Shared Evening: Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works, Amanda Loulaki, Yvonne Meier

PAULA JOSA-JONES is a dancer, choreographer, writer, visual artist and movement educator known for her visually rich, emotionally charged dance theater. Her work includes choreography for humans, inter-species work with horses, dancers and riders, film and video. Josa-Jones has been called “one of the country’s leading choreographic conceptualists” by the Boston Globe and the Village Voice describes her work as “powerful, eccentric, and surreal”. Her dances have been produced in Russia, Europe, Mexico and throughout the United States. She has taught in the dance programs at Tufts University, Boston University and at universities, colleges and dance festivals nationally and internationally. Her writings on movement and dance have been published in Contact Quarterly. Her book, The Common Body: How Horses, Movement and Awareness Awaken Our Essential Humanity, will be published in the spring of 2016. Josa-Jones is a 2013 recipient of a Connecticut Artist’s Fellowship, and a 2014 Bogliasco Fellow. She has received two Choreography Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an NEA US/Mexico Cultural Exchange Fellowship and an Artist’s Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the recipient of two New Forms grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, an Artist’s Foundation Fellowship in Interarts for her video dance collaborations with Vin Grabill, and two finalist awards in choreography from the Massachusetts Council for the Arts. She has been in residence at Yaddo (1995, 1996, 2015) and the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California. Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works has received support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Arts Lottery, Creative Time, the Dakota Foundation, LEF Foundation, the  Claneil Foundation and the Polaroid Foundation. The company’s work in Mexico was supported by the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and they received two grants from the Trust for Mutual Understanding for choreographic projects in Russia. Josa-Jones has received commissions from the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, Dance Umbrella, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and nuArts at Northeastern University, among others.

KATHERINE FREER is a multimedia designer working in theater, film, and installation. Her work is driven by the love of storytelling and the desire to turn her wildest imaginings into reality. Her background in film and computer science combine to generate work that is not only aesthetically beautiful, but pushes the boundaries of conventional theatrical video. Frequent collaborators include Tim Bond, Liz Lerman, Ping Chong, Kamilah Forbes, Stein | Holum Projects, Kamillah Forbes, Andrew Scoville, and Tamilla Woodard. Katherine is a Helen Hayes nominee and an Innovative Theater Award nominee. In addition to designing video for the stage, her installation work has been presented nationally and internationally. Venues include the National Building Museum, the Hammond Museum, 3LD Art & Technology Center, Front Room Gallery, and the World Wide Words Festival (Denmark). Her early video work includes Beatbox Flute Inspector Gadget Remix, a simple yet popular video with over 28 million views on YouTube and People’s Choice Award nomination. Kate has taught master classes at Harvard University, Syracuse University, New York University, University of Iowa, and Albany High School. Katherine is a founding member of Imaginary Media.

Amanda Loulaki was born in Iraklion, Crete. In 1990 she received a BA in Education from the Department of Pedagogy in Crete and in 2007 she received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University in USA. In 1994 Amanda was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio and moved to New York. Amanda Loulaki and Short Mean Lady, a project oriented company was formed in 2001. The focus of her choreography is in the “process of making,” and researching the creative process in terms of imagination and relationship to the physical and emotional state. www.Amandaloulaki.com

Originally from Zurich, Switzerland, Yvonne Meier has lived and worked in New York City since 1979, where she became a member of the original group around Performance Space 122, regularly collaborating with Ishmael Houston-Jones  and many others in the US and Europe. Her work, spanning anywhere from big spectacles to quiet solos, has been supported by three Fellowships in Choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Inter Arts, Franklin Furnace and Pro Helvetia. The American Master Piece program of the NEA has supported the upcoming recreation of her performance-instillation work, The Shining. She has received  three “Bessie” Awards for her works The Shining (1993 and 2011) and Stolen (2009). She has twice been supported through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence program. Meier has been teaching Releasing Technique and Authentic Movement nationally and internationally for the last 30 years. After a life-long commitment to improvisation she has developed her own improvisation technique known as Scores. Meier also teaches children’s dance classes in NY Public Schools through Movement Research’s Dance Makers program.