Alumn Amanda Rosenberg, Associate Producer 'Mystery Diagnosis'

Tune in to see the work of one of our very own TRDA Alum, Amanda Rosenberg, Associate Producer of 'Mystery Diagnosis'. The first episode premiers tonight 8/31 on the Discovery Health Channel at 10pm and will air again Sat, Sept 5 at 5pm. The second episode premiers at 10pm on Monday Sept 7.

Welcome Back!

The Theatre & Dance Department is so excited to start our Fall Semester. Looking forward to seeing all of our TRDA students in class and around campus. Don't hesitate to stop by and say hello!

-Dana Tai Soon Burgess

Faculty News

Karin Abromaitis, long time faculty member is currently directing Go Dog Go for Adventure Theater. The show will go on National tour next season. The Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County recognized her with a professional development grant for 2008-2009 and listed her on their professional teaching artist roster. Domestic Snakes, her play at this year's Fringe festival will be performed at Dixon Place in NYC next season. Cabaret Coo Coo by Happenstance Theater, was her solo singing debut. The show won the Fringe award for Best Comedy.

Alumn Alesia Young Changing Dance In LA

Deemed By Her Latest Presenting Venue As One of the “West Coast’s Finest Female Choreographers” GWU TRDA Alumn Alesia Young Is Changing the Face of Dance In Los Angeles

With work that has been referred to as organic, sensual, liquid, deeply connected, textural, and a conscious flirtatious play with gaze and perception this choreographer turned filmmaker is revolutionizing dance theatre creating works for the stage and camera that have been gaining her much notice in the dance world, and with renewed excitement and interest in dance in mainstream media, Young, with her diverse background and visual storytelling approach to choreography, is on her way to taking modern dance to the masses and riding the wave to success.

Young received her earliest dance training at The Performing Arts Center in New Jersey with additional instruction at New York's Steps and Broadway Dance Center, and throughout Europe, with a brief stay at Amsterdam's School for New Dance Development where she was exposed firsthand to the coupling of technology and the arts. Young has had the privilege of performing in such venues as Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in New York City, The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, along with working with some of the industry’s most acclaimed choreographers, and sites her work with GWU’s own Dana Tai Soon Burgess, Joseph Mills and renowned multimedia artist Maida Withers as some of her most rewarding and influential.

A diehard east coaster, Young made the move to Los Angeles in 1998 after graduating from The George Washington University with a B.A. in Dance and American Studies with a focus in Multiculturalism and going on to receive her M.F.A. in Dance from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. She pursued a fruitful career in dance education while simultaneously developing a thriving career as a performer. Since moving to LA she has been a principal dancer for Oni Dance, String Theory, Collage Dance Theatre, Trip Dance Theatre, Sakoba Dance Theatre (London/LA) which she joined during their U.S. national tour, Contra-Tiempo, and Your Huge Head, an artist collective established by Young and four other dance artists in an effort to create more opportunities for new and innovative choreographers to produce work.

Choreography has always been a part of Young’s creative and professional life, whether self-produced or commissioned, continually committed to presenting original work throughout the country and abroad with a growing body of repertoire for the stage, site-specific, and film. Her site-specific work “Streams of Emergence” created for the Skirball's Siteworks Series in conjunction with the LA River Reborn photo exhibit, “Mujeres” commissioned for Contra-Tiempo's touring roster, and “Fluid,” a breakout animated dance film in collaboration with FADAM Production's Founder and BET Animation Consultant Eric T. Elder, are just some examples of the work that is garnering her some well-deserved attention.

Most recently, Young, alongside fellow String Theory artists, was featured in the Scene in LA section of Angeleno Magazine. She has been profiled as an artist to watch by California Dance Network and nominated for a Lester Horton Award for Individual Performance. Her films have been featured in the FRAME International Film Festival in Portugal, the Edit International Dancefilm Festival in Budapest, and on tour with the NY-based Dance on Camera Festival. Upcoming projects include a commission for London-based Sakoba Dance Theatre's 2009 fall touring roster, the world premier performance of her newest work “Romp” as part of The Edye Second Space’s Fall season, beginning work on her new evening length piece entitled Soaked which explores the descent into the dark and deteriorating effects of grief unaddressed and marks her pending return to Southern California’s boldest center for new performance - Highways Performance Space, and Halle Berry’s soon to be released feature film “Frankie and Alice,” where Alesia worked as Assistant Choreographer.

Her foray into dance for film, beginning with small independent projects, has moved quickly and unexpectedly into the world of animation, television, and feature film, and has Young’s eyes set on establishing a wider audience for dance and greater purpose for her work. Using the medium at its best along with her talent for movement expression, Young plans to reinvent storytelling in a way that breathes life into the human experience in its fullest representation.

Young shares that “(as a Director) I am on the path to making dance on film as accessible and marketable in the states as it is abroad, establishing more fruitful collaborations between multimedia artists and expanding choreographer's tools for envisioning work. As a Choreographer, I am constantly and actively engaged in life and creating a listening for other's experiences; taking in every moment with wide eyes and an unending thirst. This is what excites me and fuels my work.”

For more information visit:
http://alesiayoung.com/
Subscribe to:
http://www.youtube.com/alesiayoung

NOTICE TO GW DANCERS

Anna Sperber is the Fall Semester Guest Artist for the dance program. The audition and rehearsal schedule is announced below. The schedule for rehearsal does not conflict with the sorority “rush” weekend or the two Jewish holidays in October.

