BIOS
PAULA JOSA-JONES, Co-Director
dancer/choreographer
Choreographer/director Paula Josa-Jones has developed a unique form of visually
charged dance theater built on the sensuous experience of the body as landscape
and source for movement, image and voice. She began her performance work in the theater twenty-five years ago, including
intensive work with Eiko & Koma and Authentic Movement. Her background as an actress contributes to her innovative approach to
choreography: creating characters, incorporating texts and other elements from theater. She recently extended her listening strategies to another species in her
equestrian-dance theater project, “RIDE,” choreographing dancers and horses.
As the Artistic Director of Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works, Josa-Jones has
received two consecutive two-year Choreography Fellowships (1992-96) from the
National Endowment for the Arts, as well as an Artist's Grant from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council. Ms. Josa-Jones has received commissions from
the Joyce Theater, Jacob's Pillow, Dance Umbrella, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and nuArts at Northeastern University.
Ms. Josa-Jones has produced over forty works of dance theater, film and video. She has collaborated with contemporary composers, including Ingram Marshall and
Pauline Oliveros. Her work has been produced at Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), The Joyce Theater
(New York), Jacob's Pillow (Lee, MA), Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors (New York),
Dance Umbrella (London and Boston), Performance Space 122 (New York), Tangente,
Inc. (Montreal), Bates Dance Festival (Maine), Women in Theater Festival and
Mobius (Boston), Yellow Springs Institute (Philadelphia), the Performance Art
Festival (Cleveland), as well as numerous universities and colleges.
ELLEN SEBRING, Co-Director
film and video
Ellen Sebring has been Creative Director of the Visualizing Cultures project at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since its inception in 2002. A
multimedia producer and video artist, Sebring holds a Master's degree in Visual
Studies from MIT, where she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual
Studies for six years. Visualizing Cultures -
http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu - received the National Endowment for the
Humanities award in 2005 and MIT’s Class of 1960 Innovation in Education award in 2004, has toured the US and
Japan, exhibited at Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Pacific Overtures” on Broadway, and is in the permanent collection of the National Archives.
Co-founder and President of Botticelli Interactive, Inc. – http://botticelli.com - for seven years (1997-2002), Sebring produced "Star
Festival," awarded Best of Show at MacWorld Expo and "StarNetwork" starring
George Takei, awarded the Distinguished Award of the Multimedia GrandPrix 2000,
Tokyo. The company received major funding from the Institute for Civil Society
to create an interactive television prototype to enhance creativity in
children. For museums, Botticelli Interactive produced educational touch screen
kiosks, including the innovative Titian Kiosk, which earned the New York
Festivals’ Silver Medal.
Sebring was selected for the American Film Institute's prestigious Directing
Workshop for Women to write and direct a movie in Hollywood. She has directed
over 30 documentaries on visual artists, dance and theater. In 2004 she
received a co-production residency at the Banff Centre, Canada to compose music
for a collaborative work with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones. Other awards and
grants include the Artist's Foundation Fellowship for Video Art, Canon Europa
prize at the WorldWide Video Festival in Holland, and PBS, NEA, NEFA,
Meet-the-Composer and NEFV Foundation grants. Sebring's video art includes “Aviary,” a multimedia performance at MIT’s Media Lab funded by National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council for
the Arts, which was subsequently commissioned by WGBH and WNET for national
broadcast. Trained as a composer and flutist at Indiana University and the
Hochschule fuer Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna – where she performed with the Austrian Radio Orchestra – Sebring explores the relationship of sound and image in her work. Samples are
available on her website: http://ellensebring.com.
ALISSA CARDONE
dancer
Alissa Cardone engages dance as a performer, choreographer, writer/educator and
intermedia performance collaborator. She has performed nationally and
internationally in Russia, Peru, Belgium, Japan, France, most recently with
musician Bobby McFerrin at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (April 2004) and with
butoh master Akira Kasai in "Nobody Eve" (Kyoto, Tokyo August 2003). Alissa was
recently awarded a fellowship from Asian Cultural Council to return to Japan
this fall for collaboration with Japanese artists. In 2002, Alissa was a
Choreography Finalist of the Massachusetts Cultural Council as well as a
Somerville Arts Council Artist Fellow and in 2003 moved to New York to pursue
her MA in Performance Studies from NYU. In Boston she's worked with Paula
Josa-Jones/Performance Works, Brenda Divelbliss, Sara Sweet-Rabideux/hoi
polloi, Nicola Hawkins and Christine Bennett. Her dance writing has been
published in the Brooklyn Rail, Contact Quarterly and on-line as a dance critic
for the Dance Insider (www.danceinsider.com).
INGRID SCHATZ
dancer
Ingrid Schatz is a performer and teacher who has been dancing her whole life.
She has made a career of taking risks and pushing the boundaries of dance and
in the process has learned stilt walking, low flying trapeze, horse handling,
capoeira, martial arts and aerial dance. After receiving a BFA in Dance from
the University of Massachusetts, she performed with Amie Dowling and the Dance
Generators, Jin Wen Yu/Artifact Productions, Victory Girl Productions and
Outside Art Collective. Since 1997, Ingrid has worked with Paula
Josa-Jones/Performance Works for whom she is rehearsal director and with whom
she has toured, taught, collaborated, performed and choreographed throughout
the United States, France and Russia. Performance Works’ RIDE project is currently being developed for an international tour. She also
performs with Nicola Hawkins Dance Company. Ingrid has taught at Boston
University, Fitchburg State College and the Martha’s Vineyard Charter School among others. Her own work has been produced at the
University of Massachusetts, Agnes Scott College, the Northfield Mount Herman
School and The Playhouse Theater. She currently teaches at Annemarie’s Dance Centre in Ashland, MA, North Quabbin Youth Reach and at The Dance Studio
in Orange, MA, where she directs InsideOut Dance Company, which she founded to
give greater performance and choreography opportunities to teens. Ingrid
directs BDC’s collaboration with Medicine Wheel Production’s Youth Project. She has worked with Christine Bennett/BDC since 1995.
