Great Friends Touring Project

Great Friends Dance Touring Project

2012 Great Friends
Please join us on July 14, 15 & 17-22
at the Great Friends Meeting House for Nightly Performances at 7:30p.m.
Our Resident Guest Company for 2012-2103 is Missouri Contemporary Ballet

2012 Dance Companies

John-Mark Owen presents...

Artistic Director ~ John-Mark Owen

John-Mark Owen began his ballet training in 1994 under the direction of Jean Evans Weaver in Macon, GA. He received a full scholarship in 1997 to attend the prestigious Chautauqua Institute where he studied with Jean-Pierre Bonnefueax, Patricia McBride, and Violet Verdy. From there he attended Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts before he was invited to join Nashville Ballet as a trainee in 1998. Under the direction of Paul Vasterling, while there he enjoyed dancing in many ballets including Vasterling’s “Remnants of Light”, “The Firebird”, “Robin Hood”. “Pop!”, and “Dracula” as well as Lynn Taylor-Corbett’s “Appearances”, and Trey McIntyre’s “Aliss in Wonderland”. He joined Ohio Ballet in 2000 and toured the country performing ballets by Laura Dean, Heinz Poll, Alonzo King and Anne-Marie D’angelo to name a few.

After working with Peter Powlous and Zanne Colton at the Augusta Ballet he joined American Repertory Ballet under the direction of Graham Lustig. Also a guest artist with several companies around the Southeast his portrayal of Dracula for the Greenville Ballet earned critical acclaim. He danced with Ballet NY under the direction of Judith Fugate and Medhi Bahiri for four seasons. While there, he performed Balanchine’s “Who Cares?”, Stanton Welch’s “Orange”, Alan Hineline’s “Quartet 2”, and Toni Pimble’s “Two’s Company” as well as others. He has worked with Dances Patrelle under the direction of Francis Patrelle for five seasons, dancing leading roles in Patrelle’s “American Dreamer,” “The Yorkville Nutcracker,” “Black, Blue, and Bartok,” “Is That All There Is?” the title character in “Murder at the Masque; The casebook of Edgar Allen Poe,” “Double Martini” and Mr. Patrelle’s newest work “212” set to the music of Robert Sirota.

John-Mark Owen has created several original pieces for the Middle Georgia Youth Ballet, The Nashville Ballet’s Trainee program, Ballet Builders Previews Series, Panoply Choreographic Competition, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and various summer programs. “Canzonette” a trio exploring the various states of passion premiered at the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA. His Pas de Deux “Vespers” was shown in the Dance Sampler Evening at Symphony Space in New York. He recently completed his Graduate Studies at New York University/Tisch where he was also a fellow in sound production. His focus was choreography and he now holds an MFA in Dance/Choreography. His work was also shown in the NYU/Tisch Alumni Choreographic Festival at the prestigious Skirball Center. He presented “Triptych” in the Ballet Builders/New Choreographers on Point Series 2010, as well as an evening of work at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Festival summer 2010. John-Mark has been named one of four emerging choreographers by Gotham Arts Exchange NYC. He premiered “Salve” at Dance Theatre Workshop for their Gotham Arts Emerging Artist showcase in Jan. 2011 and his “Sonatae 2” at the 92 St. Y/Harkness Dance Center Sundays at Three series.

Dancers ~ Josh Christopher, Katie Moorehead, John-Mark Owen, Kerry Shea

Island Moving Co.

Artistic Director ~ Miki Ohlsen

Bodies of Water 2010

Island Moving Co. is celebrating its 30th year in Newport, RI! Artistic Director Miki Ohlsen is noted for her adept collaborations, including groundbreaking site specific works such as her Newport Nutcracker at Rosecliff and Dracula at Belcourt Castle. The Company has commissioned over 75 works, from company members as well as guest choreographers such as Colin Connor, Daniel McCusker, Noemie Lafrance, Joanna Haigood, Kelly Ann Sloan, Rick McCullough and Monica Bill Barnes.Always interested in the work of other companies and always open to new models, the Company this year inaugurates the Great Friends Dance Residency, which builds on the success of its Great Friends Dance Festival, presented at the 1699 Great Friends Meeting House in Newport, RI. At the Great Friends New York performances, Miki Ohlsen will announce the resident company for the festival in July. This company will join eight other companies in 2 weeks of performance and creation in Newport and will host Island Moving Co. at their home theatre in the spring of 2012. The residency is funded by the Rhode Island Foundation as a new model for midsized dance companies to tour and expand audiences.

