Mara Mayer is a clarinetist/bass clarinetist currently living in Brooklyn. Mara performs with groups including the Nouveau Classical Project, Gamelan Dharma Swara, Banda de los Muertos, and Little Band of Sailors. This past summer she played in Dave Malloy’s immersive theatre piece
Natasha, Pierre, and
The Great Comet of 1812. Her duo project
Feral Children will be recording its first album this fall. She has composed works for chamber groups including a trio for violin, cello, and bass clarinet that was released last year on vinyl on the Musique Impossible label. Mara is the creator and curator of
Home Audio, a house concert series that hosts monthly shows in Brooklyn dedicated to new music. She graduated from the Eastman School of Music in 2008. Mara makes improvised and experimental music as well as classical music. She has collaborated with dancers in the past and is interested in exploring this further and incorporating movement into her own work. She is also a yoga teacher and would like to pursue the connection between pranayama (breath work) and the use of the breath as a wind player. Mara is excited about E|MERGE as she is at her most creative when she is in a setting surrounded by nature and the energy of other creative and positive-thinking people.
Maré Hieronimus is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary dance artist, performer, and teacher whose work weaves together her interests in movement, light, sound, poetry, and perceptual awareness. Her choreographic/improvisational performance experiments have been presented both indoor and outdoor, in proscenium, gallery, and site-specific settings in NYC and beyond. As a performer, she has worked with many experimental and cross-disciplinary artists, including Noemie Lafrance, Peter Sciscioli, and Sharon Mansur, touring internationally to Russia, Siberia, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. Maré is an Adjunct Professor at Long Island University/Brooklyn, and teaches publicly under her umbrella, The Body Archive. Maré is interested in how we can experience the body not as an object or form, but rather as a field or instrument through which forces of sound, light, thought, memory, space and time are passing though. Increasingly, she draws inspiration directly from the interplay of body and landscape, and the observation of the movement of the forces of the natural world, with its innate impermanence. Maré had the privilege of being involved in Moving Arts Lab at Earthdance in August, 2013. She found the experience to be thrilling and inspiring, and so wants to come back to spend some more concentrated time dedicated to the creation of work, generating new ideas, and collaborative exploration. Maré also found the Earthdance environment to be particularly supportive as she sees her creative interests shifting towards increasingly non-traditional, non-proscenium, outdoor, site-specific, and rural and natural settings.
Marisa Clementi is a dancer, singer, choreographer, and adventuress living in Brooklyn. She recently earned her MFA from the Sarah Lawrence College Dance Program, and earned her BA in Vocal Performance from Dartmouth College in 2005. Marisa has performed in works by Yvonne Rainer, Martha Graham, Laura Dean, Geraldine Cardiel, Rashaun Mitchell, and most recently with Pipaluk Supernova (Denmark). Her work has been performed at Dance New Amsterdam, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Abrons Arts Center, Dartmouth College, Deerfield Academy, and Ponderosa (Germany). Marisa has been a teaching artist at the Brooklyn Performing Arts Intensive and at Sarah Lawrence College. In January, Marisa held a residency in the Marshall Islands with Youth Bridge Global. Through E|MERGE, Marisa is interested in collaborating with artists and performers who are as eager to blur the boundaries between music, dance, theater, and visual art as she is.
Maurizio Campani is a physical action based actor, primarily working with an essential, sober, “poor” theatre. Born in Florence, Italy, he started to write texts during high school. He studied archaeology for three years, and in 2004, started his personal, not-academic form of artistic research. In 2008, he started collaborating with Teatro della Pioggia and Anne Zénour. Maurizio also works as a cook. Through E|MERGE, Maurizio would like to meet curious people to help enrich his realm of possibilities. In this work, in solitude, it's very hard to find oxygen without colleagues to work and connect with.
Meredith Bove makes performances utilizing choreographic, dancing, and singing skill sets. She hails from a small town in Vermont, and from 2008-2011 lived and worked in Berlin, where she presented work at adastudio, Salon Bruit, K77, Die Kunst Apotheke, and with the Gruntwork collective. She has performed in the work of Luis Lara Malvacías, Jérôme Bel, Zinzi Buchanan, Jillian Peña, Sarah Dahnke, and has enjoyed collaborations with dancer/choreographer Andrea Jenni and conceptual artist Luke Munn. She holds a BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MFA from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. Her daily practice consists of investigating embodiment through somatic, experiential, sensorial, and vocal techniques and strategies. In her work, she gravitates towards a moving body that is grounded in state, where movement occurs in relation to a physical state or situation. Meredith is returning to Earthdance for E|MERGE after participating in Moving Arts Lab this past summer. During this workshop, she was inspired by the dismantling of spatial, temporal, and educational hierarchies, as well as by communal models of sustaining an infrastructure. Within this environment, she felt freed of the notion that work must happen within a studio space. Meredith is interested in returning so that she might have the chance to dive deeper into questions of community, work, place, and creativity.
Michael Rau is a live performance director specializing in new plays, re-imagined classics, and opera. Since 2007 he has been working internationally in Germany, the UK, Ireland, Canada, and Greece. He recently made his German language directing premiere with Thomas Bradshaw’s Was Ubrig Bleibt at Theater Bielefeld. He has also created work in New York City at PS122, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, Culture Project, 59E59 and Dixon Place. He is the artistic director of Wolf 359, a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and a graduate of Wesleyan University and Columbia University. Michael is interested in the E|MERGE residency because it creates possibilities to meet new collaborators and explore new ideas with a diverse group of people within an artist-run process.
