New York, NY
Born 1966, New York, New York
Performance Maker, Writer
To me, performance is a form of conversation. I aim to make situations where viewer and viewed are mutually affecting and create experiences that wake up body and mind. I do this through reframing our relationship to architectural space and urban public interaction, with interventions into everyday life and infiltrations into unexpected sites in a wide variety of communities--from the streets of New York’s financial district and a public garden in Queens to a city park in Siberia and an abandoned church in Pittsburgh. I engage audiences in the context of their real lives, and ask them to engage differently with each other and their surroundings. In the work, I bring many minds together around a single concept, weaving several independent strands of thought into a complex new fabric, working with a wide gamut of collaborators, from professional creators to high school students. I rely on a grab-bag of tools, emphasizing the intangible and the non-verbal. Video, dance, sound, objects, costume and humor are combined with subverted text and conceptual simplicity to create accessible mysteries designed to reach under the ribs and connect to the phantom organs of empathy and decisive action.
1987 B.A., Dance and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, Wesleyan University
2002 Formed the collective Tryst with Paul Benney and Alejandra Martorell
1994- 1998 Founder and Artistic Director: Who You See/Who I Be, a performance project made in collaboration with New York City public high school students
1989 Formed cml performance (now Culture Push), a rotating collaborative performance company
2005- (ongoing) DAGGER, multi-media solo based on Macbeth. Performed at LMCC and Swing Space@15 Nassau, New York, NY
2003- (ongoing) TRYST, outdoor public performances based on the Situationists. Made in collaboration with Paul Benney & Alejandra Martorell. Performed at Sitelines, LMCC, New York, NY and Novosibirsk, Siberia
2002- (ongoing) Salvage/Salvation, collaborative installation and performance highlighting the metaphysics of re-use. Performed at the Queens Botanical Garden, TIXE/Chashama, TOPAZ Arts, Queens, NY
2001 The Division of Memory, multi-media theater piece based on the life of the African-American biologist Ernest Everett Just, made in collaboration with James Hannaham, video designer Michael Kang, set designer David Morris, and dramaturg Tanya Barfield. Performed at PS122, New York, NY
1999 ODD SEA (The Return), site-specific performance on the reverberations of war, based on The Odyssey. Made in collaboration with nine performers, including video work by Mike Taylor and Andrea Kleine, and music by Rebecca Moore. Performed on the Yankee ferryboat, New York, NY
1997 FEAST, performance, dinner party and installation, made in collaboration with 25 performers, five visual designers and seven restaurants and grocery stores. Performed at CHARAS and El Bohio, New York, NY
1996 SABOTAGE, group piece using video and film. Collaboration with Tal Yarden, Ellie Fitzgerald and Marion Appel; music by James Lo. Performed at Danspace Project, New York, NY
2004 Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Arts and Artists in Progress Award
2001 New York State Council on the Arts Commission
2000 Residency, The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH
1999 Grant, The Greenwall Foundation
