Photo by Joyce Marshall. Dancers L to R: Claudia P. Orcasitas, Ann-Marie Heilman, Breanna Kimbley

17th Annual Modern Dance Festival at The Modern, in collaboration with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

June 10, June 17, July 22-23, July 29-30

Films, lectures and live dance performances inspired by the Robert Motherwell Pure Painting exhibition on display in the galleries. Admission to dance festival events is free, see the www.themodern.org web site for gallery admission information.

The Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth company gave its premiere performance at the Dallas Morning News Dance Festival on Labor Day weekend of 1990. The summer of 2020 would have been the 30th anniversary celebration of the company, but it was put on hold due to the pandemic. Coming out of this hiatus, CD/FW is honored to be celebrating Robert Motherwell’s work as part of the 17 th Modern Dance Festival at The Modern.

SCHEDULE

Allana Lindgren

Saturday June 10 2pm : Motherwell and Modern Dance: Activating Creativity through Automatism – Video, Lecture and Q & A with Allana Lindgren

Museum Auditorium

In the 1940s, automatism, in its various forms, was a powerful accelerant for creativity. This talk transposes Robert Motherwell's ideas about plastic automatism to modern dance using the choreography of Françoise Sullivan, a member of the Montréal Automatists, as a case study. These artists' innovative experiments with automatism can serve as catalysts for anyone interested in activating new sources of inspiration. June 10, 2023, also happens to be the 100 th birthday of Francoise Sullivan, who is still actively creating work! Video examples of Sullivan's work will be featured, including her 1948 automatist work, Dédale. Come learn about and celebrate this great artist who is also a painter, sculptor, and photographer in addition to being a dancer and choreographer.

Allana Lindgren, PhD, is the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria. She has published in a variety of journals and collections, including The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, Dance Research Journal, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, American Journal of Dance Therapy, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Co-edited publications include Canadian Performance Documents and Debates: A Sourcebook (2022), Moving Together: Dance and Pluralism in Canada (2021), The Modernist World (2015) and Renegade Bodies: Canadian Dance in the 1970s (2012). She is also the Dance Editor for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism.

Ginette Boutin in Françoise Sullivan's Black and Tan, 1992
Photographer unknown. Courtesy Danse Collection Danse

Saturday June 17 2pm : Re-Assembling The Past and Pondering The Future: Merce Cunningham’s “Assemblage” - Film, Lecture and Q & A

Museum Auditorium


James Klosky (photo by James Klosky) (bio)	Jeff Slayton (photo by Lisa Hartouni) (bio)

Choreographer/performer/author/dance journalist Jeff Slayton (Long Beach) will be a long-distance guest speaker through live video feed. CD/FW is honored to welcome Slayton back to festival programming as an artist who has participated in multiple past festivals in a variety of capacities. As one of the featured performers in the film, he will share his memories and perspectives on the process and the world of the Merce Cunningham company at the time.

Renowned photographer James Klosty will contribute perspectives in regard to the creation of Assemblage. Photos of Assemblage are featured in his book Merce Cunningham which was first published in 1975, re-issued in 1986, and re-imagined as Merce Cunningham Redux in honor of Merce Cunningham’s 100th birthday. While Klosty was not a part of the film crew, he was the company’s documentary photographer throughout the process of the creation of the dance and the film.

While Cunningham never collaborated with Motherwell, they were colleagues at the Black Mountain Arts Festival, often traveled in the same circles, and were working in the same cultural “soup” as they developed their own aesthetics of abstraction. As such, the feel of this film provides historical perspective for the types of experimentation happening in 1968.

Audience members are encouraged to stay for a Q&A session with Slayton at the end.

