NEXT FRI: Free Event with Tere O'Connor
Company:
MJDC
You are invited to bring your lunch and participate in an open showing of the choreographic investigations of the 2013 CHIME Across Borders artists, Christy Funsch, Monique Jenkinson and Lisa Townsend, as they conclude their mentorship year with celebrated choreographer Tere O’Connor. Hosted by Margaret Jenkins, a discussion and “meet and greet” will follow.
CHIME Across Borders, a project of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, arranges for choreographer-mentors of renown to work in San Francisco with a group of local choreographers and the MJDC dancers/collaborators over the course of one year.
MJDC Dancers/Collaborators: Brendan Barthel, Margaret Cromwell, Kelly Del Rosario, Chinchin Hsu and Risa Larsen.
Guest Dancers: Todd Eckert, Kegan Marling, Hope Mohr and Julie Sheetz Mahoney.
For more information call 415.861.3940 www.mjdc.org or email chime@mjdc.org.
Tere O’Connor (2013 Chair, CHIME Across Borders) is based in New York City where he has been making dances since 1982. He has creating over thirty works for his company and toured throughout the US, Europe, South America and Canada. O’Connor has also created numerous commissioned works for dance companies around the world, among these have been solo work for Mikhail Baryshnikov and works for the Lyons Opera Ballet and White Oak Dance project. He is 2009 United States Artist Rockefeller fellow and the recipient of numerous grants from many funding organizations including a 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship. O’Connor has received three “Bessie’s”, New York Dance and Performance Awards, most recently for his work Frozen Mommy (2005). He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign where he resides for the spring semester. He teaches frequently both nationally and internationally in various settings and is an active participant in the New York dance community mentoring young artists, teaching, writing, curating and volunteering in various capacities.
Margaret Jenkins (Artistic Director) is a choreographer, teacher and mentor, as well as a designer of unique community-based dance programs, such as Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME). In New York in the 1960’s, Jenkins danced in the companies of Jack Moore, Viola Farber, James Cunningham, Gus Solomons and Twyla Tharp's original company. A faculty member of the Merce Cunningham Studio, Jenkins restaged his works for companies in Europe and the United States for over 12 years. Jenkins returned to San Francisco in the 1970’s and formed her own company. In the last four decades, she has created an impressive body of work, with over 75 works created on her Company as well as resident companies in the United States and Europe. Jenkins has also received commissions from renowned national and international arts presenters and cultural institutions. A proponent of a fully realized collaborative art, Jenkins has worked with dance, music and visual arts luminaries, including Terry Allen, Alvin Curran, Paul Dresher, Rinde Eckert, Naomie Kremer, David Lang, Bruce Nauman, Alexander V. Nichols and Yoko Ono, among others. In addition to annual performance seasons in San Francisco, her Company tours regularly in this country and abroad. Jenkins’ cross-cultural collaborations with companies in India and China, as well as ambitious multi-disciplinary works, have been a highlight of her choreographic attention for the last decade. For her unique artistic vision, Jenkins has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the San Francisco Arts Commission Award of Honor, three Isadora Duncan Awards (Izzies), and the Bernard Osher Cultural Award for her outstanding contributions to the arts community in San Francisco and the Bay Area. In 2013, she was awarded a residency at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy. In 2013-14, she will celebrate the 40th Anniversary Season of her Company with the premieres of Times Bones, a work that draws inspiration from her extensive canon, and a new cross-cultural collaboration with the Kolben Dance Company of Jerusalem..
For biographies of the 2013 mentees, click here.
Major funding for CHIME Across Borders is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Photos (left to right, top to bottom): Tere O'Connor (photo by Natalie Fiol), Christy Funsch (Alex Keitel), Monique Jenkinson (Michelle Blious), and Lisa Townsend (Piro Patton).