Miki Ohlsen has been the Artistic Director of the Island Moving Co. since its inception in 1982. She studied with Herci & Myles Marsden in Rhode Island. She graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Amsterdam, Holland and performed with Dansgroep Kristina de Châtel. In 1979 she founded The Newport Academy of Ballet which trains young dancers and is home to the IMC. The sold out Dracula at Belcourt Castle is the most recent of her projects for the Island Moving Co., which includes over two dozen ballets. Miki also is the creative force behind Island Moving Co.’s imaginative in-school programs and a corporate teambuilding workshop.

Dancers ~ Meredith Baer, Ron Belger, Brooke DiFrancesco, Shane Farrell, Danielle Genest, Glen Lewis, Christine Sandorfi, Carol Tang, Devon Vu Rottinhaus

Missouri Contemporary Ballet

Artistic Director ~ Karen Mareck Grundy

Celebrating its sixth year, Missouri Contemporary Ballet is a professional dance company based in Columbia, Missouri. MCB focuses on providing opportunities not only for the 9 talented dancers it employs and brings to Columbia, but maintains an even greater mission and responsibility to the surrounding communities by devoting efforts, education and outreach to schools both local and regional, retirement homes and communities lacking arts programming. MCB allows new and emerging choreographers the opportunity to set original works on the company in a professional atmosphere and to see their vision come to life on stage for the benefit and enjoyment of audiences across Missouri.

Karen Mareck Grundy was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV, where she worked as a featured and lead dancer on stage and on television, and under the direction of Ron Lewis, choreographer for Liza Minelli. After moving to Columbia to teach at the Columbia Performing Arts Centre in 2000, Grundy worked as Artistic Director of Cedar Lake II. Students leaving her training have gone on to The Juilliard School, Lines Ballet School, Dance Kaleidoscope and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, as well as Broadway. She formed Missouri Contemporary Ballet in 2006, seeing a need for live dance performance in the central Missouri region. As Artistic Director, she has developed a style that is fresh and innovative while maintaining classical and modern training, and adding her own Vegas twist.

Dancers ~ Elise Eslick, Alex Gordon, Genene McGrath, Caroline Millikin, Fernando Rodriguez, Cassondra Roloff, Jason Stotz

Daniel McCusker Dance Project

Artistic Director ~ Daniel McCusker

The Daniel McCusker Dance Project performs at the Great Friends Dance Festival for the first time this summer, although choreographer Daniel McCusker has made numerous dances for Island Moving Co. McCusker works collaboratively with diverse groups of dancers and make dances for a variety of performance settings. His dances include material that is generated by the performers in response to instructions, visual images/scores, movement problems and other tasks. As material is fragmented, rearranged and passed from one performer to the next, it is personalized and reshaped by the dynamics and phrasing of each dancer. Rather than mirroring given structures, McCusker’s dances embody the decisions and processes by which material was produced.

Dancers ~ Alison Ball, Leah Bergmann, Rebecca Lay, Wanda Strukus, Sarah Baumert

Providence Ballet Theatre

Providence Ballet Theatre is directed by Eva Marie Pacheco, who danced and choreographed for Island Moving Co. from 1994 to 2009. Providence Ballet Theatre was created in 2008 to expand the performance opportunities for students, professional dancers and choreographers. Starting with community performances such as The Pawtucket Arts festival and Fall River's New Boston Road Business Association Halloween and Christmas Strolls, PBT debuted at Rhode Island College. PBT presents original story ballets annually at venues throughout Rhode Island.

Dancers ~ Brittany Carr, Alicia Colantonio, Stephanie DeQuattro, Elizabeth Rogers, Alicia White

2011 Great Friends Dance Residency

This summer, Island Moving Co. inaugurated the Great Friends Touring project, beginning with the residency in Newport of Pasadena Dance Theatre. PDT, under the artistic direction of Cynthia Young, was led for these performances by Artistic Associate Laurence Blake. Deanna Beasom, Seth Belliston, Alissa Halpin & Michael Waldrop joined Laurence in Newport for two weeks of creative time and rehearsal, plus performances for new audiences at the Great Friends Dance Festival. During the residency, Laurence worked with four Island Moving Co. dancers on a fresh duet he hopes will premiere when PDT hosts the Island Moving Co. in Pasadena in the spring of 2012. As the Project continues, Miki Ohlsen will select another company to come to Newport for the residency in summer 2012 and IMC will visit their home theatre in spring 2013. The project uses a trade of resources between small and mid-size ballet companies around the country to increase audiences and visibility for this overlooked constituency. For Island Moving Co., the model moves us closer to several goals: to have a regular spring performance season without the onerous expense of self-producing in new cities; to broaden our visibility around the country and expand our audiences; to provide more touring opportunities for small and midsize ballet companies; and, finally, to connect with other artists around the country presenting new dance, expanding the ballet repertoire and connecting audiences to dance. The Great Friends Residency project has been funded for this pilot year by the Rhode Island Foundation.