Assemblage is a recently rediscovered lost film featuring Merce Cunningham and his early dance company. A collaboration with director and former dancer Richard Moore, Assemblage features Cunningham dancing with his company in a public happening in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square in November 1968. Cunningham's riveting performance--conceived from the beginning as a dance staged for the camera--is amplified by Moore's astonishing special effects and a soundtrack by John Cage, David Tudor and Gordon Mumma. Rediscovered after Cunningham's death, Assemblage was transferred from 16mm and colorized by artist and filmmaker Charles Atlas, himself a longtime collaborator of Cunningham's. Assemblage presents a dance that unfolds across fractured space and inside shattered time. Produced for broadcast by San Francisco's public television station KQED, Assemblage is a film with two subjects: Merce Cunningham's dance company and Ghirardelli Square, one of the first of a new wave of gentrified urban environments where dilapidated markets or industrial sites were rehabilitated as mall-like retail districts. In an interview with San Francisco critic Robert Commanday, Cunningham explained his idea that "the finished film will deal not so much with dance in the narrow sense, but with various motions--boats moving, people walking, and, of course, groups dancing." On screen, Cunningham's dancers walk, frolic, and scramble through the shopping concourses and promenades of the square. Cunningham and his company spent three weeks rehearsing and filming on location in fall 1968, creating what Moore described as "movement modules." From these sequences, Moore and film editor Bill Yahraus crafted a motion picture collage of overlapping movements and moments, which occur sometimes in fragmented film windows, sometimes within ingenious superimposed planes. To create the breathtaking hallucinatory collision of filmed dances, Moore used extensive optical illusion and process photography; dancers were filmed as silhouettes and superimposed on different backgrounds. In one extraordinary composited sequence, Cunningham's company becomes a miniaturized troupe of Lilliputian dancers, weaving in and out of the dancing legs of gigantic versions of themselves. Assemblage serves as a testament to Cunningham's groundbreaking investigations of dance and movement within the virtual spaces of film.

Merce Cunningham during the filming of Assemblage in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square in November 1968
Photo by James Klosty as featured in his book Merce Cunningham Redux published in 2019 by PowerHouse Books

Director: Richard Moore. A film by Richard Moore. Phillip Greene, Bill Yahraus, William Winant, Bernie Stoffer, Barbara Styman. Dancers: Merce Cunningham and Dance Company, with Carolyn Brown, Sandra Neels, Valda Setterfield, Meg Harper, Susana Hayman-Chaffey, Jeff Slayton, Chase Robinson, Mel Wong. Musicians: John Cage, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma. Special Assistants: Jean Rigg, Jim Baird, Rick Nelson. Special Effects Printing: W.A. Palmer Films, Inc. San Francisco. Producer: KQED-TV, Bay Area Educational Television, San Francisco. A production of the KQED Film Unit. Filmed on location at Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco. This production was made possible in part through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The film is 58:03 minutes in length and is provided Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York)

**Dancers (L to R) Jeff Slayton, Valda Setterfield, and Sandra Neels in the film "Assemblage" 1968**,
directed by Richard Moore with choreography by Merce Cunningham. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

July 22-23 and 29-30, 2pm: “Actions and Elegies for Robert Motherwell” — Celebrating the Robert Motherwell Pure Painting exhibition and CD/FW’s “Thirty-Something” Anniversary
Museum Lobby, Free Admission. Each event is 60 minutes in length.
(While admission to the performances is free, regular museum admission policies apply when visiting the Robert Motherwell Pure Painting exhibition on display in the galleries. For museum admission info go to: https://www.themodern.org/visit/hours-and-admission)

This series of live performances of dance and music are dedicated to the memory of Jerry Bywaters Cochran, who founded the modern dance program at Texas Christian University, was a pioneer for modern dance in the North Texas area, and served on the CD/FW advisory board for many years; and also to her daughter Mary Cochran, who was a guest artist and collaborator with CD/FW during her career.

CD/FW Artistic Director Kerry Kreiman: Jerry Bywaters Cochran referred to Robert Motherwell often in class when listing off visual artists to look to for inspiration. She would bring giant art books to class and ask students to page through them. Jerry also frequently referenced primitivism in her teaching, and would ask rhetorical questions about the origins of the first forms of the arts, referencing cave paintings, and dancing around fires. That may have been part of her affinity with Motherwell. And Jerry always encouraged students to collaborate with artists of other disciplines. Mary was also a proponent of interdisciplinary works, and always up for a new artistic challenge. Both of these leaders in dance played a huge role in CD/FW’s history, and this unique project is a fitting way to honor them.

