Bios
collaborators/creators:
Kym McDaniel
Kym McDaniel is a choreographer and media artist living in Milwaukee. Originally from Chicago, Kym has a BFA in Dance and a BA in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has performed at various concerts in the Midwest and has taught dance in Romania, Maine, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Her collaborations have included textures for video mapping, projection, and sound design for choreographers. Her film, Groundswell, was screened at REDCAT in Los Angeles during the Dance Camera West Festival. Kym practices the Alexander Technique and is currently an MFA candidate in Film, Video, Animation and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Halie Bahr
Halie Bahr is a Choreographer, Performer, and Dance Educator. Her works have been seen in
Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Follies, Danceworks and, her most recent work Blush premiered in Minneapolis at the Gamut Gallery in March of 2015. Currently, she is working in collaboration with Kym McDaniel on a multi-media work Moving While Standing Still, which will premiere in June 2016. As a performer Bahr has worked with Danceworks Performance Company, and appeared as a Guest Performer with Wildspace Dance Company, and Your Mother Dances. Recently she relocated to Minneapolis to dance for the April Sellers Dance Collective. Halie has been teaching dance for 5 years in a variety of settings and continues to research and create work within the field. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee with her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance & Choreography.
Kristin Marrs
Kristin Marrs has performed classical and contemporary roles as a company member of Columbus Dance Theatre, Arova Contemporary Ballet, Northern Ballet Theatre, Paradise Ballet Theatre, Ballet Quad Cities, Opera Columbus, and Images (London). She has worked with choreographers Kennet Oberly, Tim Veach, Stella Kane, Kristina Isabelle, Maria Glimscher, Alun Jones, Kim Robards, Lynn Bowman, Simone Ferro, Johanne Jakhelln, Penny Askew, and Margaret Mead-Finizio, and has performed ballets of Petipa, Balanchine, and Frederick Ashton. She continues to perform as a freelance solo artist.
Kristin trained at SUNY Purchase and London Studio Centre, and holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa, where she is currently a Lecturer in Ballet. She is a certified instructor of vinyasa and yin yoga, and an Alexander Technique teacher trainee holding an associate membership with the American Society for the Alexander Technique. Her research and teaching interests include the integration of healthy somatic practices with the precision of ballet technique.
Kristin has presented her choreography at concert and site-specific venues around the United States. Works include Out of the Depths, selected for performance in the 2012 American College Dance Association Gala concert and A Poet’s Love, featuring a live performance of Schumann’s Dichterliebe. This spring, she directed a restaging of Petipa’s classic ballet Paquita for the University of Iowa Youth Ballet, and served as co-director of the Iowa Summer Repertory Dance Ensemble.
Hannah White
Hannah White is a filmmaker engaged in rendering abstract theoretical concepts into concrete representations through stop-motion animation. She uses the paradox inherent in both the act of bringing life to otherwise inanimate objects as well as the use of flat paper puppets to depict depth and dimensionality in order to shine light on a variety of concepts drawn from across disciplines. By exploring the processes of perception through stopping and starting the motion of the work, she is able to consider how seeing, breathing, and feeling influence the human experience. Her work pauses, isolates and expands upon these moments of perception, in order to attend to deep and automatic processes found in these brief exchanges. Her creation of a hand-made world represents human perception as a construction. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres program at UW Milwaukee.
guest choreographers:
Marissa Jax
Connecticut born-Wisconsin raised, Marissa Jax has found no other passion in life like dance. She was studio trained for age four through high school where she has background in competitive dance and show choir. After one year at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point dance program, Miss Jax transferred to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There she attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Contemporary Dance specializing in performance and choreography as well as a Minor in Psychology in May 2015. She has had the honor to perform in work for Elizabeth Johnson, Luc Vanier, Maria Gillespie, Dani Kuepper, Reggie Wilson, Brandi Coleman, Rebecca Stenn, Stephen Koplowitz, and Kym McDaniel. Marissa currently resides in Milwaukee where she is teaching dance as well as creating work.
Chloe Nagle
Chloe Nagle is a first year graduate student in Dance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with her BFA in Dance. She has performed her work as a soloist at the American Dance Festival, the Bates Dance Festival, and Danceworks-Milwaukee.
performers:
Amelia Morris
Amelia attended the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee where she received a BFA in Dance. She had the pleasure of participating in inspiring master classes such as: LeeSaar Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Irene Dowd, and Oni Dance. While in Milwaukee, Amelia has danced for Wild Space Dance Company, Kym McDaniel, and the Milwaukee Master Singers. After graduation, Amelia auditioned for the Li Chiao-Ping Dance Company and has had the opportunity to travel and perform nationwide over the past year. In the summer of 2016, she is moving out west to further discover new cities and dance communities.
Emma Call
Kelsey James
Gina Laurenzi
A UWM Dance Department graduate and second season Danceworks Performance Company (DPC) member, Gina Laurenzi previously trained as a Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago scholarship student, under Elements Contemporary Ballet’s Artistic Director Michael Gosney, and performed with both Giordano II and Inaside Chicago Dance. Gina was the Coordinator for the YMCA Dance Program in Kenosha, WI where she gained experience teaching ages 3-Adult in ballet, jazz, hip hop, modern, contemporary and improvisation. A desire to give back to her community and spread a knowledge of the arts compelled Gina to create Laurenzi Dance where she ran the studio class program until 2013. Currently, Gina serves as the Owner/Artistic Director of her youth performing dance companies and she continues to produce thoughtful themed events with her young artists of Laurenzi Dance in Kenosha. Gina is thrilled to further share her love of the arts here in Milwaukee by teaching for Danceworks, being a part of the the MHBT program and in working with the young movers of Danceworks Youth Performance Company (DYPC) as part of the DYPC Artistic Team.
Nicole Spence
Miranda Zielinski
Miranda began training in dance at the Studio at the age of 3 and continued on until graduating from Germantown High School. During her 15 years at the Studio she studied Ballet, Tap, Jazz, and Modern Dance and in her High School years participated in the Student Teaching Apprenticeship Program. Miranda has attended multiple Chicago National Association of Dance Masters intensives, and was awarded the 2015 College Scholarship from Dance Masters of Wisconsin. Miranda is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Here she has had the opportunity to work with and perform works choreographed by faculty members Darci Wutz and Dani Kuepper. In addition, she has been selected to perform in works done by 5 student choreographers. She was also given the opportunity to work with New York visual artist, Xavier Cha in a piece called "Surveil" performed during Art & Tech night at the INOVA gallery that correlated modern internet use with movement.