American Dance Festival | July 14, 2007 Acts to Follow

July 14, 2007, 8 pm
Baldwin Auditorium
FREE and open to the public (general admission)

After the performance, take your shoes off and join us on stage for a Dance Party as we celebrate five years of discovering dance made locally!

2007 Acts To Follow | June 16 | June 30 | July 14

A native North Carolinian, Autumn Mist Belk earned her B.A. in Dance and Studio Art from the University of Alabama and her M.F.A. in Dance from the University of Maryland. Belk is currently the assistant director of the Dance Program at North Carolina State University and also works as a visual artist. Her choreography has been presented by the NC State Dance Program, Celebrate the Arts Festival, Union Art Gallery, Dance Alabama!, North Carolina Dance Project, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Maryland Opera Studio, and in several independent concerts along the east coast. Belk has exhibited her visual artwork in various galleries in the southeastern U.S. and in 2005 she produced a limited edition book showcasing visual artwork from her full-evening project of dance and video art, code. Currently, Belk spends her creative energy editing Product, her latest dance film, and working on Work, a gallery exhibition of static visual art intertwined with related live dance performances.
Speak. Sign. Shake. Sprint? With each formality seemingly more ridiculous than the last, “Regulation” turns eight energetic women into a mass of semi-clone brides as they jump through the hoops surrounding both marriage and divorce. Reduced to children’s games and the drills of high school gym class, these women follow the necessary rules, laws, and customs to the brink of exhaustion.

Photo by Autumn Mist Belk.

Carson Efird is a collaborative artist in the realms of dance, theater, and design in Raleigh. She honed her physical craftsmanship at Bennington College in Vermont and received her B.A. in June 2005. For the past several years, she has been working with actors, dancers, and non-dancers alike, generating impulse-driven interactive movement in site-specific and theatrical landscapes. Her most recent projects include Road to Paradise, commissioned by Bennington College, which premiered in September 2006 at the First Annual Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, MA, and “A Part,” commissioned by Meredith College’s Affiliate Artist Program, which premiered in January 2007 at the North Carolina Dance Festival in Raleigh. Efird’s work has been presented as part of White Wave’s DUMBO Dance Festival, Brooklyn, NY; Danspace Project’s After School Series at St. Mark’s Church, New York City; and the American College Dance Festival Association’s New England gala performance, among others. She also danced with the Vermont-based Emergent Improvisation Project, directed by Susan Sgorbati, and North Carolina-based Immediate Theatre, directed by Katherine Ferrier. Aside from her artistic endeavors, Carson is dedicated to the practice of yoga and recently opened her own studio, YogAsana South, where she teaches.
“A Part” (2007) is a female duet that uses the grandiose connotations associated with opera to reinforce and deconstruct facades of womanly strength and vulnerability. Raleigh musician Joe Westerlund created the original sound score in response to the movement.

Even Exchange Dance Theater is a professional dance company dedicated to creating work rooted in collaborative process, progressive artistic vision, and technical excellence. Informing this work are “even exchanges” with community members and artistic partners who expand and enrich our creative process. Even Exchange Dance Theater company artists have collectively danced for over 160 years and have degrees from New York University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Eastern Carolina University, North Carolina State University, Meredith College, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Always learning, their work is informed by their training in art, design, yoga, Body Mind Centering, tai chi, contact improvisation, music, engineering, and a thriving sense of humor. Members of the company teach, perform, improvise, and choreograph together and individually.
Even Exchange will present “Gleaning,” which is based on research within a larger project entitled Food for Thought. As part of this research, the company and invited community members went gleaning, which is the picking of produce leftover from the initial harvest. Generally what is left after an initial harvest does not meet commercial standards because of physical appearance: a potato is too big or too small, for example. The dance work is an extrapolation of the motions from the gleaning experience as well as the emotions associated with judging what is “malformed” or “substandard.”

Courtney Greer graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Contemporary Dance, holds a certification in Pilates (Bodyworks, The Treatment and Prevention Center, Physical Mind Institute). She serves as a Dance Educator at Enloe High School in Raleigh, where she directs the Enloe Dance Ensemble. Her other teaching credits include North Carolina Governor's School, NC State University and the NC School of the Arts. She has performed with Laura Dean Musicians and Dancers, Tiffany Rhynard and Dancers, Postcards Project with Carol Finley, Chavasse Dance and Performance, Immediate Theatre Collective, and NickWalk Dance Project.
Greer will present two pieces at Acts to Follow. “without were fightings, within were fears” is a quintet exploring the images and nature of the poem “Blackberry Picking” by Seamus Heaney. “Why Fall When You Can Stand In It?” is a duet performed by Greer and Joan Nicholas-Walker.

Photo by Dick Johnson.

Julie Mulvihill is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she earned an M.A. in Dance Studies. Julie is now the Administrative Director for Even Exchange Dance Theatre in Raleigh, as well as an adjunct professor at UNCG, teaching dance histories, theory courses, jazz, and ballroom. She has danced with Birmingham Ballet and competed professionally in American Rhythm ballroom competitions. Julie now dances for various choreographers in North Carolina as well as independently creating her own work. She is interested in many aspects of dance art and combines her research ideas into textual performance projects. Julie has taught all kinds of dance to all kinds of people.
“Door Dance” is an examination of coming, going, opportunity, and connections made or missed. A portion of the dance is based off of a movement and verbal score. Other sections of the work evolve from manipulated gestural and pedestrian movement from physical experiences with literal and figurative doors.