Consisting of four unique events, each performance will combine ideas from the Robert Motherwell Pure Painting exhibition, abstract expressionism, automatism, and improvisation, interspersed with tangentially-related echoes of memories from Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth’s company history and past festivals at The Modern – along with flickers of ideas from the late Jerry Bywaters Cochran (1936-2022) and her daughter Mary Cochran (1963-2017). Composers Doug Ferguson, John Hopkins, William Meadows, and Brittany Padilla will be creating and executing sound scores with fluid frameworks for unique outcomes each time. Choreographers and dancers will contribute ideas directly in real space and time, and indirectly through advance contributions offered up to the live performers. Opportunities for audience participation will be featured in each performance.

Choreographers/performers will include Cher Anabo (SoCal), LaCentheah “Cece” Bagley (Dallas), Loris Anthony Beckles (Dallas), Heather Coder (Godley), Ann-Marie Heilman (Fort Worth), Stephanie Howell (Dallas), Suzie Jary (Fort Worth), Breanna Kimbley (Arlington), Kerry Kreiman (Fort Worth), Courtney Mulcahy (McKinney), Tina Mullone (Providence, RI), Claudia P. Orcasitas (Fort Worth), Lori Sundeen Soderbergh (Dallas), Jessica Thomas (Nacogdoches), and Sherry Welborn (Haltom City). Crickett Pettigrew (Fort Worth) will be designing costumes.

John Hopkins and Doug Ferguson will be the lead composers/musicians for the July 22-23 performances and Brittany Padilla will be the lead composer/musician on July 29-30 with bonus contributions from Doug Ferguson. William Meadows’ contributions will be long-distance from a selection of sound files, including excerpts from past collaborations with CD/FW, to include echoes from CD/FW’s “Thirty-Something” year history.

Sharing Options: Audience members are invited to share photos and videos from the event via cell phone to social media as long as they are not using flash or special lighting, and stay outside of the performing area. Audience members who choose to participate in the performance should not bring their electronic devices into the playing area and instead leave them with friends in the viewing area. Professional photographers/videographers/filmmakers seeking footage for commercial purposes need to request special permission at least 3 days in advance of the performance.

Mary Hill

Photographer: Timothy C. Hutchins

Mary Hill, Ed.D. of Lightbodies Geometries, LLC (Choreographer/Performer of “Double Infinity and “Current” on July 12-13 and “Bleed” on July 14) is engaged in a broad range of movement disciplines and continues to push the boundaries of these endeavors. These movement modalities include GYROTONIC® method, Pilates, Thai Bodywork, Yoga therapeutics, and Wall/Vertical Suspension, as well as dance. She is also a certified Reiki Master Teacher and Practitioner. Her movement experiences range from the performative, to the educational, to the therapeutic, to the transformative. Mary holds a Doctorate in Dance History/Education from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. along with a Women’s Studies teaching certification. She was awarded the first Doctor of Philosophy Excellence in Scholarship Award in the Dance Department at Temple for her research on the Modernist influences of Primitivism, Dimensional Reality, and the Artist-As-Seer on Martha Graham’s early dance practices (Postmodern Reflections on Dance Modernism: Modernist Currents of Primitivism, Dimensional Reality, and the Artist-As-Seer on Martha Graham’s “Heretic,” “Lamentation,” and “Primitive Mysteries.”) Mary received a Master’s of Fine Arts at Texas Christian University under the tutelage of international choreographer James Clouser, and Martha Graham Rehearsal Director, David Hochoy. She taught Modern Dance while attending TCU, and also taught Ballet and Modern Dance while attending Temple. A previous Artist-In-Residence for the Texas Commission on the Arts, Mary has performed, choreographed, studied, and taught throughout the United States and internationally.

