2014 Filmmakers
Ann Robideaux's bio (along with those of her festival Co-Directors) can be found here...
Parijat Desai
Parijat Desai creates contemporary dance that attempts to challenge the boundaries of culture, religion and nation. Since 1999, she has worked with her group Parijat Desai Dance Company to develop hybrid vocabularies, blending Indian classical dance, contemporary dance, and other forms. She is also curious about how to use movement to grapple with ideas and human experience. Besides dance for the stage, Parijat has created participatory choreography for public protest, and as a 2013–14 Fulbright-Nehru scholar to India, she investigated Islamic architectural sites using movement, historical research, photography, and film in a project called Buildings Bodies Breath. More info: facebook.com/ParijatDesaiDanceCompany | parijatdesai.org
Erin Fowler &
Nick Graalman
Erin Fowler is an Australian independent dancer, choreographer, musician and physical theatre performer who works collaboratively across artistic mediums. Her choreographic work includes the dance film, Gaia, created with filmmaker and time-lapse specialist Nick Graalman and composer Christopher Larkin, released in 2014. Gaia was awarded the inaugural Ausdance Digital Residency Award in June 2013. Erin’s first choreographic work Keeping Up With the Joneses (2011) was nominated in the Adelaide Fringe Awards for Best Dance and the Festival Centre In:Space Development Award. The 2nd development of this work MYTH: A study of the female species, premiered to Adelaide audiences in August 2011 at Nexus Multicultural Arts. Erin is the Co-Artistic Director of The Mill, a creative hub for Adelaide’s local artists from all disciplines. The Mill provides artist’s space and a curated program that is focused on the creation and continuous evolution of Adelaide based arts and artistic culture. Erin is also a musician in the band Sitara, performing vocals and guitar. They recently performed at the 2014 Womadelaide Festival as well as in the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe and will release their debut album in early 2015. In 2012 and 2013 Erin travelled to the Wudang Mountains in China where she studied KungFu, Tai Chi and QiGong practices. This has a strong influence on her creative practice and led her to co-develop the Movement is my Medicine Festival, which promotes movement culture and practices.
Nick Graalman is a filmmaker, cinematographer and director of photography. Nick began making and shooting short film in high school. He continued his interest in film making in 1999 when he studied at MAPS (Media Arts Production Skills) in Adelaide, South Australia. Upon his graduation from MAPS, Nick began his professional career as a freelance cinematographer and camera operator. In 2004, he collaborated with Tom Bettany & Chris Edser to create the video production business Quench Studios. In early 2009, Nick shot "Girt By Beards", possibly the first documentary captured on a 5D MkII. In 2012-2014, Nick took on his most challenging project to date, a 2 year collaboration with dancer and choreographer Erin Fowler on the short film Gaia. With a ton of projects in the pipeline, Nick intends to continue developing his passion for filmmaking and cinematography with great enthusiasm and promise. www.gaiadancefilm.com
Marta Renzi
Marta Renzi has made over 50 dances for her Project Co. and choreographed her first video dance for public television in 1981. She has received numerous choreographic fellowships, commissions and awards, including a NY Dance and Performance Award (a "Bessie") and a Dancing in the Streets award as "a fearless explorer." In 2005, she began self-producing dance/videos, which have been presented at festivals in the US, abroad and on line. Both Ching-I Chang and Jenny Tortorello have worked with Marta on several projects, both live and on film. This was cinematographer Charles Caster-Dudzick’s second short with Marta; they recently completed a third in spring of 2014. For more info: http://martarenzi.blogspot.com or Marta Renzi on Vimeo.
Florence Freitag
Florence Freitag (FR/GE) is a Screendance and Video Maker, Dancer and Writer, all in all a Screendancer in theory and practice. She is fascinated by movement in any sense, through the body or the image or the body as an image and vice versa. Florence studied cinema and audiovisual media at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Université Lyon 2 Lumière, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle and Paris Université Ouest de Nanterre. But before the image there was dance and Florence trained since the age of 4 in classical ballet, jazz and modern dance, with guest-terms at the Conservatoire of Le Mans and Lyon and working as a dancer and actor in Germany during her studies. With the beginning of her MA in 2011 she got more and more drawn - after discovering filmmaker, dancer and voodoo priestess Maya Deren - to mix both, film and dance, continuing to develop in contemporary dance and movement knowledge in Paris, and starting an ongoing one minute documentary video series of found choreography in the street. In 2014 her screen dance and video works have been shown at the One Minute Competition of Cinedans Festival Amsterdam and in a group installation of the International Videodance Festival of Burgundy (France). Since Novembre 2013 she is living and working, filming and dancing in Berlin, collaborating with dancers and choreographers in Germany and France and rethinking choreography for the screen. Living in Berlin, it was her wish to find her own language and new ways of collaborations between artists, but also researchers from different fields, dance, film, sound or theatre, looking for ways of working the moving image and movement as an image together.
