Mascher Space Co-op

Althea Baird, Nicole Bindler, <fidget>/Megan Bridge, Dawn Ann Bryant, Ami Dowden-Fant, Marcel Williams Foster, Ellie Goudie-Averill, Green Chair Dance Group, Lela Jones, Pink Hair Affair, Emma Morehouse, Lisa Rothstein, Kate Russel, Kate Speer, Zornitsa Stoyanova, Rebecca Weber.

Biographies and Links

Nicole Bindler, (b.1977), is an experimental dance artist, inspired by her studies of new dance, dance-theater, contact improvisation, and butoh. She is also a bodyworker and uses healing practices, as a source of creativity, inspiration and physical training. She researches extended dance techniques, which are unique movements, individual to her particular body and develops teaching methods to help other dancers find their own extended techniques. Dance is a social art form and Bindler is a promiscuous collaborator. She is mostly known for her collaborations with avant-garde musicians, but also works with other dance, theater and visual artists. Her dances are most often improvised with varying degrees of preparation. Her work is always site-specific, seeking to activate and enliven all performance spaces whether they are theaters, studios, homes, places of business or the outdoors. Bindler has choreographed over twenty original dance works and has performed over 200 improvised dances in cities throughout the U.S., Canada, Argentina and in Berlin, Tokyo and Beirut. In August 2004, her solo “Places I’ve Never/Been” was performed in Quito, Ecuador by dancer, Stephanie Sherman. Bindler has performed in The High Zero Festival, The Transmodern Age Festival, The Shawinigan Street Theater Festival, The Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues and Ideas, The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, the D.C. Improvisation Festival, Fireside Festival, the Performance Mix Festival, the nEW Festival and Irtijal09′. Her work has been supported by Philadelphia Dance Projects, Dance Advance and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Bindler holds a degree in Muscular Therapy from the Muscular Therapy Institute and a BA in Dance and Poetry from Hampshire College. She has taught New Dance, Improvisation, Contact Improvisation and Experiential Anatomy throughout the U.S. and Argentina. She is a member of the Spontaneous Performing Artists Network, Mascher Dance Cooperative and she curates the StudioSeries at Studio 34 in Philadelphia.

<fidget> is a concept. Collaborators Megan Bridge and Peter Price use body, sound, and visual gesture to create live performance work that is time-based and concept driven: sexy, sci-fi, cybernetic, psychedelic multimedia dance theater. We have created more than a dozen performance works together since 2000; we work and live in a warehouse (thefidget space) in Philadelphia.

Because <fidget>’s work is conceptually driven, each project can be realized in a variety of formats: from fixed works for the theater to site-specific installations, improvisational structures, lecture / demonstrations, and informal gallery and studio presentations. Each work exists as a portfolio of several possible realizations.

Formerly working as Dance by Megan Bridge, Price and Bridge have been creating performance works together since 2000. Peter Price creates digital sonic and visual environments for live performance, and has a long history of collaboration with dance companies, performance artists, and musicians. He is currently researching and writing on the topic of resonance as a PhD candidate at European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland. Megan Bridge has worked as a dancer with international choreographers such as Jerome Bel, Willi Dorner, Rennie Harris, Lenni Basso/Akiko Kitamura, and Carole Brown. She holds a BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase.

Green Chair Dance Group is a dance-theater company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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.

Pink Hair Affair currently has nine co-directors, residing in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Portland. The collective premiered at the 2007 Philly Fringe Festival, garnering critical acclaim and the “Best Fringe Dance Find” pick by Janet Anderson of City Paper for their shows Mindfall and Speaking of SomeBody. Pink Hair Affair explores the nature of collaboration, aiming to fully support the co-directors’ individual artistry through community and cooperation. In 2008, they created and premiered in memory of the deathtrap, a site specific work directed by Anne MacGillivray Wilson. Other evening-length shows include: oOOoOoOo (Fringe 2008) and A Sympathetic Listener (premiered at the WOW Festival in San Fransisco). Pink Hair Affair’s work ranges from formal to improvisational, humorous to athletic, and conceptual to satirical. The energetic, fluid exchange of ideas within Pink Hair Affair cross-pollinates to forge a new vision of contemporary dance.

