CONDER/dance Announces Artists For 10th Anniversary Of Dance Festival
By: Molly Tracy Nov. 25, 2016
After receiving a record-breaking 145 submissions from the top national and international voices in contemporary dance, CONDER/dance announces its final selection of artists who will be featured at the 2017 Breaking Ground Contemporary Dance Festival.
Now celebrating its 10th Anniversary at Tempe Center for the Arts, the 2017 Breaking Ground Festival will be held January 27 & 28 at 7:30 pm. Tickets: $28Adults/$23 Students and Seniors at the door $25Adults/$18 Students and Seniors when purchased in advance (minimum 24 hours)
Tickets are on sale now at tca.ticketforce.com.
CONDER/dance and its Breaking Ground Festival recognizes its role in supporting contemporary dance, and in particular, local contemporary dance artists. This year as part of the 10th anniversary celebration, the Festival will provide platforms to nurture and showcase the incredible breadth of local contemporary artists of Arizona. CONDER/dance has commissioned three Arizona choreographers to present new work at the 2017 Festival: Mary Fitzgerald, Jessica Rajko and oneTON collective, who represent the wide range of styles and voices that are rooted and producing work here in Arizona. Two Arizona artists also were selected through the highly competitive application process to present on the MainStage; DATURA and Jenny Gerena. and two Arizona alumni artists are returning with new work to share; Aaron McGloin and Britta Joy Peterson.
2017 Breaking Ground Festival will also feature the popular "tiny dances," - short 5 minute pieces performed on 4 x 4 ft stages. 10 Arizona companies will perform the "tiny dances" in the lobby and on the True North patio of the Tempe Center for the Arts during intermission.
The 2017 Breaking Ground Festival artists were selected by a juried panel, (Carley Conder, Keith Johnson and Eric Handman) who reviewed all submissions before determining the finalists. Many artists featured over the past 10 years of Breaking Ground have gone on to significant contemporary dance careers including Joshua Peugh, Maria Gillespie, Shaun Boyle and Colleen Thomas.
"It's been an amazing journey to start Breaking Ground 10 years ago and see it develop into such a prestigious event - one that gives audiences and artists a glimpse of what's happening here in our community as well as across the spectrum of the contemporary dance world. We have great reason to celebrate this year and as always, look forward to the future as new and exciting voices emerge year after year." - Carley Conder, Artistic Director, CONDER/dance and Breaking Ground Festival Founder
Charlotte Boye-Christensen
"Boye-Christensen shows in her works an infectious vitality and a rare gift for inventive moves." -The Cincinnati Enquirer
CHARLOTTE BOYE-CHRISTENSEN, a native of Copenhagen, received her formal training at London Contemporary Dance School and completed her MFA Degree at Tisch School of the Arts.
Known for her daring, avant-garde work and her dark intensity, CHARLOTTE BOYE-CHRISTENSEN has commissioned new works for companies around the globe including Milwaukee Ballet, Ballet West, Singapore Dance Theatre, Danish Dance Theatre, Second Avenue Dance Company in NYC, London Contemporary Dance School's Edge Dance Company, and the Utah Symphony and Opera.
A Fulbright Scholar, she has choreographed for universities and ballet schools around the world and has performed as a soloist at the International Choreographic platform in Almada, Portugal, at the Marato de l'espectacle in Barcelona, Spain, and at the Metropolitan Museum of photography in Tokyo, Japan.
Li Chiao-Ping Dance
Li ChiAO-PING, Artistic Director of Li Chiao-Ping Dance, was named by Dance Magazine as one of the "25 to watch".
Recognized for her physical strength, the 52 year old choreographer formed Li Chiao-Ping Dance in 1990. She has had the pleasure of dancing original solos created for her by Cynthia Adams, Bebe Miller, Elizabeth Streb, June Watanabe, and Mel Wong, among others.
Her collaborations with visual artist/director Douglas Rosenberg include several dance films which have aired on public television and screened around the world. She is the subject of two documentaries, including "Seven Solos: A Documentary", which was made about her "Women Dancing" solo project and was selected for the Dance On Camera Festival held at Lincoln Center in 2012 in New York.
CONDER/dance
Known for its fearless interpretations, athletic movements and a continually expanding exploration of the human form, CONDER/dance will premiere a new work,
Howard Hughes is ill. Howard Hughes is dead. Howard Hughes is in Las Vegas for the 2017 Breaking Ground Festival.