Tumblr on movement & image: www.florencefreitag.tumblr.com
One Minute videos: www.cargocollective.com/florencefreitag
Laura Lamp
Laura Lamp is a first generation American dancer and choreographer who often experiments with film and photography. She has performed with A.H. Dance Company in New York, Toronto, and Edinburgh, where she also directed Dreaming to Escape, a dance documentary. Her first film Elfindorfs was screened with a live performance of the score by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina, and won the People's Choice Award. Laura recently returned from Hong Kong where she was working on a feature film directed by Kevin Tadge. Laura will show her upcoming works-in-progress dance piece at Movement Research's Fall 2014 Open Performance. She studied with Ballet Adriatico in Italy, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, North Carolina School of the Arts, and holds a BFA from George Mason University. www.lauramlamp.com
Rebecca Salzer
Rebecca Salzer is a dancemaker whose work transcends disciplinary labels. Her varied collaborative projects and her work forRebecca Salzer Dance Theater has been supported by the California Arts Council, the Berkeley Arts Council, Theatre Bay Area, and various private and corporate donors. Ms. Salzer’s recent work for the stage has been seen at Links Hall Chicago, Highways Performance Space and Gallery in Los Angeles and at The La Jolla Playhouse. Her films and videos have been programmed in national and international film festivals and on PBS-affiliate stations nationwide. Ms. Salzer is a Jacob K. Javits Fellow. She holds a B.A. in Humanities from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Dance Theatre from the University of California, San Diego. From 2011-14 Ms. Salzer was Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. She joins the Theatre and Dance faculty at the University of Alabama this fall. More info at
Melissa Sanderson
& Jordan Fuchs
Native of Northern California, Melissa Sanderson, is a performer, choreographer, educator, and dance filmmaker. She has performed in a variety a national and international festivals in the U.S.A., Germany, Switzerland, and The Netherlands, and has had her choreography performed in California and Texas. Her teaching experience also extends to California, Texas, Switzerland, and Bolivia. Melissa was awarded the Excellence in Choreography Scholarship Award: Videodance from Texas Woman’s University for her work that has been presented at international dance film festivals in the U.S.A., Brazil, Mexico, and France. Sanderson currently teaches at Eastfield College as an Adjunct Professor and performs with Contemporary Ballet Dallas as a company member. Melissa holds a B.F.A. in Dance from San Diego State University, from which she received the 2014 Alumni to Watch Award, and a M.F.A. in Dance from Texas Woman’s University where she worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant.
Jordan Fuchs is a choreographer committed to explorations of form and formlessness, proximity, and physicality. His choreography has been presented at numerous venues in NYC and nationally, including Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, FLICfest, Dance New Amsterdam, Sushi in San Diego, Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation, Fuse Box Festival in Austin, and the New Genre Arts Festival in Tulsa. In 2009 Fuchs founded the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival. An Associate Professor of Dance at TWU in Denton, TX, he has taught internationally at the NTUA in Taipei and Tsekh Summer School in Moscow and is a Fulbright Specialist. He holds a BA in Religion from Oberlin College and an MFA in Choreography from Ohio State University.
