An advisory panel of regional specialists in the dance field reviewed the proposals and selected the CHIME grant recipients. The Southern California panel consisted of Victoria Marks, a choreographer who makes live and filmed work, dances for dancers and other human beings, and is a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA and Wendy Rogers who has choreographed and performed contemporary dances for over forty years, residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City and now in Riverside, California where she joined the University of California dance faculty in 1996.
Reflecting on five years of CHIME in Southern California, Jenkins states, “CHIME is a program with a huge mission and an enormous heart. Having witnessed and facilitated the powerful personal connections that artists have established through CHIME over the last decade, I am so pleased that CHIME in Southern California will have another 6 months for artists to be in conversation and at work with one another.”
Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, Artists/Choreographers, have collaborated since 2003. Working within an interdisciplinary framework to create project-based installations and performances, Gerard & Kelly use choreography, writing and a range of other media to address questions of sexuality, collective memory, and the formation of queer consciousness. Recent exhibitions include Timelining at The Kitchen (2014) and Kiss Solo at Kate Werble Gallery (2013), as well as participation in Made in LA 2014 at the Hammer Museum. Gerard & Kelly completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2010, and received their MFAs in 2013 from the Interdisciplinary Studio in UCLA Department of Art. Their work is represented in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum and Hammer Museum. They are currently artists-in-residence at the New Museum, where their project P.O.L.E. (People, Objects, Language, Exchange) will debut in an exhibition in February 2015.
Rebecca Bruno, Dance Artist, is a dance artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Most recently she has worked as a dancer with Pablo Bronstein at the REDCAT Gallery and Le Mouvement Festival in Biel, Switzerland, as associate choreographer with Julien Prévieux at FAHRENHEIT for What Shall We Do Next? winner of the 2014 Prix Marcel Duchamp and as a choreographer and performer in her work, The Beginning, presented at Live Arts Los Angeles, PAM Residencies, and at the home of Robert Crouch and Yann Novak via homeLA. Rebecca has collaborated on works of Taisha Paggett, Flora Wiegmann, Christine Suarez, Jmy James Kidd, Melanie Rios Glaser, Monica Bill Barnes, Yolande Snaith and others. Rebecca is honored to be a recipient of CHIME Southern California and to be working with artists Gerard and Kelly. She is the founder and director of homeLA a project dedicated to dance process in interior space: www.homelahello.com
Robert Een, Multidisciplinary Artist, Educator, composer, singer, cellist, performance artist; 2004 Obie Award, 2000 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for sustained achievement; has been presented worldwide. Known for his multi-disciplinary approach to performance and genre-defying music; has worked with theater/dance collaborators Dan Hurlin, Liz Lerman, Stephan Koplowitz, David Dorfman, Lionel Popkin, Brian Selznick, Bridgman/Packer, Yoshiko Chuma, Pearson/Widrig, Christopher Williams, Heidi Duckler, Kristen Smiarowski, Ron K. Brown, others. Film scores for directors Eric Stoltz, Noah Baumbach, Alan Madison, Andrea Simon, others; featured in Gregory Colbert始s photography/film exhibit Ashes and Snow. Funding; McKnight Foundation, NYFA, NEFA, NYSCA, Rockefeller Foundation, Walker Art Center, American Music Center, MacDowell Colony, Creative Capital, Asian Cultural Council, Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, Pew Charitable Trusts. Teaching faculty; UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Naropa University, New York University; guest artist; U. of Maryland, Zen Mt. Monastery, Denison University, others; master classes presented worldwide.
Alexx Shilling, Choreographer, Performer, Artistic Director, is fully committed to the infinite investigation of movement and its potential to tell stories and allow us to remember. Her original choreography and experimental films have been presented in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, at the American Dance Festival, Jüdisches Museum München, on MTV’s 9/11 Video Postcards, among others. Shilling has created live, multi-media performance in unusual spaces both in collaboration with Ann Robideaux (ann and alexx make dances), and currently as alexx makes dances. After 12 years in New York, Alexx relocated to Los Angeles, receiving her MFA in Dance at UCLA’s Department of World Arts & Culture/Dance. Shilling co-directs FIELDSHIFT | FURTHER with interdisciplinary artist Quintan Ana Wikswo. She has been performing with Victoria Marks since 2010 and currently dances with Laurel Tentindo, Sarah Leddy, Alison D’Amato and Rebecca Pappas. Shilling teaches at The Wooden Floor, Loyola Marymount University and UCLA. www.AlexxMakesDances.com, www.FieldShiftFurther.com
Carole Kim, Interdisciplinary Director and Media Artist, is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on installation and video for live performance. She has experimented extensively with the moving image to physicalize the medium and render it malleable in real time. Kim seeks an integration of media where moving image, sound, dance and space are on equal planes engaging in a dynamic, reciprocating and mutually supportive dialogue. Her work floats between disciplines, manifesting in different contexts including experimental music, theater, dance and art. Her work has been supported by the Irvine Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Center for Cultural Innovation, City of Los Angeles, Pasadena Arts Council, Durfee Foundation, REDCAT, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), The Getty Center, The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS), Newtown, Turbulence.org, CalArts, and The Center for Experiments in Art, Information, and Technology. She was selected as a recipient of a 2013 COLA Fellowship and a 2014 CCI Investing in Artists grant.
Meena Murugesan, Choreographer and Educator, is a choreographer, filmmaker, teaching artist, and producer. She investigates the ways in which South Asian dance histories intersect with western dance histories, and re-choreographs these post-colonial junctions through live performance and multi-media. Born and raised in Montréal, Canada, she has been living in Los Angeles for the last three years where she recently completed her MFA in dance (UCLA, June 2014). Meena’s movement practice is deeply rooted in bharata natyam, improvisation, somatic body practices, and house dance; key teachers include Vasantha Krishnan, Josefina Baez, Zab Maboungou, Marie-Claude Rodrigue, Michael Greyeyes, Dazl, and Rennie Harris. As a community arts educator, she facilitates ethical filmmaking and movement processes with racialized youth, girls, and criminalized women as collaborative acts that unpack stereotypes, stigma, and systems of oppression. Meena is also the newest member of Post Natyam Collective. She is currently presenting her latest choreography we used to see this, and completing two short films. www.meenamurugesan.com
ABOUT CHIME
Founded in 2004 by MJDC Artistic Director Margaret Jenkins, CHIME seeks to formalize the exchange and feedback mechanisms between established and emerging California choreographers. Based on the core beliefs that open communication between choreographers of different generations is vital to the health of the field, and that artists should be fairly compensated for their work, CHIME provides significant support to established and emerging choreographers working together in mentorship relationships that includes, but is not limited to, work in the studio.
Funding for CHIME in Southern California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful and inclusive society. The Foundation’s grantmaking focuses on three program areas: Arts, California Democracy and Youth. Since 1937 the Foundation has provided over $1 billion in grants to more than 3,000 nonprofit organizations throughout California. With about $1.5 billion in assets, the Foundation made grants of $65 million in 2011 for the people of California.
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
507 Polk St. Ste. 320
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 861-3940
