Dynamic Duos at Reynolds Industries Theater

This preview was provided by American Dance Festival.

What happens when you pair up some of today’s hottest choreographers to create new duets that they themselves will dance? You get Dynamic Duos! Superheroes! Larry Keigwin & Rosie Herrara, Mark Haim & Jesse Zaritt, Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs, and Claire Porter & Sara Juli were given the task of putting their creative heads together to produce and perform works that would be like no other. Expect to be amazed. Expect the unexpected. Expect a one-of-a-kind evening of dance!

About Taryn Griggs

Taryn Griggs has been dancing with and for Chris Yon since 2002. Griggs was a member David Neumann’s advancedbeginnergroup from 2005-2009 and has danced for Ivy Baldwin, Karinne Keithley Syers, Susan Rethorst, Sara Smith, Anna Sperber, Liz Roche and Johannes Wieland, Angharad Davies, Dustin Haug, Justin Jones and Tamin Totzke. Griggs received a Sage award for performance in 2009 and is a 2012 McKnight Dancer Fellow administered by Northrup Concerts and Lectures.

About Mark Haim

Mark Haim has been choreographing for over 30 years. Artistic Director of Mark Haim & Dancers from 1984-1987, and the Companhia de Danca de Lisboa from 1987-1990, he is currently AD of Mark Haim Dance and Theater based in Seattle, WA. He has created new works for dance companies such as the Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet Frankfurt, the Limon Dance Company, the Joffrey II Dancers, and the  Rotterdamse Dansgroep, and has restaged his works on The Joffrey Ballet, the Bat-Dor Dance Company of Israel, Djazzex, and the Juilliard Dance Ensemble. His full evening solo project, The Goldberg Variations, has been performed at the American Dance Festival, the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, The John F. Kennedy Center, On The Boards and other venues in the U.S, Europe, Asia. His newest work, This Land Is Your Land, opened the ArtDanThe Festival in Paris, and has also been performed at the Joyce Theater in NYC and in the Nasher Museum of Art as part of the 2013 ADF performing series. Most recently, Mark has been choreographer for the Seattle Opera’s productions of The Consul and Tales of Hoffmann. Mark has been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival since 1993 and was the Senior Artist in Residence at the University of Washington Dance Program from 2002-2008. He has also taught at the NC School of the Arts, University of Illinois, Ohio University, SMU, VCU, Cornell, JMU,  and for schools and companies in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Russia, Argentina, Chile and Japan. He is a recipient of a 1987 New York Foundation for the Arts Choreographers Fellowship, a 1988 and 1996 NEA Choreographers Fellowship, and grants from the NPN Suitcase Fund, ArtsLink, Inc. and the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. In 2000, he was awarded the Scripps/ADF Humphrey-Weidman-Limon Fellowship for Choreography.  Mark is a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He holds a BFA degree from The Juilliard School and an MFA from Hollins University.

About Rosie Herrera

Rosie Herrera is a Miami based dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Rosie Herrera Dance Theater. She is a graduate from New World School with a BFA in Dance Performance.  She has been commissioned by The Miami Light Project in association with the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing and the American Dance Festival in 2010, 2011, and 2013. She has had two residencies at the ADF recreating her work Various Stages of Drowning:  A Cabaret on ADF dancers and creating a new work entitled Make Believe which is set to premiere on her company in 2015/16.

Rosie is a classically trained lyric coloratura soprano and performs with the Performers Music Institute Opera Ensemble as well as choreographs and stages operas independently throughout Miami. She has also collaborated on productions with The South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, New World School of the Arts, The University of Central Florida, Six Floor Ensemble, Zoetic Stage and with theater artist Rudi Goblen as well as filmmakers Adam Reign and Lucas Leyva. As a rehearsal director, co- choreographer and performer Rosie was in residency at the Chat Noir Cabaret in Miami Beach with the interdisciplinary performance ensemble Circ X.

Her company has been presented by the Northrop Dance Series, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Baryshnicov Arts Center, Texas A & M University, Duncan Theater, The Annenburg Center in Philadelphia and Gotham Dance at Skirball and Focus Dance at The Joyce in New York.