Aaron Levy

Sarah Inkster Photography

Aaron Levy, The Circusball Ninja, is 27-years-old and a graduate of The University of Texas at Dallas. When he's not balancing his act on stage, he is training athletes to compete on the television show American Ninja Warrior at a Dallas-based obstacle course gym.

Jackie Millán

Photo by Marissa Ericson

Jackie Millán has a BA in Dance from Hunter College with department honors in dance. She has danced with MWest & Company, Bolly Dhamaal Dance, imPULSE Dance Project, Cholorock Dance Collective, and as an independent artist. She is currently the Assistant Director of Dance at Arlington Heights High School, Director of Dance at Monnig Middle School, and on the dance faculty at Texas Dance Conservatory. Jackie is the recipient of the Bates Dance Festival Teacher Fellowship Scholarship and the Dance Council of North Texas Artful Dancewear Teacher Scholarship.

Donald Strikeleather

Donald Stikeleather spent the 1990’s as a dance professor and modern dance choreographer known for witty solos and collaborations funded by the Indiana Arts Council. “Flat,” a signature solo work, has been performed by Illinois Dance Theatre, Purdue Repertory Dance Company, at Saint Mary's College, and for adjudication at the ACDFA at Missouri State University. During the period when Flat was choreographed, Stikeleather studied with Beverly Blossom, a former Nikolais dancer. Donald has a BA in Theatre from Purdue University, an MFA in Dance from The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a MDiv from Naropa University.

Project In Motion

Tara Kolberg
Photo by Steve MacIntyre

White Fox Archetype is an experimental hip hop artist creating music representing dreams and the surreal, using beats, loops, samples and live instruments.

Tara Kolberg is a New Mexico native and has been a lifelong movement artist. She has trained in ballet and attended The Public Academy for the Performing Arts in Albuquerque. She works primarily with New Mexico performance groups including Albuquerque Circus Arts, New Mexico Air Dance and Nemcatacoa Teatro. Tara has danced for Project In Motion for two seasons.

Hilary McDaniel-Douglas is the Artistic Director of Project In Motion. She attended Interlochen Arts Academy, Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated from Indiana University. Hilary is a Bill Evans certificate holder. She has taught and choreographed for decades, both in a higher education and a community capacity. She is an Indianapolis Arts Council Fellow as well as a former Young Audiences performer. Hilary has successfully acquired many grants under PIM’s guise including NEA, NMarts and private foundations. Affiliated with PIM for decades she has created and directed hundreds of dances and productions for commercial, university and PIM programs, fundraisers and concerts including Midwest Arts, New Mexico State University, Chalk The Block El Paso and Creative Santa Fe’s Fantasé Fest, as well as others. She will be looking forward to a guest choreographer position with East Village Dance Project to take place at La Mama Theater in New York’s East Village in December and PIM’s NM Arts funded festival “Above Borders” in September.

Claudia Orcasitas and Najwa Seyedmorteza

Photo by Angela Lewis

Claudia Orcasitas is a dance educator and psychologist born in Lima, Peru. She is deeply invested in practicing ballet, modern and contemporary dance. She has taught ballet and modern dance at The School of San Marcos Ballet (Peru), the Wise Music and Dance Conservatory (Texas) and San Marcos University Department of Dance (Peru). Orcasitas has performed and presented her work with the San Marcos Ballet Company (Lima, Peru), the Contemporary Dance Fort Worth Company from (Fort Worth, Texas), and Epiphany DanceArts Company (Dallas, Texas) and participated in diverse festivals around the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Recently, she has participated as an artist residency with the organization Danzon Nuclear and Ministry of Culture of Peru, performing movement research about abject bodies as well as architectural spaces. As part of her professional development, she is now pursuing her Masters in Fine Arts at Texas Woman’s University. Her goal as a dance educator and art advocate is to create educational programs in North Texas that prepare elementary school students for a career in the arts.

