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JULY 16-18, 2010

BIG ACTION PERFORMANCE ENSEMBLE (Middlebury, VT) www.bigapedance.com

Under the direction of Tiffany Rhynard, Big APE performs four pieces at the Festival.

Trash explores themes of neglect and isolation while presenting a dichotomy between what the audience and the performer hear throughout the piece. The audience encounters a dissonant sound score created by musician Ron Rost while the performers remain absorbed in personal music radiating out from their headphones.

The duet Necessity questions the ‘essential’ versus the ‘frivolous.’ Both personal and reflective, Necessity evokes what is both vital and extraneous in the dancers lives.

Away (from here) is an abstract quartet that looks at excess. The piece oscillates from formal to casual, with the dancers constantly slipping into a dizzying wardrobe of characters, qualities, and affects; a multilayered sound score of flute and electronics by composer Juliet Case accompanies their journey.

Spill, developed while Rhynard was in residence at Hotel Pupik in Scheifling, Austria, contemplates the physical body as object — both its confrontation with the space and the experience of being observed. Raw in her physicality and with a warped sense of humor, the soloist traverses through a range of performance personas and movement styles. The piece is accompanied by an electronic composition by Kareem Khalifa.

About Tiffany Rhynard and Big APE

Interlacing the parameters of activism and art, Tiffany Rhynard is a movement artist interested in the exchange between movement and image, specifically in dialogue with the study of human behavior. Rhynard made the transition to dance from visual art during her undergraduate tenure at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she received her BA in Dance. She holds an MFA in Choreography from the Ohio State University where she concentrated in digital video. She has taught at Peace College, the North Carolina Governor’s School, Ohio State University, State University of New York at Potsdam, and as a guest artist at numerous institutions. She is currently Artist in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. As a performer, Rhynard has worked with various choreographers including Chavasse Dance and Performance Group, Brosseau Danceworks, X Factor, Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, Gerri Houlihan, and John Gamble Dance Theater. Her choreography has been presented in venues nationwide and she recently premiered her work internationally in Scheifling, Austria at Hotel Pupik.

She is Artistic Director of Big Action Performance Ensemble (Big APE), an experimental and interdisciplinary dance company pursuing artistic projects in live performance, interactive real-time media, and digital video. Her video works have been screened at numerous film/video festivals including the Dance for the Camera Film and Video Festival in Salt Lake City and Dancing for the Camera at the American Dance Festival. Recent video projects include the documentary Women Building Larger Lives, a film illuminating the strength and resiliency of incarcerated women in a vocational construction program at the state women’s prison in Windsor, Vermont.

Active in the collaborative process, Rhynard has worked with a variety of musicians, poets, visual artists, and animators. Past projects include an environmental movement and sound installation with composer Lei Liang, and a biographical solo for Christal Brown in collaboration with writer and poet Karma Mayet Johnson. More recent projects include Dance Bar: A Choreography Salon—a series of informal showings by Vermont area choreographers with casual talk back sessions and wine tasting from local vineyards—and Project Remix, a pairing of choreographers with contrasting styles who dismantle each other’s pieces.

Tiffany will teach a modern dance master class during the weekend.

Vincent Thomas/VTDance (Baltimore, MD) www.vtdance.org

In iWitness, Thomas contemplates simple truths in human behaviors and implied truths in human documents from the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ and the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ Spoken word and video projection complement Thomas’ fluid dancing to create a powerful and moving piece of dance theater. Thomas will also lead a class that includes a conversation on the issue of human rights and integrates movement for all levels of movers.

About Vincent Thomas/VTDance

Vincent E. Thomas, dancer, choreographer and teacher, received his MFA in Dance from Florida State University and a BME in Music from the University of South Carolina. He has danced with Dance Repertory Theatre (FSU), Randy James Dance Works (NY/NJ), Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (MD), and presently a guest performer with EDGEWORKS Dance Theater (DC), and an adjunct artist with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. His choreography has been presented at various national and international venues including Barcelona and Madrid, Spain, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland, and Avignon, France. In July 2008, he performed in the World Congress on Dance Research in Athens, Greece, and the International Choreographers’ Showcase in Bari, Italy. His company VTDance, performed with the Ahn Trio at the 2005 Bands of America Summer Symposium. He was selected as one of eleven choreographers from around the world to convene for the 2005 Omi International Dance Collective and served as the guest mentor for the 2007 Dance Omi residents. Vincent is the recipient of many awards including a 2008 Kennedy Center Local Dance Commission Project Award, a 2008 Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts Grant, a 2009, 2007, 2005, & 2003 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Choreography, two 2006 Metro DC Dance Awards for Emerging Choreographer, and Outstanding New Work (for his evening length work the “Grandmother Project”). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Towson University (MD).