Rosie is a 2010 MANCC choreographic fellow and a 2011 Miami Dance Fellow.  In 2013 she was awarded a Princess Grace Choreographic Fellowship for her work with Ballet Hispanico entitled Show.Girl. The same year she was in residency with Moving Ground Dance Theater in Cleveland creating a new work titled HouseBroken. This past summer she was in residency at the Bates Dance Festival working on a solo work set to premiere this May at the Miami Light Project. Rosie is a proud artistic associate of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami Dade County. 

About Sara Juli

Sara Juli has created and performed innovative solo work in New York City from 2000-2012.  Her work has been performed in numerous New York City venues including Performance Space 122, Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, Joe’s Pub as part of the Dancenow/NYC Festival and others. Nationally, her work has been performed at American Dance Festival, Napa Valley Opera House, Connecticut College, UC Riverside, and Reno Arts Festival. In February 2006, she created and performed her first full-evening solo show, The Money Conversation, where she gave away her life savings, in a sold-out run at Performance Space 122.  The Money Conversation was an instant hit and toured nationally and internationally from 2007-2012 to sold-out houses in The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, London, Russia and around the United States. The piece received notable press coverage in The New York Times, The New York Post, Time Out (New York & New Zealand), Fox Five News, National Public Radio and in major publications, television and radio spots abroad.  Her fundraising consulting practice, Surala Consulting, is entering its sixth year and advises over 30 National artists and non-profits on strategic fundraising solutions. Sara was awarded the Arts Management Award from Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2013 and is an Advisory Board member of The Field in NYC and Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine.  She graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York with a degree in Dance and Anthropology.  After 15 years in NYC, Sara recently relocated to Portland, Maine with her husband and two kids, and has returned to the creation of new solo work in addition to building her consulting practice. www.suralaconsulting.com

About Larry Keigwin

Larry Keigwin is a native New Yorker and choreographer who has danced his way from the Metropolitan Opera to downtown clubs to Broadway and back. He founded KEIGWIN + COMPANY in 2003 and as Artistic Director, Keigwin has led the company as it has performed at theaters and dance festivals throughout New York City and across the country. KEIGWIN + COMPANY, which celebrates its 10^th Anniversary in 2013, presents Keigwin’s electrifying brand of contemporary dance on a myriad of stages including, The Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, New York City Center, among others. Since his company’s premiere performance at Joyce Soho in 2003, Keigwin has created dozens of dances for himself and his dancers, as well as for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, The Martha Graham Dance Company, New York Choreographic Institute, The Juilliard School, Vail International Dance Festival, and many others. His work in musical theater includes choreography for the 2011 production of the musical Tales of the City at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and the new production of Rent, for which he received the 2011 Joe A. Callaway Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. Keigwin recently choreographed the Broadway musical If/Then, starring Idina Menzel.

Keigwin has designed and choreographed special events including “Fashion’s Night Out: The Show” in New York, which was produced by Vogue magazine and featured more than 150 of the industry’s top models. Keigwin also has mounted several versions of Bolero, his acclaimed large-scale community project that has been commissioned by communities across the country. Keigwin has created Keigwin Kabaret, a fusion of modern dance, vaudeville, and burlesque presented by the Public Theater at Joe’s Pub and by Symphony Space. As a dancer, Keigwin has danced at the Metropolitan Opera in Doug Varone’s Le Sacre Du Printemps and Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute, in addition to his work with Mark Dendy (receiving a Bessie Award in 1998 for his performance in Dream Analysis), Jane Comfort, John Jasperse, Doug Elkins, Zvi Gotheiner, and David Rousseve.  He appeared in the Broadway show Dance of the Vampires, the Off-Broadway show The Wild Party and the Julie Taymor, Oscar nominated film Across the Universe. He is a co-founder of the Green Box Arts Festival in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, a multi-disciplinary festival designed to increase cultural opportunities in the region, as well as provide creative residencies to young, emerging choreographers. Keigwin is a member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society.