Created and choreographed by Artistic Director Carley Conder, the piece is inspired by an essay written in 1967 by Joan Didon on the elusive and eccentric Hughes, and will feature 1960s music and costuming.
"I am fascinated with how human beings deal with public and private personas, and the effect it has on our daily choices. A rich and famous tycoon, surrounded by Hollywood starlets, Hughes had a need for absolute privacy and control that eventually drove him into hiding from the public eye. To me, it is a struggle that we all deal with, the gap between what we say we want and what we really want ... what we publically admire and secretly desire." - Carley Conder
CONDER/dance features Jordan Daniels, Danielle Feinberg, Joan Rodriguez, Taimy Miranda, Stephanie Lebedies and Haydehn Tuipulotu.
DATURA
DATURA is a media ensemble dedicated to using both digital and analog instruments to create improvisational live performances.
DATURA performances are fascinating experiences as audience witness these artists incorporating new instruments called "sonic sculptures", along with computers, electronics, interactive images and movement.
DATURA is comprised of some of the leading creatives in Phoenix including John D. Mitchell (computer, synthesizer & woodwinds) Tony Obr (computer, electronics & saxophone), Joe Willie Smith (sonic sculptures), Chris Todd (interactive images), Fumihiro Kikuchi (lighting) and Yingzi Lang (movement direction).
Mary Fitzgerald Dance Projects
MARY FITZGERALD has been active in the professional dance community as an educator, choreographer, performer and community artist for many years, and was a member of Kei Takei's Moving Earth for nearly ten years, performing and teaching internationally.
Ms. Fitzgerald has been a guest artist for several professional companies and dance programs in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Mexico, India, Colombia, and Israel. She has received funding from the Ministry of Culture in Mexico, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture and the Herberger College for the Arts. She is a winner of the 2005 Arizona Choreography Competition, and received an Artists Project Award in 2006. As an Associate Professor at ASU, she has been awarded two Distinguished Teaching Awards from the Herberger College for the Arts.
Jenny Gerena and Jeremiah Jenkins
JENNY GERENA is a performing artist and choreographer based out of Phoenix Arizona. An alumna Arizona State University where she attained a Masters of Fine Arts in Dance in 2016, Jenny has presented two evening length pieces in Phoenix, Flesh Narratives in January of 2016 and Lavender, which premiered in May as part of the Phoenix nueBOX Artists Residency program. She was a Collaborating choreographer for the 2016 Fashionably Avant Guard/ SMoCA Mix Fashion Show at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
Since 2014, she has been a resident choreographer at SCC working with their Dance Company, Instinct Dance Corps. Jenny was also a resident choreographer with Fusionworks Dance Company where she reset a work titled, HEiR which was presented at the 2016 Northeast Choreographers Festival In Lincoln RI.
Her work has been shown at the American College Dance Association, Arizona Dance Festival, Breaking Ground Dance Festival and the Multi- Purpose Dance series in Soho, NY.
Aaron McGloin Dance
"...Aaron McGloin, a tall dancer with an elegant line, demonstrates unselfconsciously quirky choreography, with a whisper of existential despair" - Chicago Tribune
AARON MCGLOIN was born and raised in Arizona and graduated from Arizona State University with a BFA in Choreography. He formed his own company, Aaron McGloin Dance, in 2007, with a mission to create honest and ambitious art through joyous, athletic movement and an eclectic sensibility.
His choreography has been presented in NYC at Joyce Soho, Dance New Amsterdam, Chez Bushwick/Center for Performance Research, Dixon Place, The Irondale Center, Triskelion Arts and the 92nd St Y, and you can catch him teaching classes at Gibney Dance, Broadway Dance Center, and Williamsburg Movement andArts Center.
Over the past few years he has had the privilege of performing with companies throughout Phoenix, Chicago and NYC including CONDER/dance, Arial Dance Chicago, Bryn Cohn + Artists, Christopher Williams, and Project 44.
Joe MonteLEONE is a New York based solo dance artist, freelance choreographer, and Artistic Director of Monteleone Dance. Known for his highly conceptual, multi-media performances, Monteleone seeks to explore the relationship between man and machine.
Moneteleone received the Audience Favorite Award at NYC10 in 2015 for his solo work "Defense Mechanism", and was voted "favorite choreographer" at The Intimate Series. His company work has been presented at the Peridance APAP Showcase, The Wassaic Project, The Current Sessions, Boston University, Rutgers University, and Baruch Performing Arts Center (Reverb Dance Festival) as well as other showcases throughout the NYC area and
internationally.
