CHIME Across Borders is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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2012 CHIME Across Borders Artist Profiles
Elizabeth Streb was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award in 1997. In 2008, Streb was appointed to the Mayor's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a commission mandated by the City Charter to advise the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. She holds a Master of Arts in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, a B.S. in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport from which she has received an honorary doctorate of fine arts as well. Streb also holds an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island College. Elizabeth Streb is the recipient of numerous other awards and fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award in 1991; two New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessie Awards) in 1988 and 1999 for her "sustained investigation of movement”; and over 20 years of on-going support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Once called the Evel Knievel of dance, Elizabeth Streb's choreography, which she calls "PopAction," intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, boxing, rodeo, the circus, and Hollywood stunt-work. The result is a bristling, muscle-and-motion vocabulary that combines daring with strict precision in pursuit of the public display of "pure movement."
In 2003, Streb established S.L.A.M. (STREB Lab for Action Mechanics) in Brooklyn, NY. S.L.A.M.'s door is literally open for the community to come in and watch rehearsals, take classes and learn to fly. The central idea at SLAM (besides always being public) is to mix three extreme action forms: PopAction, KidAction and Circus Arts.
Streb believes that true movement invention (the rubric of her investigations) happens accidentally with the milling together of strangers and out of the diverse movement voices that accidentally cross paths. SLAM is the Petrie dish that feeds the possibility for these new forms to emerge.
In 2011, Streb joined the Board of Directors at the EmcArts Inc., a social enterprise for learning and innovation in the arts. www.streb.org
Gregory Dawson began his studies in Chicago at the Ruth Page School of Dance and then continued at the University of Southern Illinois at Edwardsville, where he also studied Afro Haitian dance with Katherine Dunham. From 1983 – 1986, he danced with Theatre Ballet Canadian, returning to the Bay Area to perform with Oakland Ballet, Berkeley Ballet Theater, Sacramento Ballet, and the San Francisco Opera Ballet. Dawson joined the Alonzo King LINES Ballet in 1987. Upon retiring from the company in 2005, he began to teach and choreograph for the LINES Ballet Training Program. In 2009, he became Assistant Director of the California State Summer School of the Arts (CSSSA) Dance Department. In 2007, Dawson formed dawsondancesf, and most recently, he has become the Artistic Director for Dawson-Wallace Dance Project (formerly the David Taylor Dance Theatre). www.dawsondancesf.org
Jo Kreiter is a San Francisco-based choreographer with a background in political science. She thrives at the intersection of social justice and acrobatic spectacle. Through dance she engages imagination, physical innovation and the political conflicts we live within. Her lineage includes gymnastics, Chinese pole acrobatics and 14 years as a dancer with Joanna Haigood/ZACCHO. Kreiter/Flyaway is a recipient of a 2009 IZZY Award for Special Achievement, as well as awards from the NEA, CAC Creating Public Value program, CHIME in the San Francisco Bay Area (with KT Nelson), Creative Work Fund, Meet the Composer, Rockefeller/MAP, the Wattis and Gerbode Foundations, the SF Arts Commission, and the SF Bay Guardian GOLDIE Award. Her articles have been published in Aerial Dance, Contact Quarterly, In Dance, STREET ART San Francisco, and Site Dance—the first book written on contemporary site specific performance. She is one of a few women worldwide to have gained expertise in the art of Chinese pole acrobatics. www.flyawayproductions.com
Charles Slender has worked as a dance artist in the United States, Russia, Hong Kong, Poland, Latvia, Mexico and France. He is the founder and Artistic Director of FACT/SF – a contemporary dance company based in San Francisco. His choreography has been commissioned locally by CounterPULSE, Electric Works Gallery, and the College Preparatory School; and in Russia by Dialogue Dance Company (Kostroma), Acid Rain (Chelyabinsk), and the Yekaterinburg University of the Humanities (Yekaterinburg). In 2007, The Fringe Club (Hong Kong) presented three new works Charles developed in collaboration with Emily Woo Zeller. In 2006 and 2007, he performed with Provincial Dances Theatre in Yekaterinburg, under the direction of Tatiana Baganova. With Provincial Dances he toured internationally, taught company and master classes, and collaborated on the creation of new works. Charles graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, with degrees in English Literature and Dance and Performance Studies. www.factsf.org
Photo credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photos of dawsondancesf by Peter Warren; FACT/SF by David Papas; Flyaway Productions by Austin Forbord; Elizabeth Streb by Jack Mitchell Hires; Gregory Dawson; Charles Slender by David Papas; and Jo Kreiter.
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
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