Co-directors Christina Gesualdi, Laura Jenkins, Kaleigh Jones, Jackie Koch, Lauren Mathis, Rachel Slater, Christine Steigerwald, Anne MacGillivray Wilson, and Ashley Wood all studied dance at The University of the Arts where they graduated in 2007. In addition to the shows listed above, Pink Hair Affair has made appearances in The 2008 Rockies Award Show, The Mascher Cabaret at National Mechanics, and local band, Jotto’s, music video. The collective looks forward to upcoming opportunities such as: performing a repertoy piece at Contempra Dance at The Painted Bride in May ’09, a collaboration with film-maker Jarryd Meyer, and a Fringe 2009 debut.

Kate Speer’s work ranges from performance and choreography to research scholarship. She holds a BA in dance and biology from Swarthmore College and has studied with such artists as David Dorfman, Michael Foley, Robert Een, Odile Duboc, Leah Stein, and Lisa Kraus. Speer is a 2009-2010 New Edge Mix Artist and an artist-in-residence at Mascher Space Co-op. Currently, she is dancing with Anne Marie Mulgrew and Dancers and Philly Contact Collective. In Philadelphia, she has performed in the 2009 Philly Fringe, Please Touch Museum’s Dancing Days, the first annual GLBT Arts Festival,   and Willi Dorner’s bodies in urban spaces in the 2008 Live Arts Festival. Speer also supports the Philly dance community administratively as General Manager for Leah Stein Dance Company and as an intern for Headlong Dance Theater, the nEW Festival, Group Motion, and Here[begin] Dance. Speer’s newest research project which examines the choreographies of David Dorfman, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Jérôme Bel was presented in 2009 at Dance Under Construction XI Conference at UCLA. Her own choreography has been presented at ETC Performance Series and React/Dance’s South Philly Solon. For more information about her work and upcoming performances visit www.myspace.com/kate_speer. (Photo by Deborah Boardman)

Zornitsa Stoyanova (Here[begin] Dance Co) is a native of Bulgaria and holds B.A. in Dance and Sound Design from Bennington College where she studied with Dana Reitz, Eva Kartzag, Susan Sgorbati, Susan Rethorst, Brendan McCall, Paul Matteson, Keith Thompson and Terry Creach. In 2008 she completed Headlong Performance Institute, a post graduate program in Philadelphia, where she focused on abstract character building, clowning and interactive theatrical performance. That year she had the amazing opportunity to study performance and improvisation with Deborah Hay, and technique with Anouk Van Dijk’s dance company.  She is deeply inspired by those very different approaches and tries to incorporate Anouk’s Countertechnique ideas with Deborah’s performance and state quality.

Since moving to Philadelphia, Zornitsa has choreographed and performed numerous dances, improvisations and human installations.  Her work has been presented by Rutgers Camden Center for the Arts, Bowerbird, NEXUS Gallery, The New Edge Mix Festival, Etc. Series, StudioSeries, Inhale Performing Series, The A.W.A.R.D. Show! Philadelphia, as well as Mascher Artist in Residency show.  Apart from Philadelphia, she has also shown  work at Joyce SoHo, Danspace at St. Mark’s Church in NYC, Hubbart Hall in Cambridge, NY,  her native Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as Budapest, Hungary.  Zornitsa also works professionally as a lighting, graphic and web designer and is the Membership and Rentals Coordinator for Mascher Space Cooperative, where she is in residence.

In early 2007 Zornitsa formed Here[begin] Dance Co. out of the need to name all her collaborations and curatorial events.  She is devoted to helping young and emerging choreographers and has used Here[begin] to produce and support just starting choreographers in and around Philadelphia.  She produces Current: an evening of dance and art and Dance Cinema Projects geared specifically to Philadelphia communities. Zornitsa also directs and self produces her own collaborative performances.

