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Artists In Residence
Mauri
Walton
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Mauri Walton is an actor, dancer,
movement-artist,
cabaret/host/singer/performer and multi-media performance creator. She
has appeared in over 70 different productions across disciplines in
film and theatre, and in countless and assorted venues in Philadelphia
and beyond. Mauri is currently deeply appreciative and
thoroughly
enjoying being an artist in residence at thefidget space in
Philadelphia. Her own performance creations have run the gamut from
delicate solos to 25 member ensemble productions. |
She has ardently enjoyed collaborating and performing, with and for,
numerous choreographers, directors, composers, and musicians,
including: David Jacobson, Adrienne Truscott, Big Mess Theatre and
Orchestra, Headlong Dance Theatre, Moxie Dance Collective, Group
Motion, Nichole Canuso, SubCircle, Grace Mi He Lee, Lee Ann
Etzold, Kathryn Te Bordo, Mark O’Maley, Rebecca Sloan, David Gammons,
Peter Price, Megan Bridge, Chris Mandra and Paule Turner among many,
many, many others. Her work has frequently been presented at
the
Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The
Painted Bride Art Center, and at the Kimmel Center for the Philadelphia
Orchestra. She was quite favorably reviewed in ReelTalk for
her
portrayal of Nina in Vera Zubarev’s film, “Four Funny
Families”.
Other critics have described her work as: “Genuinely, weirdly,
intriguing”, “hilarious and adroit”, and as having “dark and twisty
themes”. She was cited as managing “somehow to reinvent the
most
famous scene in theatre” in her Hamlet deconstruction, “Tubey or Not
Tubey, a Ham uhmLET”. Mauri’s colleagues describe her as:
“One of
Philadelphia’s often kept secrets”, “performance art luminary” and “…
well, Mauri makes the experimental performance world go
‘round”.
Audience members have described the effect of Mauri’s work on them as:
“a single statement by Mauri Walton has forever altered my perspective
on the topology of the causal pathways in the universe”, and “her
portrayal of her subject was so quirky and yet so compellingly and
hauntingly real”. Mauri has received grants and awards for
her
work, among which are those from the PA Council on the Arts and through
the Community Education Center.
To see some of Mauri’s non-performative creative outlets, check out her
blog at: http://www.vertigoplanes.blogspot.com.
David Konyk
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David Konyk is a dancer and choreographer based
in
Philadelphia. David has long fostered a love of site specific
work. Having worked with some of Philadelphia’s leading
practitioners of site
specific work,
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namely Leah Stein and Kate Watson-Wallace, it is plain
to see where this love came from There is something about a piece that
is tailored to the space that it is performed in that inspires and
entices him. However, for him, this does not necessarily mean
to
make work that is only able to be performed in one particular place,
but rather, to create concise worlds that the pieces live in.
David’s current focus, as a choreographer, is to integrate all the
elements of the stage into his creative process. It is his
hope
to have all these parts play an active role in shaping and informing
the work. How do things like light, scenery and sound, effect
the
audience's perception? How can playing with the natural
mechanics
of the human eye through lighting create effect, surprise and
mystery? How can costume and prop inform, hinder and create
movement? These are just a few of the questions David is
concerning himself with lately. His goal is to take a
stronger
look at all the parts that make up a dance piece as opposed to his
previous method of focusing mainly on the movements of the
dance.
Having spent fifteen years in a relationship with dance, David is ready
and excited to take on this new perspective in his art
making. He
is ever so thankful to thefidget space for the opportunity of this
residency to allow him to play, discover and develop.
Currently, David is a member of the Leah Stein Dance Company and Group
Motion Multi-Media Dance Theater. His previous dance credits
include Scrap Performance Group/Myra Bazell (1997-1999), The Bald
Mermaids (1999-2000), Kate Watson-Wallace (2004-2007), and The
Reactionaries (2004-2006). As a choreographer, David’s work
has
been presented at the Community Education Center,
Philadelphia;
Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia; DanceNow/NYC,
New
York; Dock 11, Germany; Project Theater,
Germany.
When not dancing, David is a student of American Sign Language and the
Acting Class with Kenneth McGregor. He can also be seen
working
at Honey’s Sit n Eat, in Northern Liberties, or zipping around town on
his skateboard. David graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelors of
Fine Arts in Dance from Temple University.
Daniele Strawmyre
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Daniele Strawmyre is a multi-media artist,
choreographer, performer and educator based in Philadelphia. She
directs the collaborative arts company readySetGO. Currently an artist
in residence at thefidget space in Philadelphia, she's developing a
performance installation inspired by Japanese ghost stories for October
2010 titled Kaidan Insuto. The staged version (Kaidan) will premiere at
this year's Live Arts Festival as part of 8 (eight choreographers/eight
new works) and is the culmination of 2 years of research and
performance called The Obake Project. Daniele's past work has been
shown at Mascher Space Cooperative, thefidget space, Pentimenti
Gallery, Kumquat Dance Theater, the CEC, the Painted Bride Art Center, |
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others, and in site specific
performances throughout Philadelphia. In 2003 she co-curated, "Ladyfest
Philly",
a 4-day festival showcasing women's activism through the arts and in
2004 she participated in a 2 month residency with CIE Felix Ruckert in
Brussels, BE and Berlin, DE (made possible by a grant from the Leeway
Foundation).
