Charlotte Dance Events

Dance Charlotte!
November 12 & 13, 2010
Booth Playhouse at The Blumenthal Performing Arts Center

Dance Charlotte! is a repertory concert that consists of highly talented and innovative local and national emerging choreographers and companies. The adjudication process to select the performers for this event has toughened every year with the number of quality applications that the festival receives.

2010 Performers

Congratulations to the following choreographers and companies who were selected by three adjudicators for CDF's 5th Dance Charlotte! event.

In the Sole
Ashley Suttlar Martin
Charlotte, NC

Ashley Suttlar Martin is an independent artist, performing and teaching in the North Carolina region. She holds a MFA in Dance from Temple University and a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her choreography is presented widely, from Brooklyn to San Diego. She has served on faculty at Morehead State University and Queensborough Community College - City University of New York. Currently based in Charlotte, Ashley is delighted to be a part of the 5th Annual Dance Charlotte! Festival . For more information visit: www.4thrightdance.com

Ashley Sutlar Martin
Photo by: Yi-Chun Wu

Mesmeric Revelations is an excerpt from CC&Co.'s most recent evening length work entitled The Macabre Masque. The entire work intertwines the literary works of Edgar A. Poe through an original murder mystery storyline by Caroline Calouche. This excerpt is influenced by the short story, Mesmeric Revelations, in which the character of Lady Rawena faints and travels into a hallucination about metaphysics.

Founded in 2005, Caroline Calouche & Co. evolved from years of independent choreography and performance in the U.S. and Europe . Caroline Calouche gathered a small group of 3 dancers to debut the contemporary dance company with Risk in her hometown of Gastonia , North Carolina . Since the initial performance, CC&Co. has performed in North Carolina , South Carolina , Virginia , Tennessee and Texas .

In 2006, Caroline Calouche began her explorations of blending contemporary dance with aerial dance in harness and fabric. The company's reputation for providing innovative, entertaining and edgy work was pushed to another level with the aerial work. With the increase of performances and touring, CC&Co. continues to connect to their home community along with the communities that they visit with their outreach programs in all age, ethnic and social groups.

Caroline Calouche & Co. is a non-profit organization formed with the mission of creating an arts organization dedicated to producing and promoting contemporary dance choreography in conjunction with multi-disciplinary artistic collaborations. The goal is to build cross-cultural dialogs with dance as a means to unite and educate the global community through an exchange of philosophies and methods.

Visit our website for an updated performance schedule. www.carolinecalouche.org

Caroline Calouche & Co.
Photographer: Michael Church

E.E.Volution
E.E.Motion
Charlotte, NC

E.E. Balcos resides in Charlotte, NC and is originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He began studying dance with modern dance pioneer Hanya Holm at the age of 19 in Colorado. He is Artistic Director of E.E.Motion, created in 2006. The company has been featured with North Carolina Dance Festival, Charlotte Dance Festival, American Dance Festival's Acts to Follow Series, Dances at the Lakes in Minneapolis, and in Piccolo Spoleto's Dance at Noon Series in June 2010.

His choreography has also been presented at Walker Art Center and Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Joyce/Soho and St. Mark's Church in NYC, Folly Theatre in Kansas City, Lawrence Arts Center, Minnesota Fringe Festival, throughout North Carolina, and at festivals, and universities nationally. He has been awarded grants for dance and choreography from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, Asian American Renaissance, Missouri State University, College of Arts and Sciences at UNCC and the Arts and Science Council Charlotte-Mecklenburg .

As a performer he toured nationally and internationally with Shapiro & Smith Dance, Demetrius Klein Dance Company, Zenon Dance Company, numerous regional companies, and has worked with nationally known choreographers including Danny Buraczeski, Ping Chong, Sean Curran, David Dorfman, Joe Goode, Dwight Rhoden, David Rousseve, Stephanie Skura, and Bill Young. He was an artist-in-residence with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in Washington, DC in 2009.

Balcos has a B.A. in Vocal Music from The Colorado College, and an M.F.A. in Choreography from The University of Iowa. He is an Assistant Professor at UNC Charlotte, teaching modern technique, choreography, and improvisation. Balcos was a guest artist-in-residence at North Carolina School of the Arts in 2009. He teaches Master classes and workshops at Universities and Dance Festivals across the country.

