Irvine Fellowships in Dance

1998 Irvine Fellows in Dance

Joe Goode, based in San Francisco, has choreographed and produced numerous dance theater works for his own company, Joe Goode Performance Group, and for other dance companies including Zenon Dance Company in Minneapolis and Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Ballet. He is recipient of numerous grants and awards including choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, and a National Dance Residency Program grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. During his grant period as an Irvine Fellow in Dance, Mr. Goode will concentrate on the development of a new work, Gender Heroes, which will integrate storytelling, voice and dancing in a new dance play.
Contact: Joe Goode www.joegoode.org
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Margaret Jenkins, a native San Franciscan, has an extensive history of dancemaking and teaching dance in the Bay Area, across the country, and around the world. As a member of the faculty of the Merce Cunningham Studio for twelve years, she served as Mr. Cunningham’s special assistant, teaching and restaging his works for companies in Europe and the United States until 1977. Since 1970, she has created over 80 works for her own company, the San Francisco-based Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, as well as receiving commissions from companies including New Dance Ensemble, Repertory Dance Theatre, and the Oakland Ballet. Her collaborators over the years, in addition to her company members, have included Terry Allen, Paul Dresher, Alvin Curran, Rinde Eckert, Bruce Nauman, the Kronos Quartet, and most recently actor Olympia Dukakis. Her numerous grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Dance Residency Project grant, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Award of Honor. Ms. Jenkins will use her Irvine Fellowship funds to launch a new exploration of her work through the design of a three-part program of forums in three distinct venues, wherein she will assemble a small community of artsts for artistic development in shared residencies. Contact: Margaret Jenkins www.mjdc.org
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C.K. Ladzekpo, based in Oakland, has combined a career as a performer, choreographer and composer with teaching and extensive scholarly research into African Performing Arts. He is a member of a family of African musicians and dancers who traditionally serve as lead drummers and composers among the Anlo-Ewe people of southeastern Ghana in West Africa. In 1973, Mr. Ladzekpo founded, and to this day directs, the African Music and Dance Ensemble, a Bay Area touring ensemble of musicians and dancers that has performed extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe. He is co-recipient, with his brothers, of two National Endowment for the Arts choreography fellowships. Mr. Ladzekpo will use his Irvine Fellowship in Dance to travel to West Africa for research and field work to create a new work, Lamentation for Freedom Fighters, which he will present in the African Choreographers’ Forum to be produced in Berkeley in 2000.
Contact: C.K. Ladzekpo www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/~ladzekpo
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La Tania is based in the northern California community of Willits. A Flamenco dancer and choreographer who learned her craft in Spain, La Tania started her own company in Madrid in 1991 and brought it to the United States in 1993. She is recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Council choreographer fellowships, a Meet The Composer Choreographer-Composer project grant, and a Djerassi Foundation Resident Artist grant. Her Irvine Fellowship will be used to research and develop a new work, Passage of the Muse, in collaboration with visual artist Judith Diem and music director Juan Antonio.
Contact: La Tania www.latania-flamenco.com
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Donald McKayle, resides in Laguna Beach. His distinguished career in dance includes choreography, direction, writing, education and performance in dance, theater, film, recordings and television. He has choreographed numerous works for companies in the United States, Canada, Europe and South America. His dances live in the repertories of companies including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Cleveland San Jose Ballet and the Limon Dance Company. Mr. McKayle’s numerous awards and recognitions include five Tony nominations, an Emmy nomination, the Capezio Award, the Dance/USA Honors, the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, a choreography fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and, for work with The Limon Dance Company, a National Dance Residency Project grant. Working through the auspices of the Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Mr. McKayle will use his Irvine Fellowship to research and develop Story Dance Theater, a theatrical exploration of the myths and legends of indigenous peoples.
Contact: Donald McKayle www.dance.arts.uci.edu/dfacMcKayle
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Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, who relocated to Los Angeles from Cambodia in 1991, trained in classical Cambodian dance at the School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. She was a member of the dance department faculty at the School of Fine Arts, and was a principle dancer with the Classical Dance Company of Cambodia. Since establishing her own company, Dance Celeste, she has performed and offered residencies in venues including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the International Festival of Masks, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Dance Kaleidoscope. She has received funding from the City of Los Angels Cultural Affairs Department, the Fund for Folk Culture, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Ms. Shapiro will use her Irvine Fellowship support to research and develop William Shakespeare’s Othello as a Cambodian dance drama.