She has performed with companies here and abroad including Megan
Bridge, Kate Watson-Wallace/Anonymous Bodies, Jeb Kreager/Brown Squad,
Perpetual Movement and Sound, Workshop for Potential Movement,
SCRAP/Myra Bazell, Janette Hough, Jerome Meyer and Isabelle Chafaud
(NL) and CIE Willi Dorner (AT) in Philadelphia; Junction Dance Theatre
in Pittsburgh; Martha Bowers Dance Theatre Etcetera in New York; and
CIE Felix Ruckert in Brussels, BE and Berlin, DE. Daniele has students
aged three to eighty-three and has been teaching for over a decade. She
teaches Creative Movement, Ballet, Yoga, Pilates, Water Aerobics, Body
Conditioning, Basic Anatomy/Kinesiology, Acting and Story-telling,
Technical Theatre, Arts and Crafts, and Eurhythmics as well as college
and professional level courses in Dance Technique and Improvisation.
She earned a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of the Arts, in
Philadelphia.
Bonnie Lander
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Bonnie Lander is a coloratura soprano based out
of
Philadelphia, PA. Classically
trained, Bonnie performs a wide range of contemporary music in a wide
variety of spaces. Most recently, she performed with the Philadelphia
Chamber Music Society under the baton of Leon Fleisher and as a
participant in the Yellow Barn Kurtág Residency studying with soprano
Susan Narucki, who affectionately termed her "the Janis Joplin of
modern music." Bonnie is currently an Artist In Resident at thefidget
space, a founding member of chamber opera company "Rhymes With Opera,"
and a featured artist with the "Embody" vocal arts series in Baltimore.
She has performed experimental improvisation with amazing musicians
Mike Formanek, David Smooke, Shodekeh, Kate Porter, and Peter Price.
Bonnie holds a BM in Voice Performance from the University of Miami
Frost School of Music in the studio of Esther-Jane Hardenbergh; |
MM in Voice Performance at the Peabody Institute in the studio of
Phyllis Bryn-Julson; two GPDs in Voice and Computer Music studying with
Dr. McGregor Boyle. She is the only person to have twice received the
Phyllis Bryn-Julson Award for the Commitment to and Performance of
20th/21st Century Music.
Chris Mandra
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Chris Mandra is a composer and performer whose
work has
been performed in Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States. He holds
a Bachelor of Music degree in composition from the University of the
Arts in Philadelphia, PA; a certificate of study from the Liszt Ferenc
Zeneakademia in Budapest; two Master's degrees -
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one in music composition and one in computer music, both from the
Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University where he also
completed all of the coursework for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree
before abandoning that program.
In 2004 he was awarded a fellowship to STEIM in the Netherlands to work
on his wearable performance interface "the manDrum". He currently lives
in Baltimore,
gets to help create cool audio processing software (that he likes to
use himself) for the company Intelligent Devices, and plays guitar for
and performs extensively with the celebrated original psychedelic dance
band TELESMA.
Gloria Justen
Gloria Justen, Violinist and Composer, is both a passionate performer
of the classics and an innovative artist trying new approaches to
music. Ms. Justen grew up in Houston, Texas, and from 1984-1990 she
attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her principal
violin teachers were Fredell Lack and Szymon Goldberg. Currently
residing in San Francisco, Gloria is dividing her time between East
Coast and West Coast.
Ms. Justen has played with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia since
1985, serving as Concertmaster since 2004. From 1990 to 2008 she
performed and toured internationally with the Philadelphia Orchestra as
a substitute violinist. She is associated with groups in Philadelphia
and San Francisco such as Network for New Music, Orchestra 2001, the
Relache Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble, the San Francisco Chamber
Orchestra, and the magic*magic orchestra, and she has premiered and
recorded many works by living composers. She has toured with the Philip
Glass Ensemble for the Book of Longing project. Ms. Justen has enjoyed
collaborations with musicians from diverse backgrounds, modern dancers
and visual artists. Improvisation in various genres spurred her to
create her own compositions. Some of these are written in the
traditional manner for acoustic instruments, and others are digital
sound collages incorporating electronics, field recordings, and
surround sound concepts. Her first CD of original music, Four-Stringed
Voice, is a collection of pieces for solo violin. Most recently her
composition "Not Created or Destroyed" was performed by the San
Francisco Chamber Orchestra.
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