people
Who you are:
Our desired audience are those wanting to watch avant-garde dance work, who desire being challenged as they are engaged, who appreciate an immersive and untraditional theatre experience, who seek a strong emotional response and are excited by ambiguity and questions raised, and who find enjoyment in somatic response to new movement language rather than passive entertainment, expected movement vocabulary, or easily deciphered narrative arcs.
Who we are:
Jonathan Meyer
Jonathan Meyer began dancing at Oberlin College and graduated from UNC Greensboro. He was certified
as a Somatic Movement Educator from the School For Body-Mind Centering in 2008. His dancing and
choreography reflect his diverse studies in modern and post-modern techniques, gymnastics and capoeira, taiji
and aikido, ballet, butoh, and contact improvisation. He has danced with The High Risk Group, The Seldoms,
Asimina Chremos, and others, and has an on-going collaboration with his partner Julia Rae Antonick. In July
2011, their work was selected for presentation on stage at the MCA as part of the Dance/USA conference.
Meyer has been a LinkUp Artist, a CDF Lab Artist, a DanceBridge Artist, a mentee with Shirley Mordine, an
Artist In Residence at the Ragdale Foundation and the Djerassi Foundation, and has received grants from the
Driehaus Foundation, CAAP, and the Illinois Arts Council. With long-standing fascinations with floor work,
release work, and partnering techniques, Meyer’s choreography takes place largely in the intersection between
physics and human relationships. Meyer has served as Artistic Director of Khecari since founding it in 2002.
Julia Rae Antonick
Julia Rae Antonick is an independent dancer and choreographer whose movement and choreography reflect a digestion of modern/contemporary dance, contact improvisation, ballet, yoga, Klein/Mahler technique and Indonesian dance with an emphasis on kinetics and fillagree. She has been immersed in an ongoing duet collaboration with her partner Jonathan Meyer since 2007 that focuses on the research and investigation of duet based movement forms and the performative crafting of those queries. Julia graduated from the Chicago Academy for the Arts with the Dance Department's Award of Excellence and received her BFA in dance from CalArts. She has received choreographic residencies at Links Hall (LinkUp), the Chicago Cultural Center (DanceBridge), the Ragdale Foundation, Djerrassi Resident Artist Program and was chosen for Shirley Mordine's Emerging Artist Mentoring Program. She has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, CSDP, CAAP and was awarded the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Grant for 2009/2010. For more information visit: juliaraeantonick.com
Suzy Grant
Production Manager
Suzy Grant is a dancer, improviser and most recently, production manager. In 2008, she received her B.A. in dance from Columbia College Chicago. Since that time she has provided production support to Peter Carpenter, Jonathan Meyer and Khecari, and Breakbone DanceCo. Suzy recently began working with the Chicago Moving Company as Special Projects Coordinator. Over the past year Suzy has performed in works by Breakbone DanceCo., Jyl Fehrenkamp, Matthew Hollis, Peter Carpenter, Portable Dance, Szewai Lee and STD. She helped to form the collaborations STD and Portable Dance and also helped to produce Portable Dance’s first concert in April, 2009.
Christopher Preissing
Collaborator
Christopher Preissing is a free-lance composer, improvisor, and sound designer working in music and combined media in the Chicago area. He is completing his dissertation from the University of Illinois at Urbana on "Intermedial Relationships Among Component Arts in Combined Art Works" where he studied with Herbert Brün, Salvatore Martirano, and William Brooks. He taught briefly at Indiana University at South Bend, is a former composer-in-residence at Beloit College, Guest Composer at The Latin American Music Center at Indiana University, and was twice Associate Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Yuji Takahashi and John Zorn. Christopher's music has been performed nationally and internationally and he is just back from São Paulo, Brazil, where he presented composed and improvised music with the Chicago-based improvisation ensemble Auris.
Katrin Schnabl
Katrin Schnabl is a designer whose work is primarily situated in contemporary fashion and performance. Visual attributes expand movement, explore tensions, negative space, flow and patterns, and emotional attributes enhance and sharpen the performer's sense of their role. The name lineamente suggests trailing and defining emphatic vault lines created by underlying motion or tension. With every garment there is a re-negotiation of form, of edge, of outline, of lineament that encourages a shift of perception. Edge emerges as a crucial border where cloth ends and skin begins. Trained as a dancer, Schnabl moved from Germany to New York in the mid-eighties to pursue performance. A break from dancing switched her focus towards her career as a designer. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she received multiple awards, she freelanced for renowned designers, including Jil Sander, Robert Danes and Bernard Chaus. In 1999 she launched Miche Kimsa, in 2002, she branched off with her eponymous label. The style of her line ties together her interest in fashion, dance and the intersection of both forms.