Contact: Sophiline Cheam Shapiro www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/cambodia/shapiro
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Anthony Shay, based in Los Angeles, is a specialist in traditional dance. A founder of AMAN Folk Ensemble, and founder/artistic director of AVAZ International Dance Theatre, Shay has received five National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholarships during his extensive career. In addition to his work as a dancer, choreographer and musician, Shay is an educator whose contributions to traditional dance scholarship have been published in Dance Research Journal, Oxford Encylopedia of Dance, Visual Anthropology, and Iranian Studies Journal. An edited form of his doctoral dissertation from University of California, Riverside, on solo improvised dance in the Iranian world, will soon be published. Mr. Shay’s activities as an Irvine Fellow will focus on three research trips to regions of the world that are either saturated with Islamic images and atmosphere, or hold important collections of Islamic art.
Contact: Anthony Shay www.avazinternationaldance.org/shay
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Lula Washington, based in Los Angeles, is resident choreographer and artistic director of the Lula Washington Dance Theatre. Her background in dance includes training with Donald McKayle and R’Wanda Lewis, dancing in films and television, and performing on tour with Al Greene and Cher. As a choreographer, she is known for her unique blend of African, modern and ballet techniques in works rooted in the urban community experience. She has received a choreography fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and, in 1997, was one of five women honored with the first Dance Woman/Living Legend Award. Commissions for her work have come from AT&T, Opera Pacific, Lincoln Center, El Camino College, the Ford Foundation, and the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts. Ms. Washington will use her Irvine Fellowship to undertake musical and studio research in preparation for the creation of Rite of Spring 2000, scheduled to premiere at Royce Hall in 2000.
Contact: Erwin or Lula Washington www.lulawashington.com
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1999 Irvine Fellows In Dance

Remy Charlip resides in San Francisco. His distinguished career spans over five decades. His professional work includes dancing with and costume designing for, among others, Charles Weidman, Merce Cunningham, and Donald McKayle. Mr. Charlip has designed textiles, book and jacket covers, and children’s picture books for many years, and has had 29 books published. His company, The International All-Star Dance Company, has toured all over the world. Included in his list of distinguished awards and honors is the first 3-year NEA grant, and the first artist-in-residency for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Mr. Charlip will use his Irvine Fellowship support to create large-scale sculptural objects and paintings of dances to operate as part of an interactive dance-visual arts exhibition that will include both professional dancers and non-experienced visitors. This will be an extension of Mr. Charlip’s ongoing Airmail Dances, but at a much larger scale with higher visibility, and will serve as a public consolidation of the work he has been doing for many years. www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/970623/charlip
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Joanna Haigood, based in San Francisco,specializes in creating dances that use natural, architectural, and cultural environments as a point of departure for movement and narrative. Her recent work includes NOON, performed suspended off the clocktower of the San Francisco Ferry Building, Psalm, performed at the Pope’s Palace in Avignon, France, and Invisible Wings, performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts. Ms. Haigood is the recipient of many honors and awards, including those bestowed by the California Arts Council, the NEA, the Gerbode Foundation, and The John Simon Guggenhiem Memorial Foundation. Ms. Haigood will use her Fellowship funding for the research and development phase of her new performance project Picture…. Her activities will include collaborating with young people from three different communities across the country in the creative process. www.zaccho.org
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Jacques Heim, a native of Paris, France,now resides with his company in Southern California. Heim was the artistic director for a street theatre group in Paris before earning his BFA in Theatre, Dance, and Film from Middlebury College in Vermont. Heim also holds a Certificate for Analysis and Criticism of Dance from the University of Surrey, England, as well as an MFA in Choreography and Teaching Video for Dance from California Institute for the Arts. Together with his company, Diavolo, Heim works collaboratively to develop work in, on and around outrageous sets and structures. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Martha Hill Choreography Award, three Lester Horton Awards, and the Special Prize of the Jury at the 6 th Saitama International Dance Competition in Japan. Mr. Heim will apply his Fellowship funding to support two apprenticeships with choreographers Jelon Vieira of Dance Brazil and Jeffery Graham Hughes of Ohio Ballet. His goals are to deepen and expand his own dance vocabulary, and strengthen his skills as a lead choreographer and artistic director. www.diavolo.org