Nicole Nigro is a contemporary dance artist based in Toronto, Canada. She is a performer, choreographer, educator, and workshop facilitator. Nicole began her training in Edmonton, Alberta, and has since graduated from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, obtained an Honours BFA from York University, and is currently enrolled in the Diploma in Dance Teaching Studies with The Royal Academy of Dance in London, England. She has had the privilege of dancing with The Danny Grossman Dance Company, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Toronto Dance Theatre, and several independent choreographers. Her work has been presented across Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Together with Cory Neale, Nicole is excited to continue a co-directed project engendered in E|MERGE 2013,
Oracle, focusing on the special role the Oracle plays in one's existence and the individual's journey toward enlightenment.
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones is a performer, choreographer, and improviser based in NY. She has worked with artists and companies such as Marianela Boan, Leah Stein Dance Company, Yelena Gluzman’s science project, Abigail Levine, Nicole Bindler, Sasha Welsh, Merian Soto, and many others, and has performed in various cities in the United Sates, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and Puerto Rico. Her own choreography has been shown at Movement research at Judson Church, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Studio 34, Dixon place, Dance New Amsterdam, Ulah’s House, Green Space Studio, Temple University, Smith College, and many others. Currently she is collaborating in a project PISO with Noemi Segarra to investigate the body’s relationship to places and displacement in public and private places. Rebecca is excited for E|MERGE as she feels the collaboration process will teach her how to support, listen, share, challenge, compromise, and work with others which will lead her to making work that she would not be able to create alone.
Susan Myhr-Fritz was born and raised in Montana. At 18, she stormed the east coast for the University of Pennsylvania where she met the inspiration for her current work, her late husband Dan. Select life/work highlights include: certified yoga instructor (Ashtanga), Late Show intern, Michael Crawford backup singer, Italian middle school English teacher, once-upon-a-summer manager/maid/unpaid laborer at her mom’s motel on the Oregon coast, documentary film/photo-maker, and a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild and Actor’s Equity. She transferred to NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she received her BA. She currently couch/futon/bed surfs as she types away, and has been a nomad for the past 4.5 years. Susan always operated in an “interdisciplinary” manner which is what lead her to skip music school (vocal performance) in exchange for 1.5 years in the Ivy League (not for me), followed by 3 years at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study (and, finally, graduation). The work that happens in and comes out of the E|MERGE Residency seems in line with this interdisciplinary thread – only taking it steps further to produce, or simply practice, work that has the potential to impact communities as much as the individuals producing it.
Tang Ling Nah is a Singapore-based visual and movement artist. She is fascinated with the city’s transitory spaces. Her work seeks to reflect and address the conditions of the modern city, particularly its speed and the lack of interpersonal intimacy in urban life. In 2008, she represented Singapore in the 2nd Singapore Biennale and also exhibited a work in the 11th International Architecture Biennale in Venice (Singapore Pavilion). Her accolades include the Juror’s Choice in the Philip Morris Singapore-ASEAN Art Awards 2003, the Della Butcher Award 2000 and the Young Artist Award (Art) 2004 conferred by the National Arts Council, Singapore. Tang is also an independent curator. She has been instrumental in her capacity as Artistic Director of the Drawing Out Conversations exhibition series. Tang believes the inter-disciplinary sharing and working of E|MERGE will open up her mind and provide her with new inspiration.
Tanja London is a choreographer/filmmaker based in Salt Lake City. She grew up in Germany rummaging around in the beautiful wide spread forests of the South and in the WWll family history. Her curiosity always drives her to ask questions at the wrong time. Querying hierarchical constructs is an integral part of who she is. Her work has a feminist viewpoint and explores sociopolitical and ecological discourses like inherited guilt, bioengineered skin, autonomous robots, erosion of US democracy, and sustainability. Besides a BA in Social Pedagogy and Contemporary Dance she holds an MFA in Modern Dance including a Screendance Certificate. The E|MERGE Residency offers an ideal work and play environment for Tanja because she is very interested in the intersection of different disciplines, collaborative leadership structures, and creativity. She believes discussion and achieving group consensus to be an improvisational, creative and clarifying process that strengthens any artistic process and creates depth in content and aesthetics. She finds it essential to explore different forms of collaboration not only to expand her own arts practice but also to further investigate leadership structures that might be useful in a broader societal context.
Y.E. Torres (ms. YET) is an improvisational muscle dancer, visual/performance artist, teacher, model/muse, experience connoisseur of violent delights, and a very Bad Unicorn. Y.E. began her study of Oriental Dance at the age of 17 and holds dual BFA degrees in Drawing & Painting and Fashion Design from the University of North Texas. She is a Yoga instructor (200 RYT), Bellydance instructor, and has completed Rachel Brice's 8 Elements™ Phase 1: Initiation. Y.E. has exhibited her artwork and dance films throughout the US and was named one of Houston's Top "100 Creatives" by the Houston Press in 2011. Her whose primary artistic focus is the creation of on-going, evolving, site-specific performance installations. She produces collaboration driven projects that merge musicians, dancers, filmmakers, and photographers, visual and performative artists into one event. She is interested in the E|MERGE Residency becoming a platform for her to further develop, mold, experiment, and inspire her own journey as a performing and visual artist.