Please see website: WWW.E.E.MOTION.ORG

E.E.Motion
Photography by Greg Cable

Luna
Dr. Jan Van Dyke
Greensboro, NC

Jan Van Dyke currently serves as Chair of the Department of Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro . She has wide experience as artist, teacher, producer and administrator, and has set her choreography on a variety of groups ranging from the Washington Ballet to students at the Western Australia Academy for the Performing Arts in Perth . In addition, she is director of the Jan Van Dyke Dance Group as well as the North Carolina Dance Festival, an annual showcase of regional work which is produced in Wilmington , Greensboro , Boone, Charlotte and Raleigh . A 1993 Fulbright Scholar, she spent one semester teaching dance in Portugal and was awarded a NC Arts Council Choreography Fellowship in the same year. In 2001, she was honored by the North Carolina Dance Alliance for Contributions to the Development of Dance in this state. DANCE TEACHER MAGAZINE awarded her the 2008 Dance Teacher Award in Higher Education.

Dr. Jan Van Dyke

Just Here Body
Mickie Geller and Sybil Huskey
Shade, OH and Rock Hill, SC

Just Here Body was choreographed collaboratively by longtime friends and reunited dance partners, Mickie Geller and Sybil Huskey. The dance's intricately wrought movement derives from the expressive brush strokes of Japanese calligraphy and the graceful but tenacious quality of bamboo. What evolves is a piece that reflects friendship over time and distance.

Mickie Geller was a New York City based choreographer, performer and teacher from 1971-1983. While there, Geller presented concerts of her work at Dance Theater Workshop and Space Place and had many pieces produced in DTW's Choreographers' Showcases, La Mama, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Eden's Expressway and Larry Richardson's Dance Gallery. In addition to performing in her own works, Geller has danced in the companies of Tina Croll, Jack Moore, Art Bauman, Rosalind Newman, Pat Catterson, and others. Since relocating to Ohio in 1983 to join the School of Dance faculty at Ohio University, she has continued to choreograph, perform, and teach internationally in venues in Japan, Finland, and Spain, and nationally in New York City, Ohio, Washington, DC, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and North and South Carolina. Most recently, she has been performing with Sybil Huskey in North Carolina and the World Dance Alliance in Madison, WI. Geller has received three Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships in Choreography and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.

Sybil Huskey, Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte , has worked as a teacher, choreographer and performer in New York City , Finland , New Zealand , Mexico , France , Brazil and England . Her work has been commissioned by the Universities of Wisconsin/Madison, Illinois , and Utah and seen throughout the United States . While working in New York City in the 1970's, Ms. Huskey was selected for the prestigious Affiliate Artists, Inc. program, working with the Arts Commissions of South Carolina and Mississippi . The recipient of two Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards, Ms. Huskey was resident artist in the inaugural year of the first university dance degree program in Helsinki , Finland and developed choreographic resource materials for New Zealand 's national arts curriculum. She was recently an invited Visiting Professor in Drama at Kingston University in London , where she co-authored the curriculum for the new dance program. Sybil has held faculty and administrative positions at Cornell University , Arizona State University, Winthrop University and UNC Charlotte and has served as President of the American College Dance Festival Association. She recently received a 3-year National Science Foundation grant for her choreographic work with dance and technology. In the past three years, Sybil's choreographic work has been funded by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Arts and Science Council, the Center for Humanities, Technology and Science at UNC Charlotte, the York County Arts Council, UNC Charlotte Faculty Research Grants and the National Science Foundation/Creative IT and she has performed at the World Dance Assembly, North Carolina Dance Festival, Piccolo Spoleto Festival and the SC Dancing Festival. Ms. Huskey holds the M.F.A. degree from the University of Utah .

Sybil Huskey
Photography by Mike Lavine

Mickie Geller

Maple Leaf Rag
South Carolina Contemporary Dance Company
Artistic Director: Miriam Barbosa
Columbia, SC

MARTHA GRAHAM (1894-1991) – Choreographer

Martha Graham is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th Century alongside Picasso, Stravinsky, James Joyce, and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1998 TIME Magazine named Martha Graham as the “Dancer of the Century,” and People Magazine named her among the female “Icons of the Century.” As a choreographer, she was as prolific as she was complex. She created 181 ballets and a dance technique that has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude. Many of the great modern and ballet choreographers have studied the Martha Graham Technique or have been members of her company.

