Meet the FIRST LOOK 2018 Choreographers!
Learn more about these talented choreographers below, and save the dates for performances - July 20 & 21 at The Mark O'Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Arts Center in Downtown Brooklyn.
Plus, a special treat for audience members on July 20 - a free beer with your ticket purchase, thanks to our Free Beer Friday sponsor Greenport Harbor Brewing Company.
David Appel is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher whose work has been presented in a range of contexts throughout North America, Europe, and in Mexico since 1973. Part of the early post-Judson generation that transmitted and transformed those artists’ innovations, he has since primarily followed his own path, while performing along the way with Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, City Dance Theater of Boston, as an instigator and/or part of several dance/music collaborative and improvisation groups, and with many other individual artists in various media. He has received a number of grants and awards, among them three NEA Choreographers Fellowships, and has been invited to festivals in both the United States and abroad. Appel’s influences include learned and/or discovered approaches to movement languages and investigation, as well as his immersion in the popular social dancing from the 1960s and 70s that continues to serve as an anchor for the development of his ever-evolving kinesthetic sense. He is intrigued by and explores relationships between the body’s capacity to be more subtly articulate, the ways we find to move together, and our connections to and within the world around us.
Hollis Bartlett and Nattie Trogdon are performers, teachers and dance makers. They have been collaborating together for the past 4 years building duets that draw from their experiences as humans and movers. Their work has been presented at Dixon Place, The Dance Complex (MA), Triskelion Arts, Mark Morris, and Gibney Dance Center. Hollis Bartlett, graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has been a member of Doug Varone and Dancers since 2011 and has also worked with Brian Brooks, Adam Barruch, and the Metropolitan Opera. Nattie Trogdon was born and raised in North Carolina and graduated from SUNY Purchase. As a freelance artist in NY, she has worked for Doug Varone, David Dorfman, Kendra Portier, Annie Kloppenberg, Mark Dendy, and Oliver and Terri Steele.
Katy E. Cashin is freelance choreographer and resident dance choreographer for White Horse Theater Company (WHTC) in New York City. Cashin is fortunate to create original works for The Tallahassee Ballet with live orchestra and chamber ensemble including "Focus", "Sing, Sing, Sing", "Mainframe", "Trio for Six", and "Rebonds B" among others. Cashin’s WHTC productions include Tennessee William’s "A Cavalier for Milady", "A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot", Sam Shepard’s "Eyes for Consuela" and WHTC Artistic Director Cyndy Marion’s world premiere, "You. Are. Perfect." (YAP). YAP was selected for the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival and will be revised this summer in Los Angeles, CA. Cashin has also created works for South Georgia Ballet, Brown Bag Dance Series and Sharp Show Production. Cashin received her BFA in dance performance and BA in history from Southern Methodist University. At SMU, Cashin performed in master works by George Balanchine, Maurice Béjart, Arthur Mitchell, and Gerald Arpino. She trained with The Tallahassee Ballet (TTB) under the direction of Joyce Fausone, Christina Paolucci of New York Theatre Ballet, Sheila Humphreys of the Royal Ballet, and Richard Sias of National Ballet of Canada. Cashin is currently pursuing her masters of public administration from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York City.
Experimentation and research, the key elements to choreographer Enzo Celli’s work, power his unconditional love for contemporary dance and theatre. His relentless curiosity gave birth to a structured technique permeated by poetry and aiming to become part of the current Avant-garde. Even though Celli has codified a technical language belonging to the contemporary dance field, it is the use of simple gestures appreciated by the audience that the essence of his poetic language reveals itself. Enzo Celli’s work, focusing on man, from the start has aimed to create an uncommon poetic language able to deal with sociological topics. Enzo Celli works have been set on prestigious theatres including: Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater (New York), La Cigale (Paris), Erfurt Opera House (Germany), Na Strastnom Theater (Moscow), Guaria Theater (Curitiba, Brazil), Belgrade National Theater (SerbIa), Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite (Lisbon), Espace Robert Hossein (Lourdes), Auditorium Conciliazione (Rome), James and Russia Drama Theater (Ufa, Russia), Sao Pedro Theater (Porto Allegre, Brazil).
Lisa R. Chow serves as Desert Dance Theatre’s artistic director, company manager, choreographer, performer and educator, and has toured with the company throughout Arizona, Mexico, Texas, New York, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Oregon and Vermont (since 1982). She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Crossroads Performance Group with her husband Step Raptis, performing interdisciplinary music and dance projects throughout the state of Arizona and regionally since 1989. Lisa is also a manager, performer and collaborator in Step’s Junk Funk. She was the first Vice-President on the board of the Arizona Dance Arts Alliance, and since 2000 has coordinated the Annual Arizona Contemporary Dance Festival, currently called the Arizona Dance Festival. She is one of the founders and President of the Arizona Dance Coalition, a web-based non-profit organization that supports dance resources throughout Arizona. Since Desert Dance Theatre, Crossroads Performance Group and Step’s Junk Funk were listed on the artist roster of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Lisa has had experience as a teaching artist for 36 years.