Thomas founded VTDance as an outlet for performance projects including solo, group, and collaborative choreographic endeavors. VTDance is multi-dimensional. The work builds on the use of contemporary dance, improvisation, text/movement, a variety of sound sources, and collaborations with other artists, including dancers, musicians, poets, visual artists, and others. These ideas coupled with witty, poignant, athletic and gestural movement are the rich palette for VTDance.

THE NAKED STARK (Hillsborough, NC) thenakedstark.com

Katherine Kiefer Stark returns to the Festival with her company and two new pieces. Taking Up Space is a quintet that explores the differences between how men and women occupy space. Stark began this work by investigating the ways in which she, as a girl/woman, was taught to occupy space - confining her body to a small space, being gentle with other people, being conscious of others’ perceptions. Next, she created the work through exploring the opposite tendencies examining the sport of football in particular for movement inspiration and aggressive, assertive behavior – commanding the space, athleticism, physically manipulating others, endurance.

A Series of Non-Sequiturs from Left to Right explores efficiency in the way we approach our daily routines and our relationships. The work is confined by a timer playing on a TV set that counts down to zero and beeps to signal the end. This work was made for two women and one man in order to play with gender roles and gender identity.

About The Naked Stark

The Naked Stark is a contemporary dance company founded by Katherine Kiefer Stark in 2009. Committed to the philosophy that works of art can stimulate social change, Katherine is interested in creating work that investigates and deconstructs social norms as well as work that explores the relationship of US citizens with the political process. Stark is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher committed to the belief that the world is socially constructed and that we create rather than merely discover its significances. This philosophy is the driving force behind her work. While dealing with serious themes, Katherine has a quirky sense of humor and enjoys adding this layer into her work. Katherine received her Master of Fine Arts in Choreography in 2009 from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her thesis, Silence and Resistance, was an evening length work on the relationship of US citizens with war, exploring how we acknowledge our responsibility and what we do once we have.

Katherine has presented her work in Connecticut, Philadelphia, New York, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Most recently, she has shown work as part of In Our Own Backyard in Raleigh (2009), in the Asheville Fringe Festival (2010) and the Greensboro Fringe Festival (2010). Katherine is currently dancing with the John Gamble Dance Theatre. She is a guest artist at Enloe High School in Raleigh, NC for the 2009/2010 school year and a guest artist at the University of Texas, El Paso for March 2010. Katherine has danced in Connecticut, Philadelphia, New York, West Virginia, Rhode Island, and throughout North Carolina performing contemporary work by David Dorfman, John Gamble, Courtney Greer, Luis Lara Malvacias, Jaquelyn McCormick, Meghan McCoy, Meredith Monk, Jeremy Nelson, Deganit Shemy, Christina Tsoules Soriano, and BJ Sullivan. She has been a member of Immediate Theatre - an improvisation collective – and CTS Dance as well as collaborating with Courtney Greer.

REBECCA M. SPROUL (Brockport, NY)

Sproul’s A Mermaid’s Guide to Living on Land, is a trio inspired by mermaids, daffodils, lightning storms, and cowgirls. It begins as if it is ending, curiously pulling the audience into a muted world of sensitive interactions. Breaking the spell with live text the dancers speak in poetic riddles of names and stories. Inspired by mermaids, daffodils, lightning storms, and cowgirls the choreography reveals a journey to adulthood. Demonstrated through virtuosic dancing, text, and subtle gestures the dancers adventure across the plains and pains of life.

About Rebecca M. Sproul

Rebecca M. Sproul is a native of New Gloucester, Maine. As an artist she looks to her youth and genera for inspiration and commentary on commonalities among all of us. Considering herself to be a young emerging choreographer Sproul's work has been presented continuously over the past three years at SUNY Brockport as well as at the University of Rochester. In 2007, Sproul produced No More the Lowing, a dance concert event at Goucher College exploring Irish American cultural identities and representation as an ode to her freckled face. She earned her B.A. in Dance from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland and currently is working towards her Master’s of Fine Arts in performance and choreography at SUNY Brockport.