His live installation work has been presented at the Alpha Art Gallery (New Jersey) and the Infinito Gallery (NYC). Residencies include two Solo Commissions by The Moving Beauty Series (Brooklyn), the coLAB Arts residency, and Arts and Education (New Jersey).
james morrow/ THE MOVEMENT
"His work has a hypnotic focus awash in clashing impulses - a defiant shot to the future." -Helen Coburn Meier & Tim Meier Charitable Foundation for the Arts
A native of Chicago, IL. JAMES MORROW is the founder and Artistic Director of james morrow/ THE MOVEMENT. Coming from an urban background, Morrow integrates classical movements into the hip-hop culture - fusing modern, contemporary and urban dance styles.
Morrow's choreography can be seen on stages throughout the U.S. and internationally, including theaters in Utrecht, Vienna, Mumbai, Krasnoyarsk, and New Brighton.
OneTON Collective
OneTON Collective is a collaboration between dance artists Jasmine Nunn, Lai Yi Ohlsen, and Kayla Tomooka. OneTON Collective is a resident company with nueBOX, an organization supporting new contemporary dance works created by Arizona artists.
As Asian-American artists working in the relatively small Phoenix Asian community, OneTon will be creating a premiere work for Breaking Ground which will focus on the concept of racial identity in today's digital world, while considering the importance of one's past.
BRITTA JOY PETERSON is a dance artist who choreographs, performs, designs, and collaborates on contemporary dance works. A native of the thriving Minneapolis arts community, BRITTA JOY PETERSON is a "nomadic-creative," using her travels to inform and shape her performances.
As a dancer and educator working primarily in contemporary and jazz forms, BRITTA JOY PETERSON'S current interests include the intersection between interactive media and movement. She is currently the Director of Dance at American University in Washington, DC. and holds her MFA in Dance, summa cum laude, from Arizona State University.
JESSICA RAJKO is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the space between dance, the body, wearable technology, and interaction design.
As an assistant professor at Arizona State University, her current work investigates the ethical implications of big data and the individual.
Jessica is a founding co-Director of the ASU Human Security Collaboratory and is affiliated with the Arts, Media and Engineering Synthesis Center as a collaborative researcher/artist. She serves on the steering committee for the PAVE Program in Arts Entrepreneurship and is the mentor for the dance MFA concentration in Interdisciplinary Digital Media and Performance.
Jessica has presented and performed in various collaborative works nationally and internationally, including Toronto's Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Festival and New York City's Gotham Festival at The Joyce Theatre. She is the co-founder and co-director of urbanSTEW, a non-profit arts collective that creates art/tech installations to engage local communities in multi-sensory experiences.
BOROKA NAGY is a dancer, choreographer, and multi-media artist born in Budapest, Hungary. Her dance training consists of prestigious dance academies such as The Fame School and the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Program in NYC. She received her M.F.A in Dance from the University of California - Irvine.
Boroka has performed in many legendary dance spaces in NYC, including The Apollo Theater, the 92nd Street Y, and The Merce Cunningham Studio. She has danced in works by Bertram Ross, Paul Taylor, Alvin Ailey, Robert Battle, Milton Myers, Desmond Richardson, Dwight Rhoden, and many more. In 2011, she performed Alvin Ailey's Memoria with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center.
Boroka performs internationally as a freelance artist, and her choreography and screendance works have appeared across the U.S.A. and Europe at various festivals, museums, and experimental spaces. In 2016, Boroka founded Re:borN Dance Interactive, a contemporary Dance Company that challenges the conventional relationship between audience and dancer and explores the interconnectedness of movement, emotions, and identity.
Some of the most exciting contemporary dancers from the local scene will perform 5 dance pieces per night on 4ft x 4ft platforms throughout the TCA's lobby and north patio during intermission. Scattered throughout the venue, these "tiny dances" are each less than 5 minutes, and give the public a taste of contemporary dance, locally grown and blossoming, concentrated in a confined art space.
ABOUT BREAKING GROUND & CONDER/dance
CONDER/dance has produced the annual Breaking Ground Festival since 2007 to support local and International Artists. Each seasons' festivals bring the freshest contemporary dancers, choreographers and filmmakers to Arizona, selected by jury from hundreds of submissions.
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