Joseph St. Charles
Collaborator
Joe St.Charles is a percussion composer, performer, and improviser who has been working in Chicago since 2001. He has performed at various galleries, music venues,festivals, and institutions throughout the city including Chicago's Version Fest and Undershorts Film Festival, The Chicago Cultural Center, Links Hall, Pritzger Pavillion, and the Ruth Page Center for Dance as well as commisioned performances at The University of Chicago and The Dance Center at Columbia College.He has also been a guest accompanist working with students through the dance department of Columbia College as well as a guest composer/ performer at The Urban Institute of Contemperary Art in Grand Rapids Michigan.He has worked in close collaboration with choreographers Julia Rae Antonick and Jonothan Meyer over the past four years as well as collaborations with Chicago circuit bending group Roth Mobot.He is currently working on the music for Julia Rae Antonick's piece, Duelog; which will be performed April 2011 in Chicago's Fine Arts building as well as recording a new album of percussion works and compiling an album of music produced and inspired by previous dance collaborations.
www.youtube.com/hgwtvideoPast Collaborators
Iris Bainum-Houle
Iris Bainum-Houle is a costume designer for the screen, the stage, and the everyday. Her work ranges from the historical to the surreal and the mundane to the monstrous. She is from Fairfax, Virginia and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. After completing an internship with celebrated costume designer William Ivey Long in New York Iris returned to Chicago to pursue her career in costume design. In the spring of 2007 Iris designed costumes for Shaw Chicago’s “Ghosts” and toured with the company to Konya, Turkey. Iris has enjoyed evolving and creating with Jonathan Meyer and Khecari over the past three years and is excited to see what further collaborations the future holds. For more information about her work please visit www.siriris.com and www.myspace.com/siriris
Julie E. Ballard
Lighting Designer
Some of her favorite dance designs include 5 Characteristics of Brother (Marquez Dance), Rhapsody (Shapiro & Smith) and Falling on Lobsters in the Dark (Stephanie Carter). She has worked for Hedwig Dance, Mordine & Co., Dance COLEctive, The Seldoms and Same Planet Different World. Ms. Ballard has been a part of numerous festivals as well as American Dance Festival, and has toured nationally and internationally with David Dorfman Dance. Ms. Ballard is full time staff and adjunct faculty at the Dance Center of Columbia College.
Ms. Ballard is no stranger to theatre either, working with Signal Ensemble as an Artistic Associate designing both lights and media. She has also worked with Irish Rep Theatre, Grey Zelda and Whitehorse Theatre Company. Some of her favorite theatre designs include Cabaret (University of Florida), 1776 (Signal Ensemble Theatre) and I Sing (Whitehorse Theatre).
Ms. Ballard earned her MFA from the University of Florida.
Philip Elson
Collaborator
Philip Elson is originally from Fort Worth, TX where he began his dance training at the Bruce Lea Dance Factory. He has recently been brought on for his first project with Khecari. Currently he is in his second season with The Seldoms and is pursuing a BFA from The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. Philip has performed with companies such as Muscle Memory Dance Theatre and Collin County Ballet Theatre. His commercial credits include performing for the Mary Kay Cosmetic International Convention and teaching for New York Los Angeles Dance Conventions and Competitions. Philip has also been seen in regional productions of The King & I, Crazy for You, and The Apple Tree. His own choreography has been seen in Dallas, Houston, New York City, and Chicago. Philip has been fortunate to train and work with Carrie Hanson, Liz Burritt, Leslie Snelson-Figueroa, Jeff Hancock, Paige Cunningham, Nick Pupillo, Skip Costa, Bruce Lea,and John Merrifield.
Marc Macaranas
Dancer
Marc Macaranas (Dancer) graduated cum laude from the University of California, Irvine and was a student at The School at Jacob's Pillow. In Chicago, he has performed with Lucky Plush Productions, Mordine & Co. Dance Theater and Luna Negra Dance Theater. In 2008, Macaranas became a founding member of DanceWorks Chicago under the direction of Julie Nakagawa.
Michel Rodriguez
Collaborator
Michel Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba and graduated from the National School of Art in 2003. He began as a company member of Danza Contemporanea de Cuba and became a principal dancer in 2006 participating in the International Theater Festival of Havana, Biennale of Venice, Temps D’ Images of Dusseldorf, and Sziget Festival in Budapest, performing in England, Mexico and teaching workshops in Spain. He has work with choreographers Jan Linkens, Kenneth Kvarnstrom, Samir Akika, Cathy Marston, Luca Bruni and Rafael Bonachela. Michel recently moved to Chicago and began dancing with Hedwig Dances and Khecari.
Cara Sabin
Dancer
Cara Sabin (Dancer) received a BFA from The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. An athlete all her life, she discovered dance while in her senior year of high school. She is a company member with The Seldoms and has had the opportunity to perform independent works at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., at Lincoln Center's Out of Doors Festival and at Solar1's Solar-Powered Dance Festival in New York. Throughout college and after graduation she worked with the Obama for Illinois and Obama for America Campaign Offices. She continues to work with Chicago political organizations and in arts administration in the city.