Dance: Creation to Performance 2005

Meet the Artists

Read the Press Release (pdf)

Gina Angelique is the co-founder and artistic director of Eveoke Dance Theater in San Diego. A graduate of the UC Irvine Dance Department, Ms. Angelique has created work for Eveoke since 1994. She is the recipient of several prestigious local awards, including three Tommy awards, six annual Top Ten dance awards and 9 Critic’s Choice designations from the San Diego Union Tribune, as well as numerous additional honors for her humanitarian work in the community. Ms. Angelique received a 2004 California DanceMaker Grant from the Irvine Dance in California program. She is the producer of one of the largest annual dance festivals of its kind on the country, the Celebrate Dance Festival in Balboa Park. With her DCP funding, Ms. Angelique will create and produce Rise, a docu-dance based on California women who have risen to environment action due to life and family-threatening environmental abuse. This work will include site-specific improvisational work in the locations where the environmental abuse occurred.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey began her training in Mexican folklore at the Escuela del Ballet Folklorico, under the direction of Amalia Hernandez in Mexico City. Other training includes work with modern and classical ballet dance masters, including Don Hewitt, Don Bondi, and Rudy Perez. In 1992, she co-founded Ballet Folklorico del Pacifico in Los Angeles. Since then, her company has grown to over 40 dancers and musicians and has toured California, New Mexico, North Korea and China. Ms. Gainey currently teaches at Dance Arts Academy under the Children’s Cultural Program, and was recently awarded certificates of recognition from both the City of Los Angeles and the Mexican Cultural Institute, for her immense contributions to the folkloric dance form and the Mexican American community. On behalf of her company, now known as Pacific Dance Company, she has also been awarded grants by the County of Los Angeles, the John Anson Ford Theatres and most recently, a California DanceMaker Grant from the Irvine Dance in California program. With current support from Dance: Creation to Performance, she will create a work that explores the positive ways Spain has culturally influenced Mexico, using dance, music and multi-media.

Tandy Beal is a choreographer, performer, director, writer and teacher. Her professional career began in NYC in the 1960’s, dancing first with Murray Louis, then the Nikolais Dance Theatre. In 1972, she began choreographing and presenting work in Santa Cruz, California, where she has yearly produced new work, workshops and innovative community events. Since then, Ms. Beal has created theatrical work for both circus and concert stage. Her wide-ranging talent has invited many diverse opportunities, including writing and directing for film, performing in improvisational concerts in France with Malou Airoudo and Pina Bausch, creating a concert of dance and theatre for NASA’s SETI Project for Russian and American scientists, and more. She has worked extensively on various opera, TV, MTV and dance/voice projects, including years of collaborative work with Bobby McFerrin. Ms. Beal has received awards from the American Council for the Arts, the New Performance Festival, the National Choreography Project, the National Endowment for the Arts in dance and theatre, including a rare three-year choreography fellowship and a solo theatre fellowship, and several acknowledgements for directing and teaching. With her DCP grant, she will develop HereAfterHere, The Paradise Project, based on human conceptions of afterlife, that will include live and on-line interviews from people of all ages.

Lily Cai began her professional dance training with the Shanghai Opera House, where she studied Russian ballet, Chinese classical dance, and European ethnic dance forms including Flamenco and Mazurka. She immigrated to the United States in 1983 to pursue a career as a choreographer. In 1984, she became the Artistic Director of the Chinese Folk Dance Association, and later founded her own company, the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company. Her goal was to synthesize elements derived from Western ballet, traditional Chinese ethnic dance, American post-modernism and technology-based contemporary American stagecraft. Since 1991, Ms. Cai has been acknowledged with several choreographic awards, including a California Arts Council Choreographers’ Fellowship, an NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship, and two individual artist commissions from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Ms. Cai was awarded an Irvine Fellowship in Dance in 2000, distinguishing her as one of the leading choregraphers in California. With her IDC grant, Ms. Cai will create and produce The Lost of the Red Tasseled Spear, an evening-length work based on the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Chitresh Das is a master Kathak dancer, teacher, choreographer and composer. His creative work contrasts exceptional speed and dynamic rhythms with delicate movement and intricate storytelling. Das has received numerous awards for his work, including an Irvine Fellowship in Dance and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and National Dance Project. He has classical kathak schools in Kolkata, India and California. His California school, Chhandam, is the largest Indian classical dance school in North America and has additional branches in Boston and Toronto, Canada. He has been a guest faculty member at Stanford University. Das was a featured artist in the BBC series, “Around the World in 80 Treasures” in 2005 shown on PBS. His ground-breaking technique, Kathak Yoga, is currently the subject of a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. With his Dance: Creation to Performance grant, he will choreograph and perform in India Jazz Suites, a collaborative exploration of Kathak, Tap, Jazz, and North Indian classical music featuring emerging tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith.

