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Workshop Faculty
“The parade of intelligent dancers and inspired choreographers appearing at Summer Stages Dance is quite something to behold.” — Theodore Bale, Boston Herald
The values emphasized at Summer Stages—supported experimentation, multi-generational cooperation, respect for audiences, inspired teaching and the value of a whole life spent in dance—are values that have shaped and expanded my own and those of my dancers. — David Parker, Artist in Residence, 2000-2007)
“Richard and Amy are visionaries and they want dance to flourish. I'd like to support that and support them. I like their taste, their integrity, their generosity.” — Dan Wagoner, Faculty Member, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007
Amy Spencer and Richard Colton, founded and directed Summer Stages Dance, a nationally renowned dance workshop and performance series that takes place during July in Concord, Massachusetts. As performers, their professional careers began in New York City in the 1970s. Spencer and Colton were members of Twyla Tharp Dance and the White Oak Dance Project, under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikov. Colton was a member of American Ballet Theatre and Joffrey Ballet, and Spencer was a collaborator/performer with Pilobolus and Martha Clarke. They served as resident choreographers for American Repertory Theater for a decade, and founded and directed SPENCER/COLTON DANCE, a company of dancers and actors they created in 1989. They are three-time recipients of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Artists Grant in Choreography for their choreographic work. Their production, Billy Nijinsky, won Best Production 2002 at the New York International Fringe Festival, and their adaptation of the novel Einstein’s Dreams was awarded the Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Award.
They have taught both nationally and internationally and have been on the faculty of the American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard, The Boston Conservatory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They currently co-direct the dance program at Concord Academy where Summer Stages is hosted.
Germaul Yusef Barnes is a former dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a Bessie Award and the Arts International Grant in 2003, which fostered his anthropology study in Ghana, West Africa. In 1991 Barnes formed Viewsic Expressions, a multi-media dance collective, now based in Brooklyn, New York. He showcased his talents around the world including Germany, Japan, England and South Africa. Barnes teaching experience is extensive, and includes assisting and demonstrating for the legendary Katherine Dunham, and serving as an instructor at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Skidmore College, University of Buffalo, Black College Dance Exchange, Ghana National Dance Theater, Dance Masters/New York, COCA, Cleo Parker Summer Intensive, 92nd Street Y, and the Harkness Dance Center (USA), among many others.
Nell Breyer 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 in public space video installations and 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]. Breyer’s work, supported by numerous grants and fellowships, has been presented internationally and in the United States. [read more...]
Alissa Cardone (choreographer, dancer)"a frightening snowflake under a microscope", Cardone's 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, in dance films and concentrate n interdisciplinary collaborations with Kinodance Company, voted one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" 2008. Cardone trained with Min Tanaka (Body Weather Farm), has collaborated and performed with Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works, Nora Chipaumire, Elaine Summers & Yoshito Ohno and continues to study 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). [read more...]
Lorraine Chapman 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 Ms. 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. [read more...]
Eiko and Koma were law and political science students in Japan when, in 1971, they each joined the Tatsumi Hijikata company in Tokyo. Their initially experimental collaboration soon developed into an exclusive partnership. The following year, Eiko and Koma started working as independent artists in Tokyo. At the same time, they began to study with Kazuo Ohno, who along with Hijikata was the central figure in the Japanese avant-garde theatrical movement of the 1960s. Neither Eiko nor Koma have studied traditional Japanese dance or theater forms; they have preferred to choreograph and perform only their own works. [read more...]
Jeffrey Kazin has been working with David Parker since 1990. As a founding member of David Parker & The Bang Group, Kazin has created and performed signature roles for the company throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. Additionally, he serves as the General Manager and CFO of the company. Outside of TBG, Kazin, as a guest artist, has appeared in Italy in the title role of the Arena di Verona Ballet’s production of Dylan Dog choreographed by David Parker and as an evil step-sister in New York Theatre Ballet's Cinderella. Jeffrey is a board member of the Peculiar Works Project theater company and a graduate of Connecticut College and the National Theater Institute
Bronwen MacArthur has performed in New York, throughout the U.S., Europe and South America. Since 1999, her choreography has been shown in Russia, France, New York, and throughout New England. In 2006, she co-founded, with Emily Coates, the dance theater lab, Motion In Dialogue (MIND) which most recently presented its work at the CORD (Congress on Research in Dance)/SDHS (Society of Dance History Scholars) joint conference in Paris, France. MacArthur Dance Project made its debut in May 2007 and was presented at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and the Shubert Theater in New Haven, CT. A summer residency reunited MacArthur with Olga Pona's Chelyabinsk Theater of Contemporary Dance, from Chelyabinsk, Russia. Also last summer, MacArthur was a participating artist in the Regional Dance Development Initiative - New England, an initiative of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. Currently, MacArthur is collaborating 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. MacArthur is a guest artist at Connecticut College and in spring 2008 will co-teach, with Joseph Roach and Emily Coates, a seminar in the Theater Studies department at Yale.