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Alonzo King began his professional dance career working with such choreographers and companies as Dance Theatre of Harlem, Bella Lewitzky Dance Company, Harkness Youth Company, and Donald McKayle, among others. A resident of San Francisco, King founded LINES Contemporary Ballet in 1982, now a national touring company. He has also created and staged ballets for The Joffrey Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem. He has ballets in the repertoires of Frankfurt Ballet, Dresden Ballet, BalletMet, Washington Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, and North Carolina Dance Theater. Mr. King is the recipient of the NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship and a grant from the National Dance Residency Program. Mr. King will use his fellowship funds to support a collaboration with musicians from the Central African Republic, in an effort to generate new ballets inspired by the art of the Mbuti. He will travel to Africa and return to San Francisco, drawing on his experiences as a basis for new contemporary choreography. www.linesballet.org
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Rudy Perez, having joined the Judson Dance Theatre in 1962, is considered one of the pioneers of the American postmodern dance movement. He is a dancer, choreographer, performance artist, dance therapist, teacher and mentor, living in Los Angeles. His company, the Rudy Perez Dance Theater, toured throughout the United States and Canada during the 60’s and 70’s. His many commissions include a work created for WGBH’s Dance for Camera program and PBS’ Dance in America. Currently on the faculty of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, he has taught at George Washington, Brown, and Arizona State Universities, Oberlin College, UCLA, and other campuses across the country. Mr. Perez is a recipient of numerous state and national grants and awards from many organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Brody Arts Fund, California Arts Council, and the Cultural Affairs Department of Los Angeles. He has received Lester Horton Awards in the areas of solo performance, teaching, and revival of a work.Mr. Perez’s Fellowship funds will support the development and organization of his existing body of work and artistic practice. He will work with a group of selected dancers to clarify his choreographic and teaching techniques, and will videotape and document these training and choreographic approaches for future reference and use. www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1401&IssueNum=76
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Wendy Rogers resides in Riverside, where she has served on the Dance Department faculty at University of California, Riverside since 1996. Ms. Rogers’ professional career began as a dancer with Margaret Jenkins, while studying at UCLA and UC Berkeley. She later moved to New York, where she studied and taught, choreographed and performed solo work, as well as worked with Carolyn Brown and Sara Rudner, among others. Upon returning to Berkeley, Ms. Rogers founded the Wendy Rogers Dance Company, which toured nationally and internationally during its 13 years of existence. The company received many honors, including the Isadora Duncan Dance Award, ten years of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several grants from various foundations. In 1991, Ms. Rogers began MAKESHIFT dancing, a ten year project involving the creation and development of dances over this extended period of time. Ms. Rogers will apply Fellowship funds to an intensive work retreat to re-investigate and choreograph ensemble dancing. This creative time, with professional dancers, will be used for Ms. Rogers to pursue professional group work after many years of working primarily in solo and duet forms. www.dance.ucr.edu/people/rogers.html
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David Rousseve graduated from Princeton University in 1981, and embarked on a career of dance and theater. He studied with many artists in New York, and included post modern movement forms in his study. He worked as an actor in off Broadway productions and commercial network television while developing his artistic voice and founding his dance/theater company, David Rousseve/REALITY. Since 1989, he has created eleven full-length works which have been commissioned and performed nationally and internationally. Mr. Rousseve has received numerous accolades for his work, including the “Distinguished Alumni Award” from the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, the 1996 CalArts/Alpert Award in Dance, six National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and several foundation fellowships. He was selected as a 1998 Fellow in the Sundance Film Festival’s Screenplay Development Lab. Mr. Rousseve is also a published writer. Irvine Fellowship funding for Mr. Rousseve will be used to investigate dance for the camera, and specifically to learn how to choreograph his own work for the camera. His process will involve a two-week intensive workshop with Nuria Olive-Belles, followed by studio work with dancers and ultimately producing a short work-in-progress dance video. www.wac.ucla.edu/person.php?pid=26
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Linda Sohl-Ellison received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Ohio University, and later earned her Master of Arts Degree from UCLA. In 1981 she formed Rhapsody in Taps, a Los Angeles based touring company featuring seven dancers and five musicians. She has performed alone and with her company, both nationally and internationally, since the company’s inception. Included in Ms. Sohl-Donnell’s many honors are a 1997 Choreography Fellowship from the Public Corporation for the Arts, the Kaleidoscope Festival’s Distinguished California Artist Award, five choreographer’s fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a “Distinguished Professor” Award from Orange Coast College Dance Faculty. Ms. Sohl-Donnell’s teaching career spans over twenty-five years. She will use Fellowship funds to support a choreography project involving tap dance and Balinese Gamelan, in collaboration with the Balinese composer/musician/dancer I Nyoman Wenten. www.rhapsodyintaps.com
