MOVERS & SHAPERS: A DANCE PODCAST

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Vimeo:  Melissa Fenley

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Naomi Goldberg Haas is the founding Artistic Director of Dances For A Variable Population, a multi- generational dance company and educational organizations which promotes strong and creative movement for adults of all ages and abilities, with a focus on seniors.   They engage community members as both participants and audience members; offering multiple weekly free programs MOVEMENT SPEAKS® and Dances For Seniors in recreation centers in libraries and senior centers in four boroughs of NYC, tuition based classes in dance and fitness; and performance and choreographic opportunities for older professional dance artists. DVP’s site-related performances have been presented in some of New York City’s most iconic public spaces, including The New York Botanical Garden, Times Square, Washington Square Park, and the High Line. DVP has also performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and internationally in Poland and British Columbia. DVP is a member of the National Dance Education Organization and The International Dance Council in UNESCO, Paris. Artistic Director Goldberg Haas has worked in concert dance, theatre, opera and film; performed with Pacific Northwest Ballet; and was recently awarded LMCC’s President’s Award for the Performing Arts and serves of the Age Friendly Media, Arts and Culture Working Group as appointed by the Mayor.

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Website: www.dvpnyc.com

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Dancemaker, Performer & Founder of N-root Danceart, Stephanie Nerbak is drawn to creating dance works that challenge her status quo, privileging the process of dance-making to leverage potent performances. She considers live dance to contain power for both the performer and the viewer, and believes performance is an opportunity for initiating conversations with ourselves and each other. N-Root Danceart was formed in 2016 as a result of those values. She holds an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in Dance Performance from Point Park University. Stephanie was a recipient of a 2017 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the 2017/2018 Jersey (new) Moves Emerging Choreographers Fellowship. Stephanie has presented her solo work through a host of opportunities and venues throughout NJ including Freespace Dance Company’s “A Woman’s Movement” & their 40+ Showcase (Montclair), Centenary University’s Dance Fest (Hackettstown), Your Move:NJ’s Modern Dance Festival (Hoboken), Bailar al Sol Dance Festival (Asbury Park), NJ Performing Arts Center (Newark), and Cross Roads Theatre (New Brunswick). Recently, Stephanie’s most well-known solo work, “Blend; I authenticate”, was integrated into an original verbatim theatre piece called, “TrueSelves: A new gender play”, produced by co-Lab Arts in New Brunswick. Over the past 20 years she has worked in a variety of performance settings across the U.S. and in Mexico – from traditional theatres to elementary school cafeterias, from Hollywood movie sets to public parks. She’s performed with companies such as Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre (Los Angeles), Los Angeles Modern Dance & Ballet, Donna Sternberg & Dancers (Santa Monica), and toured for five years with the award winning, West Virginia Dance Company. She has also had the pleasure of working & studying with powerhouse female dance artists such as Molissa Fenley, Naomi Goldberg Haas, Carli Marineck, Jodi Melnick, and Sara Rudner. While she makes the most of the moment, Stephanie is always curious about new sources of creativity and possible collaborations. Currently, she is looking forward to being a guest artist at Rutgers this fall and initiating a new improvisational dance collective in Jersey City.

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NROOTDANCEART.COM

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JANET EILBER has been Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company since 2005. Her direction has focused on creating new forms of audience access to the Graham masterworks. These initiatives include designing contextual programming, educational and community partnerships, use of new media, commissions of new works and creative events such as the “Lamentation Variations”. She has also reconstructed lost Graham works, remixed Graham choreography and created new staging in the Graham style for theater/dance productions of “The Bacchae” and “Prometheus Bound”. Earlier in her career, as a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Ms. Eilber worked closely with Martha Graham. She danced many of Graham’s greatest roles, had roles created for her by Graham, and was directed by Graham in most of the major roles of the repertoire. She soloed at the White House, was partnered by Rudolf Nureyev, starred in three segments of Dance in America, and has since taught, lectured, and directed Graham ballets internationally. Apart from her work with Graham, Eilber has performed in films, on television and on Broadway directed by such greats as Agnes deMille and Bob Fosse and has received four Lester Horton Awards for her reconstruction and performance of seminal American modern dance. She has served as Director of Arts Education for the Dana Foundation, guiding the Foundation’s support for Teaching Artist training and contributing regularly to its arts education publications. Eilber is a Trustee Emeritus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. She is married to screenwriter/director John Warren, with whom she has two daughters, Madeline and Eva.

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marthagraham.org

Instagram: instagram.com/marthagrahamdance

Facebook: facebook.com/marthagrahamdancecompany

YouTube: youtube.com/marthagrahamdancecompany

Studio Series page: marthagraham.org/studioseries

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Pat Catterson’s parents were a ballroom dancing team and her paternal grandfather a Vaudevillian tap dancer. Born in Indianapolis, she has been a NYC based artist for fifty years presenting her first full evening at Judson Church in 1970. Since then, she has choreographed 110 works, receiving many accolades including a 2011 Solomon R. Guggenheim Choreography Fellowship and multiple Choreography Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the CAPS Grants and the Harkness Foundation, as well as a Fulbright Commission. A dedicated educator, she has been on the faculties at Sarah Lawrence College, UCLA, the Juilliard School, and the Merce Cunningham Studio, among many others. For twenty years she taught her own tap classes in NYC and has been a guest artist all over the US and in Europe, most recently at the Kalamata Dance Festival in Greece and at Centre national de danse contemporaine in Angers France. Her writing has been published in Ballet Review, JOPERD, Attitude Magazine, Dance Magazine Online, the Getty Iris, and the Dance Research Journal. She first performed Yvonne Rainer’s work in 1969 and since 1999 has worked as her dancer, rehearsal assistant, as well as custodian of Rainer’s early works, touring nationally and internationally. In the past year she staged three Rainer works on the Stephen Petronio Company and this last May staged three others on four dancers for the Dublin Dance Festival at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She earned her BA in psychology and philosophy from Northwestern University and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. Her latest dance works have been “Artifice,” a consideration of the act of performing performed by eight dancers and five surprise performers premeiered at Triskelion, “NOW. “, an installation/performance/event that paired her eight NYC dancers with those in nine other countries dancing live together via Skype projection, and her current work, “Project 111: 12 by 6,” a series of solos for six different dancers created from the same base of twelve movement phrases. Rather than in a live performance, it will be “premiered” online this summer via various platforms.

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Website: PatCatDance.org

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