ENSEMBLE THINKING - facilitators
Andrew Wass
By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Andrew Wass finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. He formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious processes of composition that are the generative source of much of his works. Influenced heavily by his undergraduate studies of Biochemistry at U.C. San Diego, Andrew works by creating a defined, almost crystalline palette in order to generate a myriad of possibilities. The possibilities are reduced and concentrated in the moments of execution and reception. A member of Lower Left he is a graduate of the MA program of Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum für Tanz in Berlin, and completed his PhD in Dance at Texas Woman's University.
Julie Lebel
Julie Lebel gratefully lives and dances on the ancestral and unceeded Indigenous territories of the xʷməθkʷəjˀəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil Waututh) First Nations. She is a choreographer invested in community engaged dance and in interactions between public space and community – involving musicians, visual artists, film makers and writers with a body of work spanning 25 years. She is the Artistic Director of Foolish Operations, creating new dance experiences for and with people of all generations, especially very young children. She is a member of Lower Left Collective (USA, Germany, Norway and Canada) teaching and performing Ensemble Thinking.
julielebeldanceprojects.wordpress.com
Karen Høybakk Mikalsen
Karen Høybakk Mikalsen is a dancer, artist, mover, choreographer, teacher and community builder based in Oslo, Norway. She has been deeply invested in improvisation, composition, group work and contact improvisation since the late 1990’s and traveled and lived abroad for 9 years. She did her dance studies in Oslo, Stockholm, Salzburg and New York and sees traveling as part of her artistic lineage. She met Lower Left and Ensemble Thinking in New York in 2007 and has since then dived into research on collective work and built a community around improvisation in Oslo through ImproLAB and Improfestivalen, now PRAXISfestivalen. She is also a founding member of PRAXIS Oslo – an arena for artistic sharing for performing artists. Karen runs her own company Living Movement, she has presented her work in Norway and the Nordic countries, is active in various artistic collaborative constellations (such as music, theater and narrative art), and she choreographs for others companies and theaters in Norway. She is also part of Lonely Riders – a Nordic network on community work and improvisation with dancers from Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway. From 2015-17 Karen was the recipient of an artistic work grant from the National Arts Grants. Currently she is teaching movement at a performance art college in Oslo and recently did a research project on Ensemble Thinking facilitated for acting studies. Karen is thrilled to finally hold an Ensemble Thinking Teacher Certification and to be a Lower Left member!
www.livingmovement.no/karen-hoslashybakk-mikalsen.html
Kelly Dalrymple-Wass
Kelly Dalrymple-Wass creates performances, paintings, drawings and films. With a subtle minimalistic approach, Dalrymple-Wass seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and confuses the intervals that articulate the stream of daily events. Moments are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and becomes multifaceted. By applying abstraction, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles. A graduate of Mills College, a member of Non Fiction and Lower Left, Kelly Dalrymple-Wass currently lives and works in Berlin with Marfa always on her mind.
Leslie Scates
Leslie Scates (Houston) is a movement educator, consultant, choreographer, and licensed massage therapist. Through her work with individuals, professionals, and collectives of all kinds, Leslie facilitates enhanced performance and collaborative communication through Improvisational Movement Practices. Leslie practices Wellness Massage Therapy and Thai Yoga Massage Therapy in Houston, Texas. Leslie is an improvisational dance specialist, and teaches Contact Improvisation, Ensemble Thinking ReWire/Dancing States techniques, all of which she has learned from extensive studies with Lower Left Performance Collective and Master Teachers from around the world. Leslie is Adjunct Faculty at the University of Houston’s Department of Theatre and Dance, serves on the Artist Board for Diverseworks Artspace Houston, and is a faculty member of the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival. Leslie has created original dance works in Houston and the US since 1991 as an independent choreographer, performer and guest artist.
Margaret Paek
Margaret Paek sees dance as a life practice. A Lower Left associate since 2000, she is also influenced by her relationships with contact improvisation, gymnastics, Ensemble Thinking, Alexander Technique, projectLIMB, Dahlia Nayar, Deborah Hay, Barbara Dilley, musician/composer Loren Kiyoshi Dempster and their daughter. Margaret has also enjoyed creating with Stochastic Ensemble (co-founder,) projectLIMB, Team Djordjevich, BodyCartography, Keith Hennessy, Lionel Popkin, and Mary Overlie among others. Her work has been presented in Germany, Hungary, Mexico, Switzerland, across the U.S., and at New York venues including the Whitney Museum Biennial 2012, Judson Church, Danspace at St. Mark’s Church, and Joyce SoHo. As the practice of teaching is integral to her creative process, she is faculty at Movement Research, Marymount Manhattan and Manhattanville Colleges and has taught at festivals in Budapest, Berlin, Freiburg, and Stockholm. Margaret has authored articles for Contact Quarterly and learning to loveDANCE more. She is on the board of Marfa Live Arts and Movement Research’s Artist Advisory Council and received her MFA from Hollins University/ADF.
Nina Martin
Nina Martin, PhD, MFA, (Ft. Worth) is a choreographer and master teacher having worked in New York City, across the US, Europe, South America, and Asia. Performance credits include David Gordon Pick-Up Company, Mary Overlie, Deborah Hay, and Simone Forti, Martha Clarke, and PBS Dance in America Beyond the Mainstream with Steve Paxton and others. She was a founding member of Channel Z performance collective, New York Dance Intensive School, Lower Left Performance Collective, and presently is board president of Marfa Live Arts. Martin is an independent artist and assistant professor at TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance.
Rebecca Bryant
Rebecca Bryant is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Cal State University Long Beach who teaches studio courses in modern/contemporary dance, improvisation, composition, and pedagogy. She specializes in the creation of multi-disciplinary danceworks and cross-disciplinary collaboration.