Martha Graham's extraordinary artistic legacy has often been compared to Stanislavsky's Art Theatre in Moscow and the Grand Kabuki Theatre of Japan, for its diversity and breadth. Her legacy is perpetuated in performance by the members of the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Martha Graham Ensemble, and by the students of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance.

In 1926, Martha Graham founded her dance company and school, living and working out of a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan. In developing her technique, Martha Graham experimented endlessly with basic human movement, beginning with the most elemental movements of contraction and release. Using these principles as the foundation for her technique, she built a vocabulary of movement that would “increase the emotional activity of the dancer's body.” Martha Graham's dancing and choreography exposed the depths of human emotion through movements that were sharp, angular, jagged, and direct. The dance world was forever altered by Martha Graham's vision, which has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for generations of dance and theatre artists.

Martha Graham's ballets were inspired by a wide variety of sources, including modern painting, the American frontier, religious ceremonies of Native Americans, and Greek mythology. Many of her most important roles portray great women of history and mythology: Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc, and Emily Dickinson.

As an artist, Martha Graham conceived each new work in its entirety — dance, costumes, and music. During her 70 years of creating dances, Martha Graham collaborated with such artists as sculptor Isamu Noguchi; actor and director John Houseman; fashion designers Halston, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein; and renowned composers including Aaron Copland, Louis Horst (her mentor), Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos Surinach, Norman Dello Joio, and Gian Carlo Menotti. Her company was the training ground for many future modern choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp. She created roles for classical ballet stars such as Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, welcoming them as guests into her company. In charge of movement and dance at The Neighborhood Playhouse, she taught actors including Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Peck, Tony Randall, Anne Jackson, and Joanne Woodward how to use the body as an expressive instrument.

Her uniquely American vision and creative genius earned her numerous honors and awards such as the Laurel Leaf of the American Composers Alliance in 1959 for her service to music. Her colleagues in theater, the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One, voted her the recipient of the 1986 Local One Centennial Award for Dance, not to be awarded for another 100 years. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford bestowed upon Martha Graham the United States' highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, and declared her a “national treasure,” making her the first dancer and choreographer to receive this honor. Another Presidential honor was awarded Martha Graham in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan designated her among the first recipients of the United States National Medal of Arts.

Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary

South Carolina Contemporary Dance Company
Artistic Director: Miriam Barbosa

Spoon
Tracie Foster Chan in collaboration with Robert Gosnell

Charlotte, NC

A North Carolina native, Tracie Foster Chan earned her B.A. from Peace College in 1998 and her M.F.A. in Dance Performance from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2003. She has performed professionally in North Carolina with companies such as The Van Dyke Dance Group, 2Btribe, and the High Point Ballet. She has also taught extensively throughout the state at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, City Arts Dance, Sandhills Community College, The High Point Ballet, Weaver Academy for the Performing and Visual Arts, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and most recently Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. Chan is a past board member of the North Carolina Dance Alliance and she currently serves as a board member for the North Carolina Dance Project. Chan currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina and is a freelance dancer, choreographer, and teacher. 

Tracie Foster Chan
Photography by Steve Clark

Young Sun Lee , is a dish prepared for the taste of gourmet audiences. It is a highly personalized and refined movement piece abstracted from the properties of Young Sun Lee as an inseparable medium from the choreographer.

Young Sun Lee received a MFA degree in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received the Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship. During the three year of the program, she taught modern, ballet, and jazz dance for non-major students as a Teaching Assistant. Her works were presented both in Korea and in America at many different venues such as Seoul Art Center , the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, New York University-Tisch, and Insa Art Center . Her solo was performed for the 2010 National College Dance Festival Gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC . She performed for Renée Wadleigh, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Jan Erkert, Jennifer Monson, Wade Madsen, Sarah Haas, Nadia Lauro, Kurt Koegel, and Jobac Dance Company. Her representative works include The Snail Series: I ~ IV, Afternoon Illusion, Subsidence, Homer & Apple, Young Sun Lee, and Wallpaper . She will appear in the forthcoming book by Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Dance and the Alexander Technique in a photo/video representation.

Young Sun Lee
Photography by Daniel James