Hattie Mae Williams
& DataMouth
Hattie Mae Williams, director of Interdisciplinary dance company Hattie Mae Williams -The Tattooed Ballerinas LLC, whose roots are in site specific dance; has infused Film, Music, History, the Visual Arts and literature into their repertory. Performing and touring in sites such as laundromats, supermarkets, cemeteries, parks, tennis courts, subways and art galleries Williams is pushing the boundaries of perception and community involvement in performance and process. Her work has traveled nationally and internationally to Holland, Italy London, Los Angeles, New York and Miami. Williams, has choreographed works for artists such as playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney (workshop),Young DanceMakers Company (program Assistant), feature film “You, Me and the Circus’ (produced by Ty Hodges & Omar Epps), Actors Theater of Louisville (Movement Director) and dances on Emmy Award winning cartoon series The Backyardigans and Bubble Guppies. Williams is a recent recipient of the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant 2013, she will produce site specific projects in two of Miami, Florida's historic locations. For more info on projects go to www.thetattooedballerinas.com
DataMouth is the moniker of Chris Salazar, an artist and musician originally from Santiago, Chile who currently lives in Miami, FL. Salazar's musical background is diverse: guitarist in the influential South Florida punk band Milkshed in the 1990's and early 2000's; guitarist in the instrumental rock band Vidavox (described as an amalgam of jazz, progressive rock, jam band, & math rock) in the early-mid 2000's; and performer/collaborator in various other musical projects. Additionally, video game soundtracks and Freestyle music were among the earliest electronic influences on Salazar. His approach to electronic music is atypical in that his tracks often evolve from melodies written on guitar. Although Salazar is a senior art director professionally, outside of work, he continues to work in art by constantly drawing, designing, photographing + film-making, and creating music.
Vrinda Sheth
A spontaneous mover, Vrinda Sheth trained rigorously in the world’s finest Bharata Natyam dance institution, Kalakshetra, located in South India. Five years later, she emerged with the equivalent of a Master of Fine Arts graduating with honors. Since 2009, Vrinda travels and performs, often impromptu, with The Mayapuris. Working with mixed genres has honed her improv-skills and her ability to bring forth a mood within a moment’s notice. “Some of my deepest experiences as a dancer,” Vrinda says, “have come to me as I’m challenged to surrender to the immediacy of a live performance and its inherent spiritual mood.” Yet breaking free from structures and expected ways of dancing has long fascinated her. Vrinda continues to work within the traditional Bharata Natyam framework, while contemplating questions of identity and belonging. Through dance, she explores her place in the world as an artist and thinker. www.TheTempleDancers.com/dancers/vrinda
Tanin Torabi
Tanin Torabi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1992. She works as a freelance dancer, choreographer, and teacher there. Tanin’s interest in dance began at the young age of four, but because there were no dance schools in Iran, she had no opportunity to truly pursue her passion. She spent years searching everywhere for more information about the dance world and to try to find someone to learn from. Studying Sociology, she decided to investigate more about humanity and to portray moral and spiritual concepts through dance. In 2013 she attended, Creating Site-Specific Dance and Performance, an online course taught by Stephan Koplowitz. She has since decided to dedicate the rest of her life to training dancers and choreographing site-specific dances in Iran. Torabi would like to share this art form and the concepts she conveys in her work with the people of her country.
Yuuki
Yuuki is an artist of traditional Japanese Kamigata dance, which embodies the minimum motion in the world, and further expresses through her own performance, photography and film.
She conveys contemporary images to the world through dances with Japanese fan and kimono. She started studying dance and tea ceremony in her childhood. She has also studied architecture, garden design and landscape at Tokyo University of the Arts.
In 2009 she performed her solo dance work Tears of Eos (movie, theater) in Asahi Art Square, Tokyo. In the Summer of 2012, her dance photography was exhibited in the video dance festival Wallpaper Dance in Trieste, Italy. That autumn, she completed a solo performance project Camellia. It was performed in the Beppu Contemporary Art Festival "Mixed Bathing World" in Japan.
In 2013 she made the dance film Aquarium with filmmaker and musician Kei T. It was selected for The International Video Festival "Agite y Sirva" in Mexico, Festival International de Video Danse de Bourgogne in France, dança em foco in Brazil, El Espejo in Colombia, International Dance Film Festival Brussels, L'art difficile de filmer la danse in Belgium, Festival Internacional de VideoDanzaBA in Argentina, Dances with Camera in Poland, BANG Barcelona Videoart Festival. The piece has also been screened in Puebla, Mexico, Cinema Le Morvan in France in April, Bogota, Columbia in June, in Rio de Janeiro in August, and in Oaxaca, Mexico, at Bruxelles and Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti in Buenos Aires in September 2013. In April 2014 it was shown in Poznan, Poland and at La Casa Elizalde, Barcelona, Spain. It was also broadcast at Pool Videodance Night, a special program of International videodance festival, "POOL" in Berlin, at the Berlin based art television "ikono TV" an organization with global reach across 30 countries. More info at www.yuukito.net.