Maya Lee-Parritz is a dancer and choreographer based in NYC. As a performer she currently works with Jodi Melnick and Joanna Kotze, and she has shown her own work at Center for Performance Research. In the fall of 2017 she co-founded with Anna Witenberg a monthly dance series, Sundays in Process, where peers are invited to show their recent choreographic work in various stages of development, in order to facilitate discourse around new and experimental work in a non-curated platform. She works with time, pattern, rhythm, texture, color, space—and the relation of those elements to more concrete questions of politics, identity-making, and the (uneven) distribution of power locally and globally. She asks: what political values inhere in certain aesthetic experiences and formal structures? Her choreography follows film maker Abigail Childs’ dictum: “radical form equals radical content,”—through radical sensitivity to time, space, weight, speed rather than propagandistic persuasion, her work aims towards transformations of perception, changes in how we see and feel that remake the ground of our politics. What is the manifestation of that politics but the human bodies which live and die by its whims? She looks to the human body, the dancing human body, to reveal a phenomenology of the self.
Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone is a Brooklyn-based artist. Her writing appears in Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Dance Enthusiast, Chamber Music Magazine and The Jewish Book Council. She is the director of Undertow Dance and has the pleasure of performing with TYKE Dance, under the direction of Sophie Sotsky. Nicole is pursuing her Pilates teaching certification through Core Pilates, is a stagehand at Gibney Dance and serves as the Communication Director for Clowns Without Borders USA. She is particularly interested in environmental justice, non-hierarchical political organizing and dismantling capitalism. She pays respect to Lenape elders, past, present and future, and endeavors to walk lightly on Manahatta, the Lenape homeland.
Debbie Mausner graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College in 2016. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, she began her dance training at LaGuardia High School and The Ailey School. At Barnard she performed in works by Pam Tanowitz, Mark Morris, Caitlin Trainor, Trisha Brown, and Joanna Kotze. Since graduating, she has performed with company TrainorDance. She has also collaborated and performed with visual artist Eric Gottshall on numerous multi-media performances, most recently at Art Against the Occupation Gallery. Debbie founded a collaborative company, Debbie Mausner Dance Collective (DMDC), in 2017. Her work has been showcased through Collab Arts Collective, NACHMO, The Dance Complex, HATCH Presenter Series, The Creator’s Collective, WAXworks and Fertile Ground. In addition, Debbie has been a Teaching Assistant at Mark Morris Dance Center, working predominantly with kids with disabilities. She currently teaches creative movement and modern at Dancewave and with Kinderdance.
Stephanie Saywell is a choreographer, performer, poet, clown, musician, and dramaturg from Groton, MA. She holds a BA in Dance and a BA in Written Arts from Bard College, where she was also the recipient of the Ana Itelman Prize for Choreography in 2014. In 2015 she completed the Dell' Arte International School of Physical Theatre's Professional Training Program where she studied commedia, melodrama, mask, clown, mime, and devised theatre. In addition to apprenticing for and dancing repertory by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Stephanie has had the pleasure of performing for Witness Relocation, Messenger Theatre, ANIMALS, Paul Matteson, Peter Kyle, Sam Asa Pratt, Ainesh Madan, Brian Feigenbaum, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is a 2016 graduate of Doug Varone's DEVICES 3 choreography intensive and mentorship program, and a 2017 recipient of the Streb GO! Commissioning Program for Emerging Artists. Her work has been shown at the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, Triskelion Arts, Gibney Dance, New York Live Arts, Mark Morris Dance Studios, Green Space, and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.
Sarah Toumani graduated from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She danced as a soloist for the opening of the Danone Nations Cup in 207 at the Redbull Arena of New-York, danced for Miri Ben Ari and others and also became a member of Valleto Dance Company. Sarah has admired hip-hop since her childhood and has been most influenced by the largest street dance company in New-York City "It's Showtime NYC". She is now studying social dances under scholarship at Peridance Capezio Center. Sarah Toumani Dance Company is a New-York based dance company, mixing street styles and contemporary dance movements. The company uses the creativity and diversity of each member to create authentic work.
Anna Witenberg is a dance maker and performer. Anna received her BA in Dance and a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies in 2017. She has worked extensively with Sarah Michelson as a part of her four year residency at Bard, performing in works such as "tournamento" at the Walker Art Center, "September 2017 /|" at Bard, and "October 2017 /\ "at The Kitchen this past fall. Anna has performed in the work of Beth Gill and Anna Sperber at American Dance Festival. Anna is currently collaborating on a new ballet to be performed this Spring at the Whitney Museum in Nick Mauss’ exhibition Transmissions. Her own work entitled Wrought Coil was presented by Triskelion Arts this past February. She is currently collaborating with Anna Sperber on a new work. She works to illuminate themes of alienation and intimacy; the image of self through the other. She uses sparse rhythm, shape, and stillness to ride the vicissitudes of time that press upon the human body, leading it towards its inevitable decomposition and deterioration. Her own fictional, non-linear short stories and prose are the primary source from which she makes her dances. Her research and interests in plastic, color, fantasy, sci-fi, sex, and ancient mythologies surrounding the female body heavily informs her tastes and imagery. She is interested in choreography as a formal tool that can shape the sub-conscious into visible and rigorous forms.
Lizzy Zevallos is from Jackson, NJ. After studying architecture and dance at Middlebury College, she came to New York where she has danced with Yin Yue Dance Company, Dante Brown/Warehouse Dance, Abarukas, and Circuit Debris among others since 2011. She has choreographed site-specific pieces for art galleries around Brooklyn and collaborated with artists, musicians, and designers.