Great Dance, Great Times, Great Friends

The Companies 2011

Pasadena Dance Theatre was founded by Evelyn LeMone in 1958. Today PDT offers professional performances and training opportunities to the community through its company, conservatory, and outreach programs. Along with classical productions such as The Nutcracker, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Graduation Ball, and La Fille Mal Gardee, and new works like Cynthia Young’s Beauty and the Beast, PDT presents exciting contemporary choreography from established and emerging choreographers. In its Conversation With the Choreographer series works by Scott Putman, Douglas Nielsen, Bill Evans, Laurence Blake, Jessamyn Lawrence, Andrea Beasom, and Iris Andersen have challenged audiences with bold new concepts and innovative aesthetics of movement.

Artistic Director Cynthia Young received her formal training with the San Francisco Ballet School and the University of Utah. Joining Ballet West she rose to become the youngest principal dancer with a major American ballet company, touring extensively throughout the United States and Europe. She has been affiliated with PDT since 1981 and was appointed Artistic Director in 1996. In 1999, Young opened the Studio Theatre, an intimate performing space, and launched Conversation With the Choreographer to help audiences develop a stronger understanding of contemporary work. In 2007, she produced the first Master DanceMaker program, giving contemporary and classical choreographers an opportunity to create new work in a challenging atmosphere. Ms. Young holds the position of Associate Dean in the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at the California Insti

Associate Director Laurence Blake

Laurence Blake, who will bring Pasadena Dance Theatre to the Great Friends Dance Festival, graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts and danced with Joffrey II, then the Joffrey Ballet, working with choreographers such as Gerald Arpino, Sir Frederick Ashton, Glen Tetley and Twyla Tharp. After moving to Los Angeles, he was a guest artist with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, California Ballet and the Nevada Dance Theatre. He was resident choreographer for Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, Hawaii Ballet Theatre and now Pasadena Dance Theatre, where he serves as Associate Artistic Director. His choreography has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Lester Horton Dance Award. In 1998 he received the Regional Dance America National Choreography Plan Award for his ballet Hollberg Suite and he received an individual artist grant from the Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division for his collaboration with composer Cary Belling.

Bodies of Water 2010

Island Moving Co. has commissioned new work and presented dance in Newport, RI and on tour for almost 30 years. Artistic Director Miki Ohlsen is noted for her adept collaborations, including groundbreaking site specific works such as her Newport Nutcracker at Rosecliff and Dracula at Belcourt Castle. The Company has commissioned over 75 works, from company members as well as guest choreographers such as Colin Connor, Daniel McCusker, Noemie Lafrance, Joanna Haigood, Kelly Ann Sloan, Rick McCullough and Monica Bill Barnes.

Always interested in the work of other companies and always open to new models, the Company this year inaugurates the Great Friends Dance Residency, which builds on the success of its Great Friends Dance Festival, presented at the 1699 Great Friends Meeting House in Newport, RI. At the Great Friends New York performances, Miki Ohlsen will announce the resident company for the festival in July. This company will join eight other companies in 2 weeks of performance and creation in Newport and will host Island Moving Co. at their home theatre in the spring of 2012. The residency is funded by the Rhode Island Foundation as a new model for midsized dance companies to tour and expand audiences.

Miki Ohlsen has been the Artistic Director of the Island Moving Co. since its inception in 1982.

She studied with Herci & Myles Marsden in Rhode Island. She graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Amsterdam, Holland and performed with Dansgroep Kristina de Châtel. In 1979 she founded The Newport Academy of Ballet which trains young dancers and is home to the IMC. The sold out Dracula at Belcourt Castle is the most recent of her projects for the Island Moving Co., which includes over two dozen ballets. Miki also is the creative force behind Island Moving Co.’s imaginative in-school programs and a corporate teambuilding workshop.