Heidi Duckler is the founder and artistic director of Collage Dance Theatre, which she established in 1987. Named “the reigning queen of L.A. site-specific dance-performance” by the Los Angeles Times, she has choreographed over 40 original dance works at unique sites throughout Southern California, including the historic Lincoln Heights Prison, the Los Angeles River, the Subway Terminal Building and the Herald Examiner Building. Her work has been presented at California Plaza, Highways, the Ivy Station, Dance Kaleidoscope, Summer Nights at the Ford, the Los Angeles County Music of Art, libraries, locker rooms, and empty swimming pools. Ms. Duckler serves as visiting lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, Art Center College of Design and Claremont College. She has received numerous awards for her work, including a California Arts Council Performing Arts Fellowship in Choreography, a Lester Horton Award for Outstanding Artist and Choreography, a California DanceMaker Grant from the Irvine Dance in California program, and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist’s Fellowship. With her DCP funding, Ms. Duckler plans to create and present a site-specific dance performance with chorus at the Los Angeles Police Academy, including
participation by the LAPD K-9 Corps and SWAT units.

Janice Garrett is a choreographer and dance educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1990, following a 10-year residency in New York where she performed and toured as a member of Dan Wagoner and Dancers, she began a freelance career – choreographing and teaching throughout the U.S. and abroad. In January, 2004, Dance Magazine named her among their top “Twenty-Five to Watch.” Her work has been presented throughout California and Europe. She is the recipient of numerous choreographic grants, including those from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Gerbode Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Atlantis Research Foundation, and the Robin Howard Foundation. Ms. Garrett has been a guest artist at educational institutions throughout the U.S., including New York University, Mills College, Univeristy of California at Berkeley, and Bates College. With her DCP funding, Ms. Garrett will create Margin of Error, exploring the inherent ambiguities of body language, gesture, and facial expressions as a means of illuminating both the connections and separations at the heart of human relationships.

Joe Goode, based in San Francisco, is a choreographer, writer and director, producing numerous dance theater works for his company, Joe Goode Performance Group (JPGP), since 1986. He is best known as an innovator in the field of dance, spoken word, and song. JGPG has performed annually in the Bay Area and has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, a National Dance Residency Program grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Heritage Award from California Dance Educators Asociation, an Irvine Fellowship in Dance, and awards for excellence from the American Council on the Arts and the Business Arts Council/San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. With support from the Dance: Creation to Performance program, Mr. Goode will create Stay Together, inspired by the 2004 gay marriage phenomenon, set to the music of Michael Tilson Thomas.

Jo Kreiter has worked in San Francisco and throughout the U.S. for the past seventeen years as a dancer, choreographer, aerialist, and improvisational artist. In 1996, she formed her company, Flyaway Productions, to solidify her commitment to apparatus-based choreography. With a background in political science, she creates performances that infuse social and political content into the dance arena. She seeks to incorporate risk, spectacles and social potency in her work. Her company has performed at the Boston Dance Umbrella’s International Aerial Festival, Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance, Duke University, The Aerial Dance Festival in Colorado, Sushi Performance Space, the Improvisation Festival/NY, and in local Bay Area theaters. Ms. Kreiter has taught many residencies and workshops through the country, as well. Her awards and honors include a 2005 Arts Presenters Next Steps Grant, a 2003 Rockefeller/MAP grant, a Special Recognition Award from Precita Eyes Mural Center for “Mission Wall Dances” (partially funded by a California DanceMaker Grant), a $50,000 commissioning grant from the Gerbode Foundation, among many others. With support from DCP, she will create a site-specific work suspending dancers within and on a billboard, exploring the complexity of representing the female body in public space.