About Claire Porter

Claire Porter, a recent Guggenheim Fellow, 2013, has performed her work, Claire Porter / PORTABLES, in Scotland, India, Germany, Holland, England, Latvia and Korea and in the New York City area at DTW, Danspace St. Mark’s Church, PS 122, Joe’s Pub, The Kitchen, The Joyce Theater, Joyce SOHO, 92nd St. Y, Town Hall, The Bottom Line, The NY Horticulture Society, NJPAC and Liberty Science Center. PORTABLES has also showcased at the American Dance Festival, The Lucille Ball Festival of Comedy, Bates Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Florida Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theater DC, Tampa Bay Off Center Theater, Duncan Theater Palm Beach FL, Center Stage Raleigh NC, The Southern Theater Minneapolis MN and at The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard. Porter appears at fundraisers and special events and created and performed Namely, Muscles, recipient of the NYC Fringe Festival 2010’s Overall Excellence Award, at festivals, conferences, theaters, medical schools and universities. Currently intrigued by syntax Claire created Sen-tence performed last week at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater produced by DanceNow that included Falling for Prepositions, Witnessing Adverbs and Pronoun Emergency. At Montclair State University she created Sentenced to Sentences, at NYU, Having Conjunctions and at Purchase College, Out of The Question. Claire is represented by Jodi Kaplan and Associates, www.bookingdance.com.

Porter has received several National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships, New Jersey State Council for the Arts Choreography Fellowships, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Awards, a Live Music for Dance Award and Commissions from Dance Theater Workshop’s First Light Project, The 92nd St Y Harkness Dance Festival, Art Matters, Meet The Composer, VOGUE Magazine, University Dance Companies, and Domino’s Pizza Company. Porter has an MA in Dance from Ohio State, a BA in Mathematics from The College of New Rochelle, is on the Advisory Board of DanceNJ, www.dancenj.org, and is a Laban Movement Analyst, www.limsonline.org. Contact her at Claire@cportables.com.

About Chris Yon

Chris Yon is a performer and choreographer. As a performer, he has worked with and for Ann Carlson, Yoshiko Chuma, Justin Jones, Karinne Keithley, David Neumann, Basil Twist and Kristin Van Loon. Yon’s choreographies have been presented nationally and internationally at Dance Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122, La Mama, Symphony Space, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Gershwin Hotel, CBGB’s, The Knitting Factory, Walker Art Center, The Southern Theater, Bryant Lake Bowl, Philadelphia Dance Project, ODC Theater, Velocity Dance Center, Highways Performance Space, Project Art Centre (Dublin), Tangente (Montreal), and CiteDanse (Grenoble). His work has been commissioned by The Danish National Theatre School (Copenhagen), The Wooden Floor (Santa Ana), Irish Modern Dance Theatre (Dublin) and d9 dance collective (Seattle). He has had residencies and space grants from MANCC, The Yard, SILO and BAX. Co-founder of Ur, your neighborhood dance palace in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2003-2005. Recipient: 2003 NYFA Fellowship for Performance Art, 2005 BESSIE Award for Performance, 2009 SAGE Award for Choreography, 2011 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Choreography. He has a BFA from NYU and is presently pursuing an MFA at University of Iowa.

About Jesse Zaritt

Jesse Zaritt received an MFA in Dance from the Hollins University/American Dance Festival Program (2008). He is currently the inaugural Research Fellow in the School of Dance at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Jesse has recently taught at the American Dance Festival, Hollins University, Pomona College, and the University of the Americas Puebla as well as at festivals in Japan, Korea, and Russia. He has performed his solo work in Korea, Germany, New York, Japan, Mexico, and Israel. His solo Binding is the recipient of three 2010 New York Innovative Theater Awards: Outstanding Choreography, Outstanding Solo Performance, and Outstanding Performance Art Production. Jesse was the recipient of a 2006-2007 Dorot Fellowship in Israel. Jesse was a member of Shen Wei Dance Arts (2001-2006) and the Inbal Pinto Dance Company (2008). He currently dances in the work of Faye Driscoll and Netta Yerushalmy and is in a collaborative choreographic partnership with Jumatatu Poe. He has been on the ADF faculty since 2008.

Dynamic Duos is commissioned by ADF with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Dance. Additional support provided by The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. This performance is sponsored by the Hilton Durham near Duke University.