Uptown / Downtown: 2008
What does it mean to be an Uptown or Downtown Artist? Is the idea grounded in geography? Community? Aesthetics? Are there Uptown and Downtown audiences? How can we bring these artists and ideas together?
Uptown / Downtown 2008 culminated in two multidisciplinary evenings of performance:
Friday, May 30, 2008, 7:30PM
The Gatehouse at Harlem Stage
Saturday, May 31, 2008, 7:30PM
Dance New Amsterdam (DNA)
Participating Artists
Ashley Byler
Ashley Byler has hit the NY downtown dance scene as less of a head on, and more of a drive by. Her work includes: Champions of Dance, Original #1, Star Time and YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER!! Ashley holds a BA in music and psychology, a MFA in dance from Sarah Lawrence College and the hand of her best friend Stron Softi. You can find her scuttling between Ketchikan, Alaska and NYC or wherever her two slamming nephews are. Ashley is currently proud to be dancing with Sara Rudner and Cathy Weis. Please check her out on MySpace or in Dance Theatre Workshop’s Studio Series this spring with Champions of Dance: MAKE MILLIONS!
Vienna Carroll
Vienna Carroll is an actor, singer, historian and writer born and raised in York, PA. She discovered York’s history as a hotbed of abolitionism and Underground Railroad activity only recently, since it was never part of any history class! Currently a citizen of Harlem, Vienna is now merging her talents through the creation of her first musical docudrama entitled Singin’ Wid A Sword in Ma Han’, a musical freedom story about the Underground Railroad in the 1850’s, featuring both rare and well-known spirituals and their likely use in the quest for freedom. Vienna received her BA in African American Studies and Political Science from Yale University. She is a regular member of the Abyssinian and Canaan Baptist church choirs as well as an actor and Board member for the American Theatre of Harlem.
Laylage Courie
Laylage Courie, a Brooklyn-based writer and theater-maker, combines extended vocal techniques and disciplined physicality with poetic text to create simple, luminous works of theater. Described by the press as “truly passionate”, and “elliptical and poetic”, Courie recontextualizes spoken word. Her work includes surreal cabaret, story-telling with a film score, tea parties for voice and debris, poems and plays. Her work has been featured all over downtown New York, in Brooklyn, New Orleans, Atlanta, at the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival, the International Festival of Women Playwrights, in bars, lofts, and old houses.
Naomi Goldberg Haas
Naomi Goldberg Haas has worked in concert dance, theater, opera and film. Since 2004, she has directed Dances For A Variable Population based in lower Manhattan working with older adult communities and professional dancers. The company has been critically and popularly received performing in countless NY venues and at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Her work in theatre includes Tony Kushner’s A Dybbuk at the Public Theater, Charles Mee’s Big Love for ACT, Seattle, Philip Kan Gotanda’s Day Standing on It’s Head for the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Mikado for Milwaukee Skylight Opera and Disney’s film Hunchback of Notre Dame. Ms. Goldberg Haas was the founding artistic director of Los Angeles Modern Dance & Ballet. She formerly danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet and currently teaches throughout NYC.
William B. Johnson
William B. Johnson is a composer, writer, percussionist, arts educator and multi-disciplinary performer with an irrepressible commitment to his community. As one of New York’s premier bucket players, Johnson builds off of the diverse percussive influences of Africa, India, Japan, Europe and South America. Johnson has toured internationally and worked with renowned recording artists, including Alicia Keys, Mya, Tamia and Mary J. Blige. He has performed at the Grammy Awards, Latin Grammy Awards, Billboard Awards, American Music Awards and made numerous radio, television and film appearances. Johnson’s theater work includes roles in The Best of Broadway and Savion Glover’s international tour of Hoofing and Banging. He has also produced his own theater productions including the critically-acclaimed From Hoofin’ 2 Hittin’. Johnson is currently the musical director of Drumadics.
LuLu LoLo
LuLu LoLo, a playwright/actor/performance and multi-disciplinary artist, has written and performed five one-person plays on such topics as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the lesbian lover of murder victim Kitty Genovese. LuLu has performed in countless venues in New York and beyond. LuLu’s 2007 on-site performance project The Paper Boats of Mother Cabrini was performed in Campagna, Italy, and Paris, France. LuLu is truly an Uptown artist, born in a hospital on West 110 Street. A life-long resident of East Harlem, she lives on the street named after her father, a beloved East Harlem community leader. Currently LuLu is a LMCC writer-in-residence. She is Board Member/Director of Performance of the City Reliquary Museum, Brooklyn.
Jody Oberfelder
Jody Oberfelder, recognized as “one of the funniest modern-dance choreographers in New York”, (Jennifer Dunning, New York Times, June 15, 2007), combines strength and virtuosic movement with levity and whimsical physical imagination. Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects (JODP) has performed in countless venues in New York City as well as nationally and internationally in festivals from Serbia to Korea. Jody’s dance film LineAge won a People’s Choice Award from Cinedans for 2007 and her film Duet received a Juror’s Award from the New York Film Expo and a Silver Award from Dance on Camera. Currently, Jody is a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s and a ‘07-‘08 Joyce Resident Artist.
Connie Perry
Connie Perry’s current solo work I Am My Own Boob Job can be seen in Teatro LA Tea & Caicedo’s upcoming The One Festival. She has been seen hosting and performing her stand up comedy, solo work and stories at many NYC venues and special events. Connie was featured on the last episode of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, she plays a mom on Ether Park’s Where’s Jeffrey YouTube video, and she’s appeared with TheatreWithin in two Annual Lennon Tributes, most recently at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Other past favorite acting gigs include Suzy the Hot Dog Girl opposite Dan Aykroyd in Caravan Pictures’ Celtic Pride (seen on HBO), and a mental patient opposite Annette Benning in Neil Jordan’s InDreams.
Elke Rindfleisch
Elke Rindfleisch, originally from Germany, graduated from the Rotterdam Dance Academy (Netherlands) in 1994. Her company, Rindfleisch, has performed at the Ohio Theater’s Ice Factory Festival, Danspace Project/St. Mark’s Church, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Sitelines Festival, Das Pumpwerk in Berlin, Germany (upcoming this summer), Mt. Tremper Arts Festival, NY, Joyce SoHo, and Wallabout. Additional venues have included: the Toronto Fringe Festival, Dixon Place (NYC), the A.W.A.R.D. Show, AMBUSH/Chez Bushwick, and Movement Research at Judson Church (NYC). She currently dances for Kimberly Bartosik and the artist collective Magnetic Laboratorium, most recently in an installation at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art.
Natasa Trifan
Natasa Trifan is an international choreographer who was raised in Romania where she studied ballet for nine years at “Floria Capsali”, the premier Romanian Ballet School. She graduated from the Academy of Theater and Film in Bucharest with a major in choreography and modern dance. In 1999 she moved to United States of America and graduated from SUNY Brockport with an MA in Dance and Somatics. In recent years she is being looking for unexpected connections between video technology, dance and theatre d’object. She is a current member of the International Dance Council under the UNESCO, the Dance Theater Workshop, and the Field, a non-profit organization for artists in NYC.