Founded in 2010 by choreographer Rebecca M. Sproul, the mission of the Rebecca M. Sproul and Dancers performance group is to create and perform art that stimulates a kinesthetic perspective, generates sensational physical experiences, and harnesses a broad qualitative range for the expressive execution of movement by engaging in a collaborative creative process to build works. Based out of New York State the company strives to broaden their audience by touring around the United States.

Rebecca will teach a kids’ class during the weekend.

VALERIE GREEN/DANCE ENTROPY (NYC) www.danceentropy.org

Valerie Green/Dance Entropy performs two works at the Festival. Right Now is a solo in which the performer revisits sweet moments from an earlier time in life. It exposes a window into the performer's being as she experiences the immediacy of different emotions. Sentimental, romantic moments are broken by anger frustration and bitterness. Echo of a Trace is an abstract affirmation of presence and location. This trio is filled with goddess like imagery displaying female knowingness, intricate sensuality, and aggressive awkwardness.

About Valerie Green

Valerie Green created Dance Entropy in 1998, adding a permanent company home in 2005 called Green Space in LIC, Queens. Her choreography has been presented around the country and at festivals and venues throughout New York City. Valerie has taught and performed internationally in Canada, France, Italy, Greece, Russia, India, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Albania. As a guest artist, Valerie has received commissions from Texas State University, BITEF Theater in Belgrade, Serbia, and Theater Alternativa in Tirana, Albania. She has also taught at the University of Las Vegas, Texas State University, LaGuardia Community College, University of Nanterre, France, and at the Faculty of Drama & Art in Belgrade, Serbia and Sarajevo, Bosnia. Valerie’s choreographic work and teaching style is influenced by her formative years working with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company and her undergraduate work at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

GOOSE ROUTE DANCE (Shepherdstown, WV)

Goose Route Dance is the performing wing of Goose Route Arts Collaborative, with Kitty Clark serving as artistic director/choreographer and with Ray C. Shaw contributing choreography. During the first weekend of the Festival, Goose Route Dance will perform Clark's Stick Woman, a solo in which a fierce woman defends her territory; and the campy 'Basement' excerpt from Mood House, choreographed by Clark, with video design by Monica Larson, costumes by Colleen Tracey, and sound score by Cam Millar.

About Ray C. Shaw and Kitty Clark

Ray C. Shaw holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Arizona State University. He has worked professionally as director, producer, performer, choreographer and professor of the performing arts across the nation for 20 years. He teaches various forms of dance, theatre, somatic science and lecture courses and has served on the faculties of Arizona State University and Maricopa Community Colleges. He was the host instructor of an original Cox Digital Cable Network broadcast course called “Dance in the Movies.” He has produced and administered projects for the Cleveland Theatre, Schupp/Shaw, Black Box Project, as well as many others. He has served as President for the Arizona Dance Arts Alliance and several board committees. His professional credits include The Dance/Theatre Collective, Dance/Opera Cleveland, Aludwig Dance Theatre and The Halle Theatre. His theatrical career has found him roles such as El Gallo in “The Fantastics” and Oscar in “Sweet Charity”. His directing career includes an award winning production of “Nunsense II”. As choreographer, Ray has won numerous awards and recognition for his work with children, adults, and the professional genre, and he recently choreographed “Guys and Dolls” at Shepherd University.

Click here to learn more about Kitty.

JULY 23-25, 2010

LAURA PETERSON CHOREOGRAPHY (NYC) www.lpchoreography.com

Laura Peterson Choreography, one of the most acclaimed and enjoyed companies to perform at the Festival (I Love Dan Flavin and Security), returns with Forever, a piece that submerges the audience in a kaleidoscope’s saturated and seamless, dazzling light, perfectly symmetrical and precise in its geometry, endlessly changing. Four dancers embark on a physical tour de force, sure to delight Goose Route audiences as they did three years ago when Peterson’s company was last here.

