2008 Lab Artists

A Creative Residency with Four Independent Choreographers:

Nell Breyer, Alissa Cardone, Lorraine Chapman, & Bronwen MacArthur

October 17-26, 2008
Co-hosted by Marlboro College
and Vermont Performance Lab

ALISSA CARDONE (choreographer/performer) has been described as, "a frightening snowflake under a microscope," while her performances have been said to "release form from the unconscious heart into the conscious mind" and "to occupy time while suspending it." Her work has manifested on both stage and street, in solo and group composition, as well as in dance films. Cardone concentrates on interdisciplinary collaborations with Kinodance Company, voted one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" 2008. She has trained with Min Tanaka (Body Weather Farm) and collaborated and performed with Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works, Nora Chipaumire, Elaine Summers & Yoshito Ohno and continues to study with and perform for 'Nijinski of Butoh' Akira Kasai. Cardone was one of five US-based Butoh dancers chosen by Kasai for Japan Society's centennial commission "Butoh America" (October 2007) at the New York Butoh Festival. In Japan she was featured in his "Nobody Eve" (Tokyo & Kyoto, 2003) and in 2004 received a fellowship from Asian Cultural Council to study intensively with Kasai, Nihon Buyo with Minosuke Nishikawa and to collaborate with contemporary dancer Naoka Uemura on the multi-media production "Wonder Girl" (Tokyo, 2004).

Cardone has received generous support from Massachusettes Cultural Council (Choreography Finalist 2003, 2006), Somerville Arts Council, LEF Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Monaco Dance Forum, Concord Academy Summer Stages Dance, NYU Department of Performance Studies (MA '03), Open Society Institute & New England Foundation for the Arts Regional Dance Development Initiative. Her site-specific and stage-based works have been presented by Maison Moet Dance Festival (Japan), Gloucester New Arts, Soundscape Movement Festival (N. Carolina), DancenowNYC at DTW, the Berkshire Fringe, HIGH Fest (Armenia), St. Petersburg International Dance Film Festival (Russia), Boston Butoh Series & Mobius among others. A devoted improviser, Cardone has collaborated with musicians such as Masakatsu Takagi, rock guitarist Chris Brokaw, Tatsuya Nakatani, Mike Bullock and most recently Gene Coleman, Ensemble N_JP, avant-punk composer Roger Miller and noise artist Jessica Rylan. Currently on faculty at Longy School of Music's Dalcroze Eurythmics Program, Cardone has guest taught at Concord Academy, Boston Ballet, Drop Dance Collective (Boise, ID), Soundscape (N. Carolina), Bank of America Celebrity Series & has led Butoh-based improvisation labs in Boston, Russia & Philadelphia.

To see more of Alissa Cardone's work visit www.kinodance.org.

LORRAINE CHAPMAN (choreographer/performer) has danced with Eliot Feld Ballets/NY and Ballet British Columbia under the artistic direction of Balanchine muse Patricia Neary, as well as for several Boston-based choreographers including Amy Spencer, Richard Colton, Diane Arvanites-Noya, Jose Mateo, and Marcus Schulkind. She received her training at The Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and L'Ecole Superieure De Danse Du Quebec as well as from Boston veterans Francis Kotelly and Samuel Kurkjian. As an independent choreographer Chapman has created works for The National Ballet of Canada's Choreographic Workshop, Impulse Dance Company, Choreographers Group, the Northwest New Works Festival in Seattle at On The Boards-Behnke Center, and The Bessie Schonberg Residency at The Yard. She received a commission from Alberta Ballet for their Festival of New Works: Arias 2004 sharing the bill with internationally acclaimed solo artist Margie Gillis and more recently from Festival Ballet of Providence for Up Close On Hope. Amy Spencer and Richard Colton awarded Chapman with a Choreographer's Project Fellowship for Summer Stages Dance 2005. She is currently dancing in her own work, in David Parker's highly acclaimed Nut/Cracked in his Boston cast, and is one of Dance Magazine's Top 25 To Watch 2008.

Lorraine Chapman, The Company Inc. (LCTC) is currently in its fifth year. Since its' official inception in November 2002, LCTC has been chosen for several exciting productions including Ten's The Limit 2003 and 2005, Dance Straight Up! 2004 and 2006, Dancing Nor'easters' 8th International Festival of Arts & Ideas New Haven, The Vox Consort's full-scale production of St. John Passion by J. S. Bach, and Soaking Wet 6 produced in NYC by David Parker of David Parker & The Bang Group. LCTC received the LEF Foundation New England's Contemporary Work Fund grant '07' and is also the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Artist Grant for Choreography '04-05'.

