Riverside, CA
Born 1954, Oakland, California
Throughout MAKESHIFT dancing (1991-2000) I explored the perceptual, physical and poetic relationships we form with our surroundings. Seeking refuge from commodification, I replaced the Wendy Rogers Dance Company, repertory, and fiscal year with long-term independent relationships, an evolving body of work and a decade of time. Framing my work as a ten-year project freed me to discover the way I want to work. An ongoing, open-ended approach to choreography invites influence, convergence, exchange, transitory performance, flexibility, and alertness to circumstance. In essence, the project continues.
In recent dances I have been honing "the discipline of fragments," a choreographic method arising from a preoccupation with finding continuity out of discrete and disparate materials. 2 Trees from Brazil (2000) incorporates the non-linear and disjunctive geography of the electronic 'space' we so frequently inhabit. In the solo prelude (2001), Terry Rosenberg's spontaneous drawing, Peter Terezakis's video projection and my practice of kinetic mapping converge. In the duet riprap (2001), Jennifer Twilley and I scramble through chunks of movement akin to the "broken concrete" of the title. I am endlessly interested in the way movement and ideas leap out of each other.
1993 M.A. in Education-Dance, Stanford University
1971 B.A. in Dramatic Art/Dance, University of California, Berkeley
1966-- dancer and choreographer
1978-90 Artistic Director, Wendy Rogers Dance Company, Berkeley, CA
1996-- Associate Professor, Department of Dance, University of California, Riverside
2000 2 Trees from Brazil, performed by Eric Lorico, John Medina, Wendy Rogers, and Jennifer Twilley, with music by Laetitia Sonami, University of California, Los Angeles
1998 MAKESHIFT dancing, an evening of work performed by Wendy Rogers, John Diaz, Allyson Green, Eric Lorico, John Medina, and Jennifer Twilley, with music by Jay Cloidt, John Luther Adams, Gustav Mahler, and Glenn Branca, lighting design by Carol Mullins and costumes by Sandra Woodall, Danspace Project, New York.
1996 Standing By, a 16 mm color film based on the dance Standing By (1985), performed by Wendy Rogers Dance Company, Dyanna Taylor, director of photography, David Welle, editor, Paul Dresher, composer, Bill Fontana, sound atmospheres, Lisa Hefferman, lighting design, and Sandra Woodall costumes; Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco. 1994 compass, outdoor variation of a 1991 solo performed by Wendy Rogers, with a Cessna airplane flying overhead, Christian Langevin, pilot, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, California.
1992 trans missions, evening of work performed by Wendy Rogers, with singer J. Spence Stephens Jr., music by Peter Garland, John Luther Adams, John Cage, Meredith Monk, Richard Wagner, and Paul Dresher, story by Idries Shaw, lighting by Lisa Hefferman, set by John Woodall, and costumes by Sandra Woodall, Dancer's Group Footwork Bread and Butter Series, San Francisco.
1988 Arroyo Seco I-VI, performed by Wendy Rogers Dance Company, music by Peter Garland, lighting design by Lisa Hefferman, costumes/set by Rogers and Robert Kushner, Bay Area Dance Series, Laney Theater, Oakland.
1978 Tropical Chenille, an evening length work performed by Wendy Rogers Dance Company, music by Steve Drews, costumes/set by Rogers and Robert Kushner, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Berkeley.
1999 Irvine Fellowship in Dance
1995-97, 1991-93, 1978 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography
1994, 1990 Djerassi Resident Artists Program Fellow
1992 Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Grant
1988 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
