New Edge Mix, Cultivate, fidget, Frantasia, Green Space Blooms, Inhale, OutletDance Festival, Philly Fringe Festival, the North Carolina Dance Alliance, and the StudioSeries at Studio 34. With flandrew fleisenberg, Loren curates the H-O-T Series of Philadelphia, a monthly performance series that showcases dance and music improvisation by local and touring artists. Loren was a founding member of Mascher Space Cooperative, where she now is an Artist-in-Residence and the Programs Coordinator. In Philadelphia, she also co-facilitates a weekly contact improv jam, a monthly Underscore, and teaches dance to children and adults. www.vervetdance.org
Nicole Bindler is a body-based performing artist, inspired by her studies of new dance, dance-theater, contact improvisation and butoh. She is also a bodyworker and uses somatic practices, such as Body-Mind Centering, Yoga and Feldenkrais as a source of creativity, inspiration and physical training. She has had an extensive movement and Somatic education, including certificates in Embodied Developmental Movement and Yoga (2013) and Embodied Anatomy Yoga (2010) from the School for Body-Mind Centering; a degree in Muscular Therapy from the Muscular Therapy Institute (2002); a BA in Dance from Hampshire College (1999). Her work has been shown throughout the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Berlin, Tokyo, Beirut, Mexico and Quito, Ecuador. She has been presented by High Zero Festival, Transmodern Age Festival, Shawinigan Street Theater Festival, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, D.C. Improvisation Festival, Fireside Festival, nEW Festival, X Fest, Bowerbird, CEC New Edge Mix, First Person Arts and Irtijal09’. Her work has been supported by Philadelphia Dance Projects, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Her piece “I made this for you.” created in collaboration with Gabrielle Revlock was a 2011 finalist for the A.W.A.R.D. Show! She has taught Somatics and Contact Improvisation throughout the U.S., Argentina and at International Contact Festival Freiburg in Germany. http://nicolebindler.com/
Blakeley White-McGuire
Blakeley White-McGuire is an Interdisciplinary artist working primarily with the medium of movement in performance, choreography, video, theater and as catalyst for writing and photo journaling. Her work in dance spans across genres from Modern to PostModern, Dance Theater to Opera and also in pure movement performance. Blakeley is currently a Principal dancer with the iconic Martha Graham Contemporary Dance and was the featured dancer in Googleʼs Martha Graham Google Doodle. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, Vermont and her writings have been published by Dance Magazine, The Dance Enthusiast, Dance Films Association Journal and The Huffington Post. She was honored with the Leonide Massine per La Danza Award by the government of Italy for her international performance work, named Best Performance 2011 and 2012 by Dance Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief and has served as artist-in-residence at The Art Mill and The Key West Modern Dance Festival. www.blakeleyarts.com