Photo by Claudia Orcasitas

Najwa Seyedmorteza is a dancer and choreographer from Fort Worth, Texas. She became active at an early age, training as an elite gymnast and a competitive taekwondo fighter, in which she holds a 1st degree black belt. She began her dance career at the age of 18 at Tarrant County Community College, training under Dr. Kihyoung Choi where she learned ballet and modern dance techniques. She transferred to Texas Woman’s University (TWU) in Denton, Texas where she refined her skills in modern, improvisation, composition, theory, and production. She graduated from TWU with her Bachelor of Arts in Dance Studies in 2016. Seyedmorteza’s work has been shown at the American Collegiate Dance Association (ACDA), TWU Alumni Concert, TWU Dance Upclose Concert series, and TCC Movers Unlimited Dance Company Showcase. She has performed at the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, ACDA, and the Dallas DanceFest. She is currently working on her Master of Fine Arts in Dance at TWU. Her research interests are in exploring different ways of entering into a psychological flow state through the use of extreme physicalities, state shifting, and improvisation.

Brittany Padilla is a music performer, composer, and producer residing in Fort Worth, TX. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and minor in Spanish from the University of North Texas, where she began her experience and career as a dance musician. She danced and played with the percussion ensemble for African dance classes and performances at UNT during her undergrad, which led her to play for world dance at Texas Woman's University, also in Denton. During the following years, she expanded her repertoire, playing for modern, ballet, improv, and jazz. She is now a dance accompanist at TWU and Tarrant County College Northwest in Fort Worth. She performs and composes in collaboration with local dance companies and individual artists around the United States for various workshops and festivals (ACDA, TDIF, MALCS etc.) as well as other colleges and universities in DFW (UTA, TCU, etc.) As a multi-instrumentalist, she plays and records an array of acoustic and digital instruments with emphasis on percussion and voice. Brittany works with Ableton Live, a software for producing music and is a certified Ableton Specialist.

Caryn Heilman

Still from "Icarus Reimagined"

The most wonderful thing about her is the mysteriousness of her dancing. She has the nameless ingredient that we all seek, the alchemic gold, a material that magnetizes. It sets her apart, is unseen, only felt.
      — Paul Taylor, Paul Taylor Dance Company

Caryn Heilman is the Artistic Director of LiquidBody media, movement and dance. As a “standout dancer” she performed for ten years with the Paul Taylor Dance Company before founding LiquidBody.

Caryn Heilman stands out for her reserved yet piquant performing… (In Ariadne) she was beautiful.
      — Jennifer Dunning, New York Times

With Taylor, Caryn performed as a soloist in over 50 countries at such venues as Paris Opera Garnier, New York City Center, Kennedy Center and London's Sadler's Wells. She collaborated on over ten new works, directed rehearsals for several revivals and represented the United States as a cultural ambassador in Japan, China, India, Egypt, Greece, Russia, Turkey and Hungary and is featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Dancemaker.

Caryn Heilman is an exceptional dancer…
      — Ze’eva Cohen, Former Head of Dance Program, Princeton University

Having received a direct choreographic tutelage from one of American Modern Dance’s recognized masters, Caryn has taken this formidable foundation into more experimental territory, focusing on the fluid systems of the body and choreographic structures that include audience interaction, multimedia, live music and aerial dance. LiquidBody has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Dixon Place and BRIC in NYC, SOMA Fest in L.A., at the Electronic Festival in Warsaw, at spas in Mexico and Italy and at a 2000 seat amphitheater in Greece. She has choreographed for Julianne Moore in The Forgotten, for animations by DorosMotion and Volvox, and for the theater company Mad Woman of the Woods and was hired for The Acting Company’s production of American Dreams. She created multimedia for the premiere of award-winning hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris's Something to Do with Love. Recent choreographic commissions include Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth and Sola Fest for students at Orange County High School of the Arts. Her multimedia work has recently been commissioned in New York and L.A. and is currently on exhibit at the networked art site turbulence.org.