About Laura Peterson

Laura Peterson is a NYC-based dance artist and Artistic Director of Laura Peterson Choreography. Forever premiered in February, 2009, and is her second Dixon Place Mondo Cane! Commission. The piece began its development while the company was in residence at the Queens Museum. Peterson’s dances have been presented throughout NYC at venues including Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Joe's Pub, and Joyce SoHo. Outside of NYC, her choreography has been produced in Argentina, Germany, and throughout the US at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Philadelphia's NEW Festival and the Goose Route Dance Festival. Laura has been commissioned by Pennsylvania Ballet, Hartford Ballet, and DROP Dance in Boise, Idaho.

Laura's performance credits include Julie Taymor's latest film, Across The Universe, choreographed by Daniel Ezralow, from Sony Pictures. She has performed the work of Mark Morris at Radio City Music Hall, as well as dancing with Poppo & the GoGo Boys, Risa Jaroslow & Dancers, Paule Turner's court (Philadelphia), Group Motion Dance Co. (Philadelphia), Asimina Chremos (Chicago), and others. She is a current faculty member at CUNY Lehman College. Laura holds an MFA in Dance from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA in Modern Dance from University of the Arts.

Laura will teach a modern dance master class during the weekend.

SHARON MANSUR/mansurdance (Washington, DC) www.mansurdance.com

Sharon Mansur returns to the Dance Festival with here/there, an evocative multi-media environment of movement, photos, and video. here/there contemplates the human figure in relation to landscape, mingling presence and absence in relation to one’s sense of place in the world. The kaleidoscopic flux of a moment in time, the fluid stream between self and environment, and the lingering resonance of someone who has come and gone, or is lingering somewhere in between are facets illuminated in here/there. Mansur’s brilliant solo performance is augmented with a series of dance videos.

About Sharon Mansur

Sharon Mansur is a multi-media dance artist currently based in the Washington, DC area, and her work has been seen in theaters, galleries, parks, street corners, apartments, train stations, storefronts, fields, rivers and other venues throughout the East Coast, in Minnesota, California and abroad. Improvisation as a performance form is a focus as well as the melding of visual and visceral landscapes while examining aspects of identity. Her work has been supported by the Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council and The Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, among others.
Since 2002, Sharon has loosely organized the performance project mansurdance with several near and far flung movement, sound, light and visual art collaborators. mansurdance is committed to contemporary dance, improvisation and experimental performance forms in traditional, alternative and site specific venues. Sharon recently received the 2010 Maryland State Arts Council Award for Solo Dance Performance, and she has been on the dance faculty at the University of Maryland since fall 2008.

87 DANCE PRODUCTIONS (Winston-Salem, NC) www.87danceproductions.com

Twin sisters Cara and Mackenzie Hagan return to GRDF to perform Words Apart, a work made in collaboration with the Storyline Project of Winston-Salem that depicts the stories of four women, touching upon such themes as equality, love, grief, and friendship; Two Downtown, a not-so-usual trek through downtown Winston-Salem, reminding us that the world is our playground; Folding Over Twice, a piece that shows how the steps of little girls become the dance of women; and the world premiere of Quilt, built around the concept of 'woman's work," the quilt serves as a metaphor for the collective female experience.

About 87 Dance Productions/Cara and Mackenzie Hagan

Cara Hagan is a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker and writer based in Winston-Salem, NC. As Artistic Director of 87 Dance Productions, a multimedia performance company, Cara seeks to break the boundaries of traditional concert dance by inviting many genres of art making into the mix! Ms. Hagan's work has been seen across the country on stage, in film and in lectures and workshops. Her writing can be found on her blog about the art experience, www.benevolentart.blogspot.com and in the online magazine, La Vie Cherie, where she is the Arts and Culture contributor.

Mackenzie Hagan acts as Managing Director for 87 Dance Productions. When not dancing with 87, Mackenzie can be found flying high on her fabrics! Currently she is training, creating and performing aerial dance in NYC.

Cara will teach a modern dance master class during the weekend.

GREEN CHAIR DANCE GROUP (Philadelphia, PA) www.greenchairdancegroup.com

This smart quartet of dancers brings Uncertainty Principles to the Festival. The work is a humorous examination of the scientific laws we casually ignore in day-to-day life. Beneath the luminous veneer of the world as perceived by our senese, a rollicking game of creation and annihilation takes place. Particles, forces, and feelings interact at speeds and on scales we can scarecly imagine, tumbling through processes whose inner workings are persistently inaccessible. Green Chair approaches physics with a sense of humor and joy, and their quirky performance is delightful.