Eric Kupers is a dance/theater artist who brings extensive training in an array of movement forms to his work. He co-founded Dandelion Dancetheater in 1996 in the Bay Area. His work with Dandelion has been presented locally, as well as in Los Angeles, New York, Minnesota, Hawaii, Montana, and internationally in Scotland and India. Kupers is currently in residence at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts working on the continued development of The Undressed Project. With his DCP grant, he will create Anicca, furthering his work from The Undressed Project, addressing our culture’s relationship to bodies and body image. Anicca will be co-produced in San Francisco and will be shown in Los Angeles in the summer of 2006.

Patrick Makuakane is the founder and director of the Hawaiian dance company Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu. Born and raised in Honolulu, with roots in the traditions and fundamentals of hula, Makuakane’s artistry brings new dimensions and creative evolution to this traditional form. He began his career as a principal dancer with Na Kamalei, a male hula dance troupe in Hawai, with whom he danced for 10 years. In 1985, Mr. Makaukane founded his company in San Francisco. Since then, Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu has performed to critical acclaim throughout California, in Las Vegas, Reno, New Orleans, Honolulu and New York City. His work has garnered many honors and awards, including the Bay Area Isadora Duncan award and a Profiles in Excellence Award from KGO-TV for outstanding work in San Francisco’s Asian/Pacific community. Mr. Makuakane was honored with an Irvine Fellowship in Dance and the Gerbode Fellowship Award for recognition of his significant artistic accomplishments in the dance field and to support continued growth as a choreographer. In 2003, Makuakane was officially bestowed with the title of Kumu Hula (Master of Hula) at a ceremonial graduation in Honolulu. During his DCP grant cycle, he will create Daughters of Haumea, a theatrical dance production exploring the roles of women in traditional Hawaiian society.

Muisi Kongo-Malonga has been the artistic director of Fua Dia Congo since 2003. She was born into the world of Congolese dance and culture as the eldest daughter of Malonga Casquelourd (master drummer, dancer, and choreographer). Ms. Malonga served as a principle dancer for Fua Dia Congo for over ten years. In addition to dancing, she served as the Assistant Director of Ballet Kizingu Youth Ensemble, a project of Fua Dia Congo, before assuming the position as artistic director. Ms. Malonga is currently pursuing an advanced degree in political science and international relations, as well as continuing the cultural legacy that her parents began over thirty years ago. With support from DCP, she will create Kongo-volution, an epic dance-drumming theater performance that will explore the cultural migration, evolution, and fusion of traditional and contemporary Congolese rhythms and dance.

KT Nelson, co-artistic director of ODC/San Francisco, joined the company in 1976, after attending Oberlin College. Nelson is originally from Los Angeles, where at an early age she trained in aikido and music composition. Since 1973, she has trained in modern and ballet under numerous teachers. ODC/San Francisco is known throughout the country for its athleticism, passion, and intellectual depth. As one of its three resident choreographers, Ms. Nelson is considered among America’s finest contemporary women choreographers. Her work has been seen around the world, most notably at New York City’s Joyce Theater, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Olympic Arts Festival, the Spoleto Festival and the New York International Arts Festival. Nelson has been awarded 3 Isadora Duncan awards and the California Educators Artist Award. Ms. Nelson will apply her DCP funding to the creation of The Water Project, a new work to be performed at various sites around ODC’s new dance center in San Francisco.

Oguri began his career as a dancer inspired by Tatsumi Hijikata, the creator of the butoh dance form in post-World War II Japan. He joined famed dancer Min Tanaka’s company, Mai-Juku, in 1985, and for five years lived, worked and helped establish Tanaka’s farm outside of Tokyo. A resident of Southern California for fifteen years, Oguri formed his Los Angeles-based dance company in 1993. He is the co-founder and artist-in-residence of La Boca, a studio/theater in the Sunshine Mission/Casa de Rosas. Oguri teaches and performs worldwide, and received support from the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. He received an Irvine Fellowship in Dance in 2000 to create a site-specific dance project including many caravans to Joshua Tree National Park, exploring the relationship between dancer and environment. With his DCP grant, Oguri will create Caddy! Caddy! Caddy!, an evening-length work depicting “individual” and “place” concepts as revealed in William Faulkner’s literature.