Caryn Heilman of New York-based LiquidBody, won the prize for the most unusual…Every part blended beautifully with Nana Simopoulos' original music and Chad Jung's lighting.
      — Margaret Putnam, Dallas Morning News

Caryn is currently on faculty at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She has an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and has taught graduate classes in multimedia and multidisciplinary performance at the University of California, Irvine in the Studio Art, Drama and Dance departments and has been an artist in residence and has taught master classes at Princeton, Hollins, Texas Christian and Dennison Universities, Smith College, Beijing Dance Academy, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Orange County and LaGuardia High Schools of the Arts, SOMA Fest L.A. and more. She has taught with and been mentored by Continuum Movement founder Emilie Conrad, award-winning filmmaker and postmodern dance icon Yvonne Rainer, intermedia artist Annie Loui, John Crawford, founder of the Embodied Media + Technology Performance Lab and Emmy-nominated choreographer Paul Taylor.

People are still talking about the absolutely extraordinary concert you put on here. I knew it was going to be great, but I wasn't prepared for how great. Really, really marvelous performance - both the dance and the music. It was truly one of the best things we've ever had here, and that includes some pretty powerful work.
      — Tim Blunk, Director Puffin Cultural Forum - a center for dialogue through the arts

She has received scholarships, fellowships and grants from the American Dance Festival, Alvin Ailey, UCI, TCU, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Turbulence.org, Medici Circle and more. She has served on the Professional Advisory Committee of the Dance Notation Bureau, Somatic Movement Arts Festival.Continuum Movement and is Vice President of the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association and is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator through that organization.

Photo by Milton Adams

Mel Mobley A native of Texas, Mel Mobley currently resides and teaches in Monroe, Louisiana. Performed in the U.S. and abroad his works include orchestral, band, chamber, choral, and electronic music. His most recent work centers on the combination of live and recorded music and dance. This collaboration with dancer Tina Mullone seeks to break down the barrier between dancer and musician as well as between live and recorded performance. His music has appeared on the Revello, Navona and Ansonica labels and has been commissioned by organizations including the Monroe Symphony Orchestra and the Louisiana Music Teachers Association. Major works include Sylvan Beach, (chamber opera) and Labored Breathing (orchestra). Dr. Mobley teaches at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and is a founder and coordinator of the New Music on the Bayou Festival that connects composers from around the world with the communities of north Louisiana. www.melmobley.com.

Tina Mullone Tina Mullone, a Texas native, studied ballet under Fernando Schaffenburg in Fort Worth, modern dance at Dallas Black Dance Theatre and the University of Oklahoma. After graduating, she performed and taught for JAADE Dance Theater, Contemporary Dance/ Fort Worth, Kariamu and Company and Beckles Dancing Company. She has taught in numerous places throughout the Fort Worth/Dallas metroplex including Texas Ballet Theater School and Texas Christian University. After receiving a MFA from TCU, she continued teaching at several Dallas/Fort Worth community colleges. She has performed in Germany, Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Louisiana, Virginia and Texas. Over the years, she attended several intensives including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Dance Festival and the Katherine Dunham Institute. As Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, she continues to commute from Louisiana to Texas to work with Beckles Dancing Company, Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth (as Associate Artistic Director) and co-directs M2 (m squared), a performance art duet based in Monroe, LA. She currently sits on the Arts Advocacy committee under the National Dance Education Organization, dance specialist for Louisiana A Plus Schools, a certified Pilates mat and M’Singha Wuti level Umfundalai African dance instructor. Her most recent accomplishments include sitting on academic discussion panels at the International Association of Blacks in Dance and the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance conferences as well as performing in honor of the great Eleo Pomare with Beckles Dancing Company.

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Jessica Thomas

Photo by Milton Adams

Jessica Thomas is an independent dance artist and multidisciplinary explorer. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a BFA in Dance in 2008 and humbly received the Lucille Murchison Scholarship. Her inborn curiosity for the latent unknown — inside and outside of ourselves — serves as a continuous source of playful investigation and evolution. The core of her performances stem from self-inquiry collaborations with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth and surrounding DFW creatives. She is also the founder of The Soma Movement, where she provides integrative bodywork and expressive arts therapies.