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance

Cherylyn Lavagnino, Artistic Director

Cherylyn Lavagnino

Lavagnino has choreographed over thirty ballets in the past fifteen years, and since 2000 most of these have been created for her contemporary ballet company, Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance. The company has been presented by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church and "Inside/Out" at Jacob’s Pillow numerous times, and at Kaatsbaan International Dance Center. They have been featured in the Dancenow/NYC Festival and during The Joyce Theater's "Evening Stars" series, and have performed at Symphony Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Colloquium Contemporary Dance Exchange, The Field, Dancenow/NYC at John Jay College Theater, and "Ballet Builders" at Florence Gould Hall. They have participated in Company Residencies at Vermont Academy and Lyndon Institute (Lyndonville, VT), The Yard at Martha's Vineyard in 2008 and 2010, and in a SILO Artist Residency through Dancenow/NYC. They received a space grant from Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2006. The Company’s distinguished dancers have performed with the Hong Kong International Ballet, ODC, The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Lucinda Childs, Doug Elkins, and many others. Many of the ballets in the Company's repertoire were created in collaboration with composers Scott Killian, Jane Chung, Andy Teirstein, and Kyle Olson.Independently, Lavagnino has created original ballets for Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton University, Booker T. Washington Performing and Visual Art High School, Kutztown University, and the Monadnock Music Festival. She was resident choreographer at The Yard at Martha's Vineyard in 2000. Through her company, she is the recipient of a 2008 and 2009 Manhattan Community Arts Fund awarded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Live Music for Dance Grant from the American Music Center in 2009. She also received a Tisch Faculty Artistic Development grant in both 2006 and 2009.

As a performer, Lavagnino toured nationally as a soloist with the Pennsylvania Ballet with engagements at New York City Center and BAM. She also worked with the San Diego Ballet, Arizona Ballet Theatre, and Ballet Teatro del Espacio in Mexico City. She has performed in a range of classical repertoire and contemporary work by choreographers such as Balanchine, John Butler, Hans Van Manen, and Tere O’Connor. The diversity of her experience as a performer has energized the dialogue she creates between the classical and the contemporary with her choreography for Cheylyn Lavagnino Dance.

Lavagnino teaches professional ballet internationally as a guest artist and in several NYC studios. She has taught at the Paul Taylor Intensive (NYC), at Bates Dance Festival, at Jacob’s Pillow, and taught daily company class for the Lyon Opera Ballet. She is currently serving as Chair of the Tisch Dance Department at NYU and has been a full-time member of the faculty since 1987, directing Tisch’s Second Avenue Dance Company for 14 years. In recognition of her superior work, she was awarded New York University’s prestigious David Payne Carter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003.

Dancers ~ Sarah Bek, Selina Chau, Justin Flores, Julia Mayo , Patrick ONeill

John-Mark Owen

John- Mark Owen

John-Mark Owen began his ballet training in 1994 under the direction of Jean Evans Weaver in Macon, GA. He received a full scholarship in 1997 to attend the prestigious Chautauqua Institute where he studied with Jean-Pierre Bonnefueax, Patricia McBride, and Violet Verdy. From there he attended Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts before he was invited to join Nashville Ballet as a trainee in 1998. Under the direction of Paul Vasterling, while there he enjoyed dancing in many ballets including Vasterling’s “Remnants of Light”, “The Firebird”, “Robin Hood”. “Pop!”, and “Dracula” as well as Lynn Taylor-Corbett’s “Appearances”, and Trey McIntyre’s “Aliss in Wonderland”. He joined Ohio Ballet in 2000 and toured the country performing ballets by Laura Dean, Heinz Poll, Alonzo King and Anne-Marie D’angelo to name a few.After working with Peter Powlous and Zanne Colton at the Augusta Ballet he joined American Repertory Ballet under the direction of Graham Lustig. Also a guest artist with several companies around the Southeast his portrayal of Dracula for the Greenville Ballet earned critical acclaim. He danced with Ballet NY under the direction of Judith Fugate and Medhi Bahiri for four seasons. While there, he performed Balanchine’s “Who Cares?”, Stanton Welch’s “Orange”, Alan Hineline’s “Quartet 2”, and Toni Pimble’s “Two’s Company” as well as others. He has worked with Dances Patrelle under the direction of Francis Patrelle for five seasons, dancing leading roles in Patrelle’s “American Dreamer,” “The Yorkville Nutcracker,” “Black, Blue, and Bartok,” “Is That All There Is?” the title character in “Murder at the Masque; The casebook of Edgar Allen Poe,” “Double Martini” and Mr. Patrelle’s newest work “212” set to the music of Robert Sirota.

