photo credit: Snorri Sturluson
Jeanine Durning is an Alpert Award winning choreographer, performer and teacher, from New York, whose work has been described by The New Yorker as having both “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.”
Since 1998, Durning has created both solo and group works, presenting nationally and internationally. Her most recent projects are centered around a procedural practice she calls nonstopping. In 2010, Durning premiered her critically acclaimed solo inging (based on a practice of nonstop speaking) in Amsterdam, and has since then been performed the work over 50 times across Europe (Stockholm, Berlin, Zagreb, Kristiansand/Norway and Leuven/Belgium), the US (NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Williams College, UMBC), in Toronto, Canada. Durning’s work has been supported and awarded by two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Choreography, the Alpert Award for Choreography, the Movement Research Artist in Residence, the Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, and MANCC, for example.
Durning began her collaboration with Deborah Hay in 2005 when she was invited to join the New York cast of O, O. She has since performed and toured multiple works of Hay’s including If I Sing to You, As Holy Sites Go, As Holy Sites Go/Duet with Ros Warby, and Tenacity of Space with the Dance On Ensemble. In addition, Durning has worked in the capacities of choreographic assistant, coach to several of Hay’s SPCP solo adaptations as well as on Tenacity of Space for Dance On Ensemble, and from 2011-2013 worked as consultant to the Forsythe Company’s Motion Bank Project on Ms. Hay’s choreographic and scoring practices.
Durning has an ongoing teaching practice since 2000, facilitating classes/workshops/ateliers in movement and choreography. Durning has taught at numerous institutions across the US, including at UCLA/WAC and Eugene Lang/New School, and in Europe, including The School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam and The Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) in Berlin.
Durning holds a BFA in Dance from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts and a Masters in Choreography from Amsterdam School of the Arts (AmCh). She is currently working on a new solo project dark matter/selfish portrait and has upcoming projects, commissions, teaching and performing in Poznan, Sofia, Zagreb, Belgrade, London, and Toronto. www.jeaninedurning.com
Ros Warby is an award winning Australian dancer and choreographer. She has been presenting her critically acclaimed solo work throughout Australia, Europe and the USA at numerous festivals and venues since 1990 including the Venice Biennale; Dance Umbrella - Royal Opera House, London; Sydney Opera House; Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals; South Bank Centre, London; TBA Festivals/PICA and DTW New York amongst others. Warby has also performed with various companies and artists including Russel Dumas’ Dance Exchange, Danceworks, Lucy Guerin Inc. and the Deborah Hay Dance Company. Recognized for her unique performance work in all these contexts Warby is the recipient of the Robert Helpmann Award, The Age Critics Commendation Award, an Australia Council Fellowship, several Greenroom Awards and the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award.
The creation of her work has benefited from the rapport she nurtured with her creative team over the past 25 years. With Warby, designer Margie Medlin and composer Helen Mountfort created an elaborate interplay between the elements of dance, film, music, sound and light, and crafted a dialogue between these forms, where they coexist in a manner rarely achieved in multi- disciplinary work. Warby and Medlin’s cinematic version of SWIFT was televised in 2007 on ABC and has been screened at international festivals worldwide.
Warby began her long and fruitful association with Deborah Hay in 1998, performing 1,2,1 and then attending her first Solo Performance Commissioning Project in 1999 where she learnt FIRE. She has since performed and toured many of Hay’s solo adaptations including FIRE, Music, The Pitcher (The Match), and No Time To Fly, as well as multiple ensemble works including The Match, If I Sing to you, As Holy Sites Go, As Holy Sites Go/Duet, and Tenacity of Space. In 2011/12 Warby worked with Deborah Hay as part of the Forsythe Company’s Motion Bank Project on a trio and then duet version of If I Sing To You. Consequently Warby, alongside Jeanine Durning, has toured As Holy Sites Go/ Duet extensively between 2012 to the present. Warby has served as assistant to Deborah Hay in multiple settings including Figure A Sea with the Cullberg Ballet, Tenacity of Space with the Dance On Ensemble, and In the Dark, (SPP) as well as serving as coach to multiple artists working on Hay’s SPCP solo adaptations.
Warby currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the department World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), is a certified Alexander Teacher and continues to create new solo and ensemble work. www.roswarby.com
Laurent Pichaud is a choreographer and dance performer, artistic director of the x-sud art/site www.x-sud.info, and guest artist-researcher in the Dance department of Paris 8 University.
Laurent’s process, both as a creator and researcher, centers around the use of choreographic gesture outside of traditional artistic or stage-oriented contexts. His work has two premier focal points. The first largely comprises site-specific practices and community projects created with non-dancer inhabitants. The second is his multifaceted collaboration with Deborah Hay, for whom he has been a performer (O,O – 2006), choreographic assistant (since 2008), co-choreographer (indivisibilities – 2011), and archivist (since 2014). Most recently, he has additionally taken on the role of translator for Hay—his expanded translation of My Body, the Buddhist—Mon corps, ce bouddhiste—was published in 2017, serving as a tool to study how writing functions for both documentation and transmission in the choreographic process.
In 2018, he began a creative PhD at Paris 8 University titled Engaging site-specificity inside the work of Deborah Hay as a further evolution of the relationship between his creative and research processes and his central collaboration.
Vera Nevanlinna is a dancer and choreographer based in Helsinki, Finland. Since 1998 she has danced with Eeva Muilu, Chamecki Lerner, Miguel Gutierrez, Kirsi Monni, Janne-Camilla Lyster, Mart Kangro, Thomas Lehmen and Ervi Sirén among others. She has done interdisciplinary art productions with photographer Elina Brotherus, poet Tuomas Timonen and sculptor Maria Duncker. She has been the Artistic director of Zodiak – Center for New Dance in Helsinki 2009-2011.