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2000 Irvine Fellows In Dance

Lily Cai, a native of Shanghai and former dancer with the Shanghai Opera House, is the founder and artistic director of the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company and the co-founder of Chinese Cultural Productions. While in Shanghai, she trained in Western ballet and studied all of the Chinese dance genres. She obtained a teaching credential from the Beijing Dance Institute in 1983. A resident of San Francisco, she is the recipient of the NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship, the Artist-in-Residence Program from the California Arts Council, and many commissions throughout the Bay Area. Ms. Cai has performed and toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Since 1989, her work has explored how to synthesize dance elements derived from Western ballet, traditional Chinese ethnic dance, American modern dance and technology-based contemporary American stagecraft. Ms. Cai will use Irvine Fellowships In Dance funds to support the creation and development of a new work, Jade Warriors: The Chinese American Dance Spirit. She hopes to deepen her original dance style by travelling to China and researching the roots of Chinese movement, then blending them with her contemporary dance vocabulary, which stems from her experiences as a Chinese American woman. www.ccpsf.org
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Lynn Dally, dancer, choreographer, and master teacher, brings innovative tap dance and live jazz music to the concert stage through Jazz Tap Ensemble (JTE), the professional dance company she co-founded in 1979 in Los Angeles. As its artistic director, Ms. Dally has created over 30 original tap choreographies. She has extensive training in modern dance and tap, and has appeared with JTE at The Kennedy Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Spoleto USA, the Smithsonian Institution, New York’s Joyce Theatre (since 1986), and abroad. She has received choreographic fellowships from the NEA Dance Program since 1976, and is the recipient of NEA Dance Company grants for her work with JTE every single year since 1980. Support has also been strong from the California Arts Council, Los Angeles County and Los Angeles City. Ms. Dally will use Irvine Fellowships In Dance funding to begin to develop a new method of dance making. Through a highly focused series of movement workshops, Ms. Dally will work with gifted dancers specializing in a variety of dance forms. She plans to use these explorations to widen her perspective of dance, and to broaden her field of expression in new and exciting ways. www.jazztapensemble.org
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Born in Calcutta, India at the end of British rule, Chitesh Das was raised and trained in an atmosphere of cultural resurgence and pride, surrounded by master teachers of Indian classical dance, music, poetry, and other fine arts. Mr. Das’ training spans over two decades, and includes a masters in dance from Rabindra Bharati University. He is educated in many Indian dance forms and has performed all over the world. Mr. Das came to the University of Maryland in 1970 on a Whitney Fellowship to teach Kathak and study modern dance and ballet, and has since led the way bringing Indian classical dance to the United States. He is on the faculty of San Francisco State University, where he initiated the first university accredited Kathak course in the country in 1986. Mr. Das will apply his Irvine Fellowships In Dance funding to support research and documentation for his new multi-media work, Sadhana. In an effort to preserve Kathak’s traditional beauty, while helping it to evolve into the 21 st century, Mr. Das will create this work to tell his personal story of growing up in Calcutta during the cultural renaissance of Kathak. Mr. Das will travel to India to collect historic artifacts, stories, and memories of a time gone by, to juxtapose his memories alongside contemporary India. www.kathak.org
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A resident of Kentfield, California, Anna Halprin’s diverse career began with modern dance in New York and evolved into avant-garde theater, movement education and the use of modern myth and ritual, challenging the way dance is conceived and created. She is one of the first people in the contemporary Western world to use dance as both a healing and a performing art, and has researched and directed dances for people challenging cancer and AIDS. Ms. Halprin founded the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop in 1955 and co-founded the Tamalpa Institute in 1978. She is the recipient of yearly choreographic fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Dance Guild Award, among many others. Ms. Halprin will use Irvine Fellowships In Dance funding to support a project that represents the culmination of her many years of experimentation in environmental dance. Adorned with body art inspired by the landscape, her process will combine photographs, video and live performance. Documentation of the project will later be exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals. Through this project, Ms. Halprin hopes to answer pressing questions dealing with the interaction between human movement and the environment that will advance her journey as a dance maker. www.annahalprin.org