Tere O’Connor has been making dances since 1982 and has created over 30 works for his company. The company has performed throughout the US and in Europe, South America and Canada. O’Connor has created numerous commissioned works for dance companies around the world, among these have been works for Lyon Opera Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, de Rotterdamse Dansgroep, Holland; Carte Blanche, Norway; Dance Alloy in Pittsburgh, PA; and Zenon in Minneapolis, MN. [read more...]
David Parker & The Bang Group return to Summer Stages Dance for their seventh year in 2007. Parker grew up in Lynnfield, Massachusetts and began studying tap and ballet in Boston as a teenager. One of his first pieces, Bang and Suck was presented by Dance Theater Workshop on its Fresh Tracks series in 1992. It went on to win numerous awards and citations including a prize from the Fourth International Competition for Choreographers of Contemporary Dance in Groningen, Then Netherlands, a special citation from the jury of the Kurt Jooss Award in Germany (which included Pina Bausch), a citation for emerging choreographer at the Nijinsky Awards in Monaco and numerous ten-best-of-the-year lists. In 1995 Parker founded The Bang Group, a rhythm-based theatrical dance troupe serving Parker’s intelligent fascination with the percussive possibilities of the dancing body. The work is wide-rangingly anarchic and subversive but based on an abiding love of formalism. [read more...]
Sara Rudner, currently chair of the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College, participated in the development and performance of Twyla Tharp’s modern dance repertory from 1965-1985. During this time she began to choreograph for a small group of dancers known as the Sara Rudner Performance Ensemble. She received a Bessie award in 1984 and has been awarded grants from the NEA, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and NYSCA. She served as adjunct faculty at NYU and was a teaching fellow at Bennington College.
Dan Wagoner is a renowned American modern dance choreographer. He danced with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Taylor, and for 25 years directed his own New York-based company, Dan Wagoner & Dancers. He choreographed more than 55 dances for his company, which performed throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia as well as presenting annual seasons in New York. He has taught at Harvard Summer Dance and Bates Summer Dance programs, and at numerous universities and festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Most recently, he traveled to Juangzhou, China to choreograph for the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Wagoner was a Distinguished Guest Artist at Connecticut College and is currently on the faculty of Florida State University.
Teri Weksler was born in Baltimore and graduated from the Juilliard School. She received a Bessie Award for A career of virtuosic dancing..... As a founding member of the Mark Morris Dance Group, Weksler performed and taught all over the world. After moving to Birmingham, Alabama, she danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, then went on to become Artistic Director of Southern Danceworks. Currently a faculty member of the Alabama Ballet and Birmingham Southern College, Weksler has choreographed many works, including collaborations with the Alabama Symphony, Very Special Arts, and the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
Curriculum details and faculty are subject to change without notice.
Kate Cross is Associate Director and faculty for Summer Stages 2. She studied modern dance at Concord Academy, Connecticut College, and the Merce Cunningham Studio. In the Boston area, she has worked with Spencer/Colton, The Nashua Ballet, and Ballet Theater of Boston, and the Marcus Schulkind Dance Company.
Daniel McCusker makes dances for a wide variety of performers and venues and is a lecturer in the Department of Drama and Dance at Tufts University. His teaching for the School of Classical Ballet, in Cambridge, gives him the opportunity to continue to explore his long-standing interest in exposing young
dancers to modern dance, creative process and creative problem solving. He also teaches open morning classes at the Dance Complex.
Eliza Miller is a graduate of Concord Academy and Sarah Lawrence College. After a year in Berlin, she founded the Eliza Miller Dance Company in New York in 2000. Her work has been produced at Danspace Project; Jacob’s Pillow; Tanglewood Music Center; the Joyce SoHo; and the Kennedy Center. |