GW Fall Semester 2009 Guest Artist Audition and Rehearsal Schedule

Audition for Dancers: Thursday, September 3, 6:30 pm Building J
Building J - 2131 G Street NW - audition for 6 or more dancers

Rehearsal Week #1:

Friday (September 4: 4 to 8 pm)

Saturday (September 5; 10:30 to 5:30 pm)

Sunday (September 6: 10:00 to 4:00 pm), Building J Down.

Rehearsal Week #2:
Friday (October 2: 4 to 8 pm)
Saturday (October 3 10:30 to 5:30 pm)

Sunday (October 4: 10:00 to 4:00 pm),Building J Down.

Rehearsal Week #3:

Friday (October 9: 4 to 8 pm)

Saturday (October 10: 10:30 to 5:30 pm)

Sunday (October 11: 10:00 to 4:00 pm), Building J Down.

Technical space in - tech in: (Saturday, November 14, Marvin Betts Theatre, 800 21st Street NW – Four hours for rehearsal, space in - tech in and run.

The dance will rehearse once or twice each week for the entire semester and will be part of the DanceWorks MainStage Production, November 19, 20, 21, 2009 in Marvin Betts Theatre. For any questions of concerns, please contact the DanceWorks Concert Director Dana Tai Soon Burgess.

Best regards,

Maida Withers

withers@gwu.edu

Fall DanceWorks Auditions!

DANCE AUDITIONS: DanceWorks Fall '09
Thursday September, 3rd
Building J (2131 G Street, rear)
6:30 PM


Guest Artist: ANNA SPERBER
BIO

Anna Sperber is a native of Brooklyn, New York, where she is currently based. Her work has been pre¬sented in venues throughout NYC including Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Movement Research at Judson Church, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Center, Dixon Place, Joyce SoHo, and Chez Bushwick (at Shtudio Show and The Ronald Feldman Gallery), Live Sh— at the Chocolate Factory, AUNTS, Catch! Series at P.S.122, and the Duo Multi Cultural Arts Center. She is a 2006-08 Movement Research Artist In Residence, and a recipient of NYSCA Dance Program Public Commissioning Funds. Her work has also been supported through residen¬cies at the Harkness Dance Center at the 92 Street Y, SILO/ DanceNYC, Dragon’s Egg, and the Experimental Television Center.

Sperber, with composer Mario Diaz de Leon and video artist Jay King collaborated on the cinema installation, Cutting and Joining, 2005, and she has also collaborated extensively with artist and musician, Peter Kerlin. In addition to her own work she has performed in the work of Julie Atlas Muz, Isabel Lewis, Beth Gill, Charlotte Gibbons, The Brooklyn Adult Recorder Choir, and with Fritz Haeg/ Animal Estates at The Whitney Museum and the Park Avenue Armory as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Anna also dances with Juliette Mapp, whom she has worked with for the past four years.
Anna has taught in the Guest Artist Series at DNA in NYC, and at The American Dance Festival as part of the WFSS Series, and was selected to participate in the panel discussion at ADF/NY Winter 2007. Anna was a Co-Curator of the Movement Research Festival Spring 08 Somewhere Out There. Anna is a 2008 Sugar Salon Artist, a program developed and administered by the Williamsburg Art neXus (WAX) in part¬nership with the Department of Dance of Barnard College and supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Anna holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, and currently runs BRAZIL, a studio and intimate performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is an investigation into the body as a cognitive vessel for processing emotional and temporal information. I look to create imagery that is intimate, visceral, and rooted in both lucidity and mystery.
I am interested in how our perceptions of time and our own personal histories affect our changing experi¬ence of ourselves. My process most often begins with solo improvisation, working intuitively with con¬cerns of physical qualities, kinesthetic choices, time, and space. As I continue to work, I allow each col¬laborating performer’s individual character to affect the direction of the material. I develop content and structure through working with repetition, and with attention to subtle shifts as we live in the material to¬gether over time. This affects what surfaces in the material and what direction it takes, letting the shape and energy of a body create psychology as much as it reflects it.
For me, this process is a way of allowing meaning and content to surface. My aim is to create a visceral experience for the viewer and to allow them to have their own associations and relationship to it. I find my way into the work without a fixed plan. I invent structure and meaning as the work reveals itself, which infuses the work with a palpable immediacy; a sense that you are seeing things as they are unfolding. In making work, I let many of my own questions remain unanswered, allowing them to articulate themselves through the process.

Through the use of found objects, set design, and the integration of existing elements of each perform¬ance space, I work to sculpt a unique immersive environment -a reflection of the interior world from which the piece emerges. I am interested in how the surroundings transform the dance, and how the dance transforms the space around us.

annasperber.com 55 S. Oxford St. #5 Brooklyn, NY 11217 646.281.5851 anna@annasperber.com �

Alumni in the News!

GW Alum, Megan Richardson, a Presidential Scholar in the Arts in Dance, appearing in the New York Times:

New Leaps in Research on Injuries

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/arts/dance/09kour.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

From Prison to Stage

Inviting all to join me for a FREE staged reading I'm directing at the Kennedy Center, "From Prison to Stage." The reading features a diverse range of scripts, all written by prisoners and ex-prisoners, and performed by talented DC actors. To see more about the show, please see:
http://tinyurl.com/nybagg

-Jodi Kanter