Momentum Dance Company

Photo by Jerry Forcher

Ian Forcher danced with Momentum Dance Company and was a Dance Major at SMU, during which time he performed at the Joyce Theater in New York at the 70th Anniversary of the Limon Company festival. He is now focusing his talents on choreography, and is pleased to present his 4th work for the "Modern Dance Festival at the Modern". He also choreographs for Momentum and teaches at Forcher's Dance Center.

Lacie Minyard Sereika is a seasoned performer, choreographer, teacher and currently a dancer and choreographer with Momentum Dance Company in Irving, Texas and the Artistic Director and founder of Living Motion Dance Company. As a dancer she has performed 5 seasons at Six Flags Over Texas, has worked under the direction of Neil Goldberg in "Cirque Dreams Coobrila", the Gary Goddard company in the "Glow in the Park Parade," and with Mark Dendy at the prestigious American Dance Festival. As a graduate of the Dallas Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and of Texas Woman's University Lacie has been an active participant in master classes and choreography by Ron Brown, John Giffin, Excel Garner, Miguel Gutierrez, Bill Young, Dwight Roden and Desmond Richardson (Complexions), Kanji Segawa (Battle Works), SHUA Group, Alex J Russo (Tap Dogs), Vernon Gooden, Camilie, John Dixon, Mary Williford-Shade, Jordan Fuchs, and Sarah Gamblin and Bruce Wood. Lacie choreographed and produced a full evening of her own work sponsored by Texas Woman's University in November, 2010. Her artistic work has won her several nominations and awards. During her career she has been nominated for the prestigious TWU Leman Award, the Dallas Dance for the Planet Festival and the Southern Region American College Dance Festival.

Edin Velez

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Edin Velez studied painting at the University of Puerto Rico and at the School of Fine Arts of the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture.

In 1970, inspired by the writings of Marshall McLuhan, Edin moved to New York in order to explore the possibilities of video as an art form and became one of the pioneer artists of the medium. Through rich imagery and an acute sense of visual metaphor, Edin has consistently expanded the paradigms of the genre. He has produced award-winning video works, artist’s books, digital prints, and video installations.

A recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for Excellence in Film and Video, his works have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Documenta 8, Sao Paolo Biennial, The Tate Gallery, and the Louvre Museum, among others, and are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Hara Museum (Japan), and others.

Edin has received prestigious grants from entities such as the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Massachusetts Council for the Arts, and The Jerome Foundation. A professor and coordinator of the Video Program at Rutgers University in Newark, Edin lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Sue Collins

Photo by Milton Adams

Ms. Sue Collins has a B.S. with honors in biology from the University of Tennessee and an M.F.A. in dance from Southern Methodist University. In the summer of 2018, Ms Collins is delighted to be presenting her work “Gesundheidt Follies” both locally at Contemporary Dance Fort Worth’s 15th Annual Modern Dance Festival at the Modern and internationally in Florence, Italy! Sue had a professional dance career that spanned over fifteen years and included the Chicago based dance companies: Ballet Entre Nous, American Danz Theatre (jazz), Perceptual Motion, Inc. (modern), Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Ensemble (modern and jazz), and Winifred Haun and Dancers (modern). The later three companies, the Barefoot Brigade, and Contemporary Dance Fort Worth plus numerous universities have enabled her to produce over twenty dance works. Sue was also a featured dancer for the Lyric Opera of Chicago (A.G.M.A. Equity) and has performed over seventy works in various genres of dance. Ms. Collins was formerly on the dance faculty at the University of Tennessee, the University of Akron, Kent State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, the University of Dallas, Collin County College, and Tarrant County College. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Dance and Theatre Department at the University of North Texas where she has taught Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Stress Reduction through Movement, Dance Appreciation, and Survey of Dance; as well as choreographed “Cinderella,” a play for children, “Wind on Mountain” for the UNT Faculty Dance Concert 2014 and “Gesundheidt Follies” for the UNT Dance Faculty Dance Concert 2015.