Mythili Prakash began training in the classical dance form of Bharata Natyam at the age of 8. She studied with renowned dancer/choreographer Viji Prakash. Since 1990, she has toured her work through out the United States, Canada, Europe and India. Prakash is the principal dancer in the Shakti Dance Company, dancing leading roles and featured solos. In 2000, she received the “Spirit of Youth MGR Best Dancer Award” from The Music Academy in Chennai, India. Other awards include the Kohinoor Award for Excellence in Arts and Culture and the National Advancement for the Arts Award. She was the youngest dancer invited as a performer and panelist at the Navodaya Festival in Toronto, Canada, and has been invited to perform at many other distinguished festivals, including the “Indian Dance in the Diaspora” in Houston and Chicago. With her DCP grant, Ms. Prakash will create Stree Katha, featuring the stories of five powerful women from the Indian epic, The Ramayama.

Reginald Ray Savage began his professional dance career with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. His study with the legendary Dunham company alumni made a permanent imprint on his teaching style and choreography. Later Savage moved to Chicago and danced for several professional dance companies there, as well as touring in “The Music Man” and “A Chorus Line.” Mr. Savage came to California in 1989 and founded Savage Jazz Dance Company in 1992. Since then, he has choreographed over 100 works inspired by the music of Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. In 1993, Savage was awarded a Creative Artists Fellowship in Choreography and in 2002 he received a Goldie Award for Outstanding Artistic Contributions to the Community. Savage is the Department Chair of Dance at the Oakland School for the Arts. With his DCP award, he will create a new suite of works exploring the music of Miles Davis for production at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Wendy Rogers has choreographed and performed contemporary dances for
over thirty years, residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and now in Riverside where she joined the dance faculty at UC Riverside in 1996. Her work explores dance as an architecture of action, investigating the ways that people shape space, and the ways that place shapes human movement and interaction. Rogers approaches choreography as an ongoing process in which performances temporarily frame an evolving body of work. Numerous awards and honors include an Irvine Fellowship in Dance, as well as Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc. and the National Endowment for the Arts. With funding from Dance: Creation to Performance, Ms. Rogers will create “a meeting place,” a work for 6 dancers using compositional practices from the work of architect Julia Morgan. The work will be performed at various Morgan sites.

Erica Chong Shuch is an emerging choreographer, director, performer and teacher living and working in San Francisco. She graduated in 1997 from UC Santa Cruz with a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater with an emphasis in dance. She received her MFA in Creative Inquiry from the New College of California. Shuch is a co-founder/co-director and faculty member with the Experimental Performance Institute, a multi-disciplinary performing arts program in residence at the New College of California. She teaches at the Intersection for the Arts’ Alternative Theater Institute as well. She is the founder and artistic director of the ESP Project, whose mission is to create articulate, constantly evolving performance languages that reflect the questions and feelings of contemporary society. Ms. Shuch was chosen as the featured dance artist for the 2004 APAture Festival at SOMArts, and she received a 2003 GOLDIE Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian for her work with the ESP Project. With support from Dance: Creation to Performance, she will create Orbit, blending scientific research, movement, and narrative.

Cheng-Chieh Yu is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance/Choreography in UCLA’s
Department of World Arts & Cultures. Her post-modern choreography is grounded in an aesthetic influenced by Chinese movement disciplines and explores themes of diasporas and gender. Her dances have been produced in NYC and Los Angeles, as well as internationally in China, Singapore, and Taiwan. She has received a fellowship from the UC Humanities Research Institute and grants from the Cultural Council and the National Endowment of Arts and Cultures of Taiwan, the Jerome Foundation, the Durfee Foundation, DTW Suitcase Fund and UC Institute for Research in the Arts. From 1989-1991, Ms. Yu toured as a company member with Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan and from 1991-2001, she was based out of NYC and danced with the The Solomons Co. Dance, Jose Limon, Bebe Miller and the Ralph Lemon Dance Project. Ms. Yu plans to create Deflecting Intention/The Swallow Touches The Water, bringing together martial arts-influenced Chinese movement forms and post-modern sensibility. The cast will represent Los Angeles County Chinese diaspora communities.