To see more of Lorraine Chapman's work visit www.lorrainechapman.org

BRONWEN MACARTHUR (choreographer/performer) received her dance training from North Carolina School of the Arts and performed in New York City with the companies of Robin Becker, Gina Gibney, Bill Young, and Donna Uchizono, among others. With these companies and those of choreographers Tim Feldmann, Sara Gebran, and others based in Copenhagen, Denmark, she has taught and performed throughout Europe, the United States and South America.

Since 1999, MacArthur's choreography has been shown in New York, Russia, France, and throughout New England. At Yale University, she has choreographed for student dance companies, operas, plays, and multi-media events, including Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, and Zang Tumb Tuum!, a futurist installation at Beinecke Rare Book Library. In 2006, MacArthur and Emily Coates co-founded the dance theater lab Motion in Dialogue (MIND) which, in the fall of 2006, presented a production of the first week of Suzan-Lori Parks' play cycle 365 Days/365 Plays. This past summer, MacArthur and Coates presented MIND's 2005 work Memory Suite at the CORD (Congress on Research in Dance)/SDHS (Society of Dance History Scholars) joint conference in Paris, France.

MacArthur Dance Project was formed in January 2007 and made its debut in May at ACES Arts Hall in New Haven, CT and soon after presented work in New Haven at the Shubert Theater and at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. A summer residency reunited MacArthur with Olga Pona's Chelyabinsk Theater of Contemporary Dance, from Chelyabinsk, Russia. MacArthur was also a participating artist in last summer's Regional Dance Development Initiative New England, an initiative of the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project that took place at Connecticut College.

Currently, MacArthur is collaborating again with composer Matthew Suttor and curator Tim Young on a production of Blaise Cendrar's memory poem La Prose du Transsiberien to be performed at Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale. In addition, MacArthur Dance Project will be co-producing, with Adele Myers and Dancers, a multi-media performance event in the spring 2008. MacArthur is a guest teacher at Connecticut College and, in the spring, will co-teach, with Joseph Roach and Emily Coates, a seminar in the Theater Studies department at Yale.

To see more of Bronwen MacArthur's visit www.macarthurdanceproject.com.

NELL BREYER (choreographer) is a Research Affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. Nell was an ARM Fellow at Dance Theater Workshop 2003-2004. Her research explores how we perceive motion. Her work explores dynamic human histories through daily motion patterns, video & live performance. Breyer received her BA in Art & Humanities [Yale University, 1994], MsC in Cognitive Neuroscience [Oxford University, 1997], and MS in Media Arts & Sciences [MIT, 2002].

Of her work, which has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships and presented internationally and in the United States, Breyer says, "In creating public artwork, I aim to engage viewers through actions and images. I want commuters to actively explore their kinetic and visual imagination. I want them to observe the character and cycles of pedestrian movement routinely activating highly trafficked spaces."

"Time Translations" by Breyer was an interactive installation commissioned and produced by the World Financial Center Arts & Events (2005). Excerpts of this piece were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rovereto and Trento, Italy (2006). Other recent public art commissions include: "RE:actions" for Harvard Square's LumenEclipse art kiosk (2006) and 'still life' for Boston's City Hall. In 2004, the interactive installation and performance series, "i:move", was shown at Dance Theater Workshop gallery in 2004. "i:move" was first presented at Boston CyberArts Festival (2003). It was further developed and installed at MIT's Media Lab (2003), and the MIT Museum Inventor's Spotlight (2003). In 2004, Breyer's work was presented in group shows at Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, NURTUREart Gallery, Art Interactive and Photo NY. Breyer's has choreographed and performed in New York (The Joyce Soho, Judson Church, St. Mark's, The Williamsburg Art Nexus); Canada (Espace duMaurier Arts danse MAI); the UK (the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sadlers Well's Peacocke Theatre, Her Majesty's Haymarket Theatre; The Place Theatre, Jackson's Lane); Bangladesh (The Bangladesh National Museum Auditorium, The Liberation War Museum); and Slovenia (Cankarajev Dom, TRNFEST).