About Green Chair Dance Group

Green Chair Dance Group is a dance-theater company based in Philadelphia, PA. Since its inception, Green Chair has been a uniquely collaborative project, and continually seeks to choreograph highly original movement with a focus on interpersonal relationships, intense physicality, and humor. Green Chair’s athletic and engaging movement style exposes both the limits and surprising capabilities of the body in motion. Grounded in the banalities and complications of everyday life but charging headfirst into the unexpected, the company’s dances stand perspective on its head and offer a fresh look at how, exactly, we move through the world.

A Philadelphia CityPaper ‘Fringe Pick’ for their performance in the 2004 Philly Fringe Festival, Green Chair’s Philadelphia appearances also include shows at the 2005, 2007, and 2008 Fringe Festivals. In addition, the company has performed to rave reviews at The Dance Complex in Cambridge, MA; at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA; the Rites of Spring dance festival in Weston, CT; the 2005 Florida Dance Festival in Miami, FL; and the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Bytom, Poland (2005 and 2009). Green Chair is also the recipient of three grants from the Swarthmore Project in Theater.

Members of Green Chair will teach two free classes for kids during the weekend.

GOOSE ROUTE DANCE (Shepherdstown, WV)

During the second weekend, Goose Route Dance will perform Ray C. Shaw's Bound Conclusions, with original music by Curt Seiss, Old English poetic recitiation by Shepherd English Professor Betty Ellzey, and performance by Shaw and Clark; and Min-uets, four short duets choreographed for Clark and Shaw by Paula Kellinger, Tosha Tillman, Elizabeth Kennedy, and Amy Hatzis. Shaw and Clark's considerable performance chemistry is displayed, even exploited, in these four very different and distinctive duets.

GRDF has presented over 60 artists in 10 years representing NYC, Washington, DC, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Vermont, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Richmond, San Francisco, Colorado, and Chicago

Alethea Adsitt (NYC), Heather Ahern (Morgantown, WV), Brandon 'Peace' Albright/Illstyle & Peace Productions (Philadelphia), Katerina Antoniadou (NC), Arts United of Washington/Melissa Saint Amour (DC), Monica Bill Barnes (NYC), danah bella DanceWorks (Radford, VA), Cat Scratch Theatre (DC), Anne Burnidge (Buffalo, NY), Clare Byrne (NYC), Darrah Carr Dance (NYC), Amy Chavasse (VT/NC), Jennifer Chin (NYC), CityDance2 (Washington, DC), Kitty Clark (WV), Michele Dunleavy (PA), Meghan Durham (Philadelphia), Carson Efird (NC), Erica Essner (NYC), Courtney Greer (NC), Cara Hagan (NC), James Hansen (NY), Heather Harrington (NYC), Guta Hedewig (NYC), Mare Hieronimus (DC), Makoto Hirano (Philadelphia), Shannon Hummel (NYC), INSPIRIT/Christal Brown (NYC), Incidents Physical Theater (NYC), Jeslyn Dance Gallery (DC), Philippa Kaye Company (NYC), Therese Keegan (MD), Katherine Kiefer Stark (NC), Sharon Mansur (DC), Carli Mareneck (WV), Gesel Mason (DC), Megan Mazarick (Philadelphila, PA), Lucy Bowen McCauley (DC), Cynthia McLaughlin (WV) ,Tiffany Mills (NYC), Paul Mosley (NY), Shannon Murphy (PA), Next Reflex Dance Collective (Fairfax, VA), Bess Park-Reynolds (WV), Eva Perrotta/Nu Dance Theatre (NYC), Laura Peterson (NYC), PIMA Group (Phila.), Restless Native Dance/Tamieca McCloud (NYC), Laura Schandelmeier (DC), Marcy Schlissel (DC), Karen Schupp (AZ), Kathryn Sparks (VA), Kristi Spessard (NYC), Spinning Yarns Dance Collective/Susan Donham (San Francisco, CA), Starr Foster Dance Project (Richmond, VA), Ashley Suttlar (KY), Sweetie Pie Productions/Erika Randall and Anna Sapozhnikov (CO/IL), Kara Tatelbaum (NYC), Vincent Thomas (Balt/DC), Keith Thompson (NYC), Ashley Thorndike, Marvin Webb (DC), Boris Willis (DC), Christalyn Wright (NYC), YelleB Dance Ensemble (NYC).