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Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Patrick Makuakane has been involved in hula for most of his life. He studied and danced with John Lake and Robert Cazimero, two of the most prominent figures in Hawaiian culture, and performed for national audiences. Mr. Makuakane moved to San Francisco in 1984, and began his own dance company, Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu, in 1985. He founded the Hawaiian Cultural Preservation Association in1998 to teach and promote the language, history, arts and crafts of the Hawaiian culture. A teacher of traditional and contemporary forms of hula, Mr. Makuakane has also developed a new style of hula which blends traditional movements with non-Hawaiian music, extending the boundaries of the form, and bringing hula into a modern setting that reflects present-day influences. Mr. Makuakane is the recipient of a “Profiles of Excellence” Award for outstanding work in the Asian/Pacific Community in San Francisco and an Isadora Duncan Award, among others. With his Irvine Fellowship in Dance funds, Mr. Makuakane will study with a small group of mentors in Hawaii to deepen his knowledge of Hawaiian history and tradition, and to strengthen his foundation in hula. He will also work with a chosen team of technical directors and designers to gain greater understanding and skill in theatrical production. www.naleihulu.org/kumu.htm
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A native of Japan, Oguri began his solo career as an artist of Butoh with master Tatsumi Hijikata, known for pioneering the form in the post World War II era. Oguri 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 nine years, Oguri formed his Los Angeles-based dance company, Renzoku, in 1993. He is the co-founder and artist-in-residence of La Boca, a studio/theater in the Sunshine Mission/Casa de Rosas (the oldest shelter for homeless women in Los Angeles). Oguri teaches and performs worldwide, and has received support from the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Oguri will use Irvine Fellowship in Dance funds for the research, development and performance of Height of Sky, a site-specific dance project that will take place in the deserts of Joshua Tree and in Los Angeles. The project will include six excursions to the desert, where solo and group work will be performed and documented. Performances and exhibitions of this work will also take place in Los Angeles. Through Height of Sky, Oguri will investigate the relationship between dancer and environment, and will explore the development of his identity as a Japanese dancer in America. www.geocities.com/bwlusa//index.html
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A resident of Oakland, California, Amelia Rudolph is an athlete/dancer who incorporates her movement studies of gymnastics, rock climbing, ballet, jazz, modern, improvisation and mountaineering in her choreography. Her early dance training began with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and she has performed with The Dance Brigade, Mark Morris, and Sarah Elgart, among others. She holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in comparative religion. Ms. Rudolph founded her company, Project Bandaloop, in 1991 to explore the intersection of art, ritual, sport and the environment by employing aerial, vertical and horizontal movement. A recipient of numerous awards and commissions, Ms. Rudolph’s work has investigated site-specific dance in Yosemite, the Seattle Space Needle, the Vasco Da Gama tower in Lisbon, Portugal, and various buildings in San Francisco, Houston, Sao Paolo, and Buenos Aires. The work is a marriage of modern dance and rock climbing, culture and nature, mortality and celebration. Ms. Rudolph will use Irvine Fellowship in Dance funds to support a new work that takes her earlier work, Crossing, created and performed in the Sierra Nevada, to an urban performance medium. With her plan will begin a new choreographic investigation of context, incorporating an original musical score and projections of footage from the mountain dances. www.projectbandaloop.org
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Amen Santo was born and raised in Bahia, Brazil, where his training brought him mastery of Afro-Brazilian dance forms including capoeira, candomble, samba, maculele, and their related traditional music and history. He toured internationally with Brazil’s foremost folkloric company, Viva Bahia, before accepting an invitation to New York to work with the Zumbi Cultural Center. Mr. Santo taught in New York and Washington D.C. before relocating to Los Angeles. In 1989, he founded Capoeira Batuque, the longest standing capoeira academy in Southern California, and formed the Ballet Folclorico do Brasil Dance and Music Ensemble. He has choreographed for film, television, and the stage, and is an arts advocate and master teacher who has brought capoeira to students of all ages throughout Los Angeles, the U.S., and the world. He has received support and recognition from the California Arts Council, the Folk Arts Foundation, the World Sokeship Council, and the Martial Arts Hall of Fame, among others. Mr. Santo will use Irvine Fellowship in Dance funds to research and choreograph work that focuses on the connections between the spirit, body, and environment in Afro-Brazilian dance, specifically concentrating on candomble and capoeira. He will travel and study with grand masters in Brazil and Africa. His research will lead to new choreography to be presented in a public performance.
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