Photo by Steve Clarke.

Hannah McClure Chalut, Artistic Director of Open Air Dance, is a modern dancer and polarity practitioner who has taught and performed locally for the past seven years. Her breadth of teaching includes ballet, modern, hip-hop, creative movement, literacy through dance, polarity yoga, and goddess meditations. She has taught at The Durham Arts Council, Ninth Street Dance, The Carrboro Arts Center, The Carolina Friends School, Health Touch, and as part of the CAPS (Creative Artists in the Public Schools) program. She performs locally with several area artists including Angella Foster, Ronya Lee Anderson, and Clay Taliaferro. She was a founding member of Shen Wei Dance Arts from 2000-2001. She has studied on scholarship with the ADF, Garth Fagan Dance, and at the State University of New York at Brockport. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.F.A. in Dance from SUNY Brockport. Her own work has been shown at SUNY Brockport; the ADF’s student showings in Durham, NC; the Bridge for Dance and the Dancespace Works in Progress Series in New York City; the Lake Eden Arts Festival in Black Mountain, NC; the Eno River Festival in Durham, NC; and the Independent Dancemakers of Durham, NC, among other venues. In 2001 she co-founded Open Air Dance and has served as sole artistic director since 2003.
Open Air Dance has produced four evening length concerts. One of these concerts, A Celebration of the Elements (2003), toured the state at six festival locations. Open Air Dance’s most recent concert work was Close Your Eyes, an evening of solo performances. Close Your Eyes featured six solo women performing for the purpose of uplifting, celebrating, or healing. Their modalities included drum and song, belly dance, modern dance, and liturgical dance. Open Air Dance is committed to engaging the audience in a healing endeavor through the medium of concert dance. Open Air Dance has received grant funding from the Durham Arts Council and the North Carolina Dance Alliance. In-kind contributions have been generously given by Ninth Street Dance of Durham, Triangle Youth Ballet of Chapel Hill, the Duke University Dance Department, and Duffy Gilligan. In addition, Open Air Dance’s new Movement Choir, dances of wholeness for everyday people, can be seen and experienced this summer at The Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival, Lake Eden Arts Festival, and the Eno River Festival.
Open Air Dance will present a solo performed to music composed by local musicians.

Jess Shell graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2001. She returned home to North Carolina in 2002. She has both performed with and choreographed for Choreo Collective’s Current Collection in 2006 and 2007. Her work has been performed at the ADF’s Acts to Follow and the Durham School of the Arts. In addition to dancing whenever she can, Shell is a licensed massage and bodywork therapist. Shell currently dances with NickWalk Dance Project. In the past she has danced with Postcards Dance Project, Killian Manning, and Laura Thomasson.
“fact (after the)” is a piece filled with high energy and constant motion. Four dancers shift between unison phrases and complex patterns to explore relationships not only within themselves but to each other.

Christina Tsoules Soriano is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, where she teaches various levels of modern technique, dance composition, 20th Century Dance History, and a movement class for male athletes. Before relocating to North Carolina last year, Soriano was a visiting professor at Salve Regina University and Providence College in Rhode Island. Soriano’s teaching and choreography credits also include work at Rhode Island College, Amherst College, Trinity College, Festival Ballet (Providence, RI), and Providence Ballet. She received her M.F.A. in Dance from Smith College in 2003 and is a member of Heidi Henderson's company elephant jane. Recent North Carolina performances include the 2007 Greensboro Fringe Festival. Christina is delighted to be performing at Acts to Follow this summer and the North Carolina Dance Festival touring roster for 2007–2008.
When confronted with the daunting task of making a new dance, Soriano was struck with how the dance begins. Curious as to how other artists might respond to this idea, she sent a mass email to several dance friends and colleagues, asking them to help answer the question “What makes the beginning of a dance have that beginningness to it?” Soriano compiled a written text of the responses and this became the starting point for “Begin Again.”

Photo by Bill Ray III.

photo by Aaron Sandler Amy Beth Schneider’s Thread Dance Theater is known for evocative partnerships, dancing repertory that explores attachment, communal journey, and autonomy, particularly as these concepts relate to the lives of women. TDT is committed to the production of performance opportunities that support dance artists and the dance community as well as to designing projects that are suitable for the inclusion of younger dancers who can experience at an early age a passion for and commitment to the arts. TDT has been fortunate to share work at many festivals and venues in the eastern U.S. as well as in Warwick England in May 2007.
Amy Beth Schneider is a proud alumnus of Choreo Choreo Collective and directs Thread Dance Theater, a performance and production enterprise rooted in New York City and North Carolina. Schneider graduated from Oberlin College and studied with many master teachers at the ADF between 1997 and 2000. Thread Dance Theater was founded in 2002. TDT produces numerous events, including the Brooklyn Dance Sampler, and in addition to showcasing close to 100 artists, has received support in New York and North Carolina since its inception. TDT recently performed in Warwick England and is anticipating its 5th season in New York City at BRIC Studio.

Photo by Aaron Sandler.