Lela Aisha Jones, is a Tallahassee, Florida native and a resident of Philadelphia, PA. While movement is her home base she cannot be defined by one discipline of the arts, her experience has lead to the more appropriate titles such as Movement, Choreographic Composition and Performance Facilitator as well as a TransArtist. Advancement of community through socio-artistic activism, creative and artistic collaborations as well as educational projects are her primary career focus areas. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Florida State University and a Bachelor of Science in Health Education from the University of Florida. Furthermore she has studied at the Jose Limon Dance Institute, Dagara Institue of Music and Dance Ghana, Sankofa Center for African Dance and Culture Ghana, and L’Ecole Des Sables Senegal. Urban Bush Women, Black Smith’s Daughter Dance Theatre/Nia Love and INSPIRIT/Christal Brown are some of her most valued touring performance company experiences; she has also worked with choreographers Germaine Acogny/JANT BI, Abdel Salam/Forces of Nature, Edilueza Santos/Jelon Viera/Dance Brazil and Ronald K Brown/Evidence. Her movement facilitation and choreographic commission experience includes Shenandoah University, California State University San Bernardino, Texas Woman’s University, Florida State University, Long Island University, Tallahassee Community College, Pinelands Creative Workshop Barbados, Orchesis Dance Theatre, Sankofa Center for African Dance and Culture Ghana and L’Ecole Des Sables Senegal. She asks that her transitioned as well as living family continue to walk with her in this life and she would like to thank all of those who have nurtured her, especially her grandfather, mom, dad, and sister.

Marcel Williams Foster is a recent alumnus of Headlong Performance Institute (on a Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship) and his original choreography was featured in the 2009 Contempradance Collective and the Philadelphia LGBT Artists Festival. As a performer/collaborator he worked with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in Chicago, The Guthrie Theater, Pig Iron Theater, Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Simba Theatre International in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is interested in using the performing arts as a tool to better understand human behavior. As a former researcher for the Jane Goodall Institute, he hopes that the work he continues to create as an artist will examine behavior with equal rigor as the scientific papers he wrote featured in the American Journal of Primatology, Theater Topics Journal and Nature Magazine.

Dawn Ann Bryant graduated from Kutztown University with a B.F.A. in Related Arts, 1994.  She traveled to San Francisco, were she studied for two years with Leslie Friedman, and performed work created for her while studying with the Lively Foundation.  She then contracted with Maude Baum’s dance theatre, eba, in Albany New York.  Bryant choreographed work for eba during this time. She was given a full scholoarship by Bella Lewitzky for her choreographers’ intensive workshop in Los Angeles in 1996.  She showed work with Glue at the CEC and performed collaborations with University of Penn writing professor Tom Devaney and NY artist Todd DiCurcio for Philadelphia’s First Friday events in 1998 and 2001.  She took a break from dance/performance for the next few years, and earned her M.A. in Dance/Movement Therapy from Drexel University in 2003.  Bryant has performed with PIMA, a dance/performance group in Philadelphia, since 2007.  She has been a featured artist-in-residency at Mascher Space Co-op since 2009, having shown work at Mascher’s Fresh Juice concert November of 2009.  Bryant was part of the Burlesque show at the Annenberg Center January 2010.

Rebecca Weber, a recent transplant to Philadelphia, holds a Master’s degree with Distinction in Dance & Somatic Well-Being: Connections to the Living Body (UK) from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, England, where she also enjoyed teaching on the BA (Hons) Dance Performance & Teaching course. She is excitedly looking forward to completing her MFA in Dance from Temple University.  Rebecca is an academic, author, and artist who seeks always to find the places where dance and somatics intersect, incorporating them into both her teaching and personal dance practices.  She is currently dancing for Movement Brigade and Venus Dance company, creating work, and co-developing Somanaut Dance, a Somatic Movement Dance Education practice in Philadelphia.

Lisa Rothstein earned a B.A. in dance and mathematics from Connecticut College.  There she trained in various release modern techniques as well as contact improvisation. While studying, Lisa performed in works by professional choreographers Alexandra Beller, David Dorfman, Doug Elkins, Heidi Henderson, Adele Myers, and Lisa Race.  Originally from Havertown, PA, she has selected Philadelphia as the first stop on her path to a career in dance.  In 2008, Lisa performed bodies in urban spaces by Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner.  In Philadelphia, Lisa is currently making art with Here[begin] Dance Co., as well as with Erin Foreman-Murray.  She has presented her own work in the Current Series, hosted by Here[begin] Dance Co, and at the Dance Vanguard Series in Cambridge, NY.  Also, Lisa loves avocados, lavender, and the moon.

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