Nevanlinna began her collaboration with Deborah Hay in 2005 in SPCP where she learned the solo News. She has performed and toured News and other works of Hay’s including If I Sing to You, Lightening and Figure a Sea, commissioned by Cullbergballet, Sweden.
Nevanlinna studied at Helsinki Dance Institute and Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts in Helsinki, Finland, from where she graduated in 1998 with a M.A. in dance studies. In addition to her dance studies she has graduated as a photographer.
As a ballet master, choreographic assistant and administrator Christopher has staged and assisted the works of William Forsythe internationally, been a teacher of improvisational techniques, a research collaborator for the Ohio State University project Synchronous Objects and the Score Manager and Education Coordinator for the Motion Bank initiative in association with The Forsythe Company. He is currently the curator and organizer for the MFA in Dance European Studies at Hollins University in affiliation with Tanzraum Wedding/Danceworks Berlin and The University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt, MA CoDe. Since 2011 Christopher has been guest and adjunct faculty and choreographer in residence for Butler University, The Juilliard School, Hollins University, UCLA, USC, Princeton University, Harvard University, The Goethe Institute worldwide, Steps NY, Peridance, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Springboard Dance Montreal and Dance Arts Faculty in Rome.
Mr. Roman was one of the artists selected to be part of the Solo Performance Commissioning Project with Deborah Hay for her work Dynamic, and also one of the twenty artists to perform in Boris Charmatz’s curation of 20 Dancers for the XX Century at MoMA.
He was the choreographic assistant to William Forsythe for the original work Rearray at Sadler's Wells for Sylvie Guillem and Nicolas LeRiche as well as for the new creation for the Paris Opera Ballet entitled Blake Works I. In September 2013, Christopher assumed the role of Associate Artistic Director of The Forsythe Company and is on the Board of Trustees for the Forsythe Foundation.
In 2016, Christopher became the Artistic Director and dance artist with the Dance On Ensemble, a company for dancers over 40 based in Berlin. Together with the ensemble, he helped create 11 original works with Matteo Fargion, Rabih Mroué, William Forsythe, Kat Valastur, Deborah Hay, Ivo Dimchev, Johannes Wieland and Jan Martens premiering and touring internationally.and icluded a creation with director Ersan Mondtag and the Berliner Ensemble.
In 2019, he founded the SALT co., an agency in support of a collective of renowned dancers creating work, educating and programming with curiosity and integrity.
His upcoming productions include new works with Deborah Hay, Martin Nachbar, Wendy Houston, Wondertwins, The Hong Kong International Choreography Festival and Neuköllner Oper among others. He is currrently on tour dancing in William Forsythe’s A Quiet Evening of Dance produced by Sadler’s Wells. www.christopher-roman.com
Tilman O'Donnell was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a German mother and American father. He trained at the National Ballet School in Toronto, Canada and joined The Göteborg Ballet under the direction of Anders Hellström. In 2002 Tilman worked at the Staatstheater Saarbrücken. Thereafter he joined the Cullberg Ballet from 2003 until 2007. Tilman was a member of The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt from 2007-2012 and a guest artist until 2015. Tilman worked as rehearsal director for the Goteborgs Operans Danskompani in 2014.
Tilman made his debut as a choreographer in 2002 and has been awarded first prize in two international choreographic competitions. In 2005 he was appointed both 'Dancer To Watch" and "Choreographer To Watch" by the leading European magazine Ballet Tanz.
In 2011 he created two site-specific works for Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm. In 2012 he created the piece "August did not have what is commonly considered good taste as far as furniture is concerned.." He has also created works for Spira Jönköping under the banner Cullberg To Come (Word of Mouth) and a piece for Staatstheater Graz (The Disambiguation Project).
In 2014, Tilman was invited to be artist in residence together with Cyril Baldy at Centre Choreographique Circuit-Est / Goethe Institut Montreal. In 2015 he created the solo Whatever Singularity: Solo For Maxime / Dancing With Alain for the Göteborgs Operans Danskompani, and toured the work to the Nordwind Festival in autumn 2015.
A work for full dancer orchestra, entitled In Life & Love & So On, premiered in October 2015 at The Royal Danish Ballet, Copenhagen. Shortly thereafter, he created These & Those & Upon Us (with Cyril Baldy) for the University of Dance, Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition, he created the short work In Some Sense (with guitarist Mikkel Ploug) which premiered at Jazz Days in Koge, Denmark.
Tilman returned to Montreal with Cyril Baldy in 2016 to create the site specific piece Whateverness Singularities in collaboration with Montreal based artists Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, Dana Michel, Adam Kinner, and Jacob Wren.
In 2018, Tilman created the full length version of In Some Sense which premiered at Bora Bora, in Århus, Denmark.
In 2019, he will work on a new solo project in the Manufactured Series (Fabrice Mazliah), a new work by Deborah Hay (Animals On The Beach) to be premiered at Tanz Im August, as well a his own new work under the Dogme series for Corpus, Copenhagen.
Tilman has worked with Deborah Hay on the solo commissioning project This Empty Stage, An Ocean and the large scale work Figure A Sea, commissioned by Cullberg Baletten. In addition, Tilman teaches workshops internationally and is a member of the artist platform HOOD, a long term collaborative format supported by PACT Zollverein in Essen, Germany.
In 2015, he was named Hoffnungsträger by the prominent European dance journal Tanz.