Dancers ~ Josh Christopher, Grant Dettling, Katie Keith-Dettling, Kerry Shea, Julie Voshell

Saifan Shmerer | SASSON

Saifan Shmerer, Artistic Director

SASSON Right/Left Behind

Saifan Shmerer is geographically located in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, emotionally trapped between fantasy and logic and psychically road-tripping between matter and the moon. Her muscle memory contains 19 years of ballet training, tutus and pointe shoes, 4 years of hip-hop and jazz (including Thriller and the solo from Flashdance), 6 (plus) years of “modern,” improvisational practice and performance theory. Her intellectual capacity is threatening to max out at 14,562 GB of radical anti-racist feminism(s), childhood memories, intensive personal inquiry, 6 years of conversational Spanish, the kinesthetic dynamics of quality espresso and latte art, her grandmother’s pie crust recipe and the names of her 11 cats (some deceased). Saifan graduated from Eugene Lang College in May 2008, and was the 2008-09 recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship at Dance Theater Workshop. In April of 2010, Saifan Shmerer | SASSON premiered her first NYC season, with Right/Left Behind at The Tank. She is currently performing and perambulating under the moniker SASSON.

Saifan Shmerer|SASSON is a pick-up, collaborative effort of post-post-modern dance on the rocks with a twist. SASSON's work is concerned with “the state of things” in any and all of the following departments: the world, love, dreams, the economy, drag, academia, gynecology, language, history/herstories, sex, imaginary domains, time, power, (mis)representation, performativity, sugar and bodies. In April of 2010, SASSON performed its first NYC season to a sold-out audience at The Tank.

Dancers ~ Lillie DeArmon, Becca Cardwell, Heather Freedman, Emily Skillings & Saifan Shmerer

Adrienne Westwood/ VIA Dance Collaborative

Adrienne Westwood

Adrienne is a Brooklyn based dance artist. In 2003, she co-founded VIA Dance Collaborative when awarded the eight-month Kenan Fellowship at Lincoln Center Institute. Her choreography has been presented at Jacob's Pillow, the CCN-Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy, France), The WUK (Vienna), the McCallum Theater (California), and the East Street Theater (Massachusetts). Her work has also been presented widely in New York, at spaces including Joyce SoHo and Dance Theater Workshop (DanceNow/NYC), Dance New Amsterdam, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and Dixon Place. Lullaby in Surrealism, her last evening-length work with designers Seth Easter and Jim Briggs, was presented at the Ailey Citigroup Theater and Jacob's Pillow in 2008-2009. Record, their most recent evening-length endeavor, will premiere in NYC in Spring 2012. Adrienne's choreography has been supported by grants including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Fund for Creative Communities and Manhattan Community Arts Fund, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and by space grants from One Arm Red in DUMBO (artist in residence, 2010), the Chen Dance Center, the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, and Summer Stages Dance (Concord, Massachusetts). Her choreography has received finalist awards in both the Island Moving Company Choreography Competition and the McCallum Theater Dance Under the Stars Choreographic Competition. Adrienne is currently a lecturer at University of the Arts in Philadelphia and has been visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at SUNY Fredonia, artist in residence at University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) and Performática (Puebla, Mexico); New York teaching includes DNA Modern Guest Artist Series, CLASSCLASSCLASS, and Lincoln Center Institute. She has also danced for Helen Simoneau since 2006. She completed her MFA in dance on fellowship through Hollins University/The American Dance Festival in 2010 and holds a BFA from UNCSA. Other upcoming projects include a Blank Canvas Residency at The Firkin Crane in Cork, Ireland and topos, topio, curated by Donna Faye Burchfield, in the Philly Fringe Festival. And, she and husband Seth Easter are expecting a baby in November!
Dancers ~ Jun Eun Kim, Kathryn Logan, Helen Simoneau, Jacob Slominski

RoxanneLola MovementMachine

Anne Zuerner, Artistic Director

Anne Zuerner Lighthouse

Anne Zuerner is from Rhode Island and began her dance training with Miki Ohlsen and Mary Beth Murphy at Newport Academy of Ballet. She received a BA in dance from Barnard College in 2002. In 2007, she founded RoxanneLola MovementMachine to devote more time to her choreographic projects and has since created eight works for her company. Anne has received two grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council and a fellowship from Summer Stages Dance for her work. As a dancer, Anne has performed with Island Moving Company (apprentice), Anna Myer and Dancers, and David Parker and the Bang Group. Anne also teaches for Lincoln Center Institute and Cynthia King Dance Studio.

RoxanneLola MovementMachine is a Brooklyn based contemporary dance company founded in 2007 and led by Anne Zuerner. The company presents unique choreography characterized by an original dance vocabulary that draws on ballet and modern dance forms, mixing the raw and the formal, the theatrical and the abstract. RoxanneLola's work has been presented by various venues in New York City such as DNA and Triskelion Arts and has been supported by grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council.
Dancer ~ Anne Zuerner

Island Moving Co * PO Box 746 * Newport, RI * 02840 * 401.847.4470