“Wide ranging, generous movements and raw physicality mark Rebecca Lazier's absorbing dances.... Lazier's bold movement vocabulary, with its appealing combination of no-holds-barred turns and dives to the floor and the surprising moments of quiet in torqued shoulder stands and still, hawk-like hovering is articulated fully by her seven dancers, who throw themselves into every off-kilter balance and tangled embrace with an abandon that is truly astonishing.”
—Sophia Ernst, Show Business Weekly
DANCERS
| Jennifer Lafferty (Performer) is from southern CA, where she received a dance degree from UCLA. Since her trip across the country in 1999 she has been dancing and traveling with Rebecca Lazier's TERRAIN. She also works with Renée Archibald, Nina Winthrop, Christopher Williams and Michou Szabo. |
| Rashaun Mitchell (Performer) was born in Stamford, Connecticut, and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He started dancing at Concord Academy in Massachusetts and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2000. He received the Viola Farber-Slayton Memorial Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts in 2000. Since then he has danced with Pam Tanowitz, Chantal Yzermans, Donna Uchizono, Risa Jaroslow, Sara Rudner and Richard Colton. He joined MCDC in January 2004 and is currently on faculty at the Cunningham Studio. In 2007 he was the recipient of a Princess Grace Award: Dance Fellowship. He presented his own choreography in collaboration with writer Anne Carson at the Skirball Center in December of 2008, and recently performed with Pam Tanowitz. Rashaun joined Terrain in Summer 2009. |
| Silas Riener (Performer) grew up in Washington DC. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Comparative Literature. There he began studying dance with Ze'eva Cohen and Rebecca Lazier, and performed works by James Waring, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Leonide Massine, as restaged by Millicent Hodson. He has also worked with Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, and Jonah Bokaer. While performing with MCDC, Riener completed his MFA in Dance at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He joined MCDC in November 2007 and Terrain in 2008. |
| Rommel Salveron (Performer) received his BA in Dance from the University of California, San Diego. While in Southern California, he danced with the San Diego Dance Theater and Patricia Rincon Dance Collective. He has also worked with Wendy Rogers, Joe Goode, Kim Epifano, Mary Anthony, Kevin Wynn, Risa Jaroslow & Dancers, and Christopher Williams. Rommel currently dances with ZviDance and has been with Terrain since 2005. |
| Emily Stone (Performer) is from Boulder, Colorado. Her early training was with both the Boulder Ballet and Colorado Ballet. She attended the Dance Conservatory at SUNY Purchase. She earned her Certificate of Completion in '06 from the Professional Training Program at the Merce Cunningham Studio. In addition to Rebecca Lazier's TERRAIN, Emily works with Stephen Petronio and has performed with Brandon Collwes, Ellen Cornfield, Sean Curran, Hilary Easton, Bryan Hayes and Robert Sher-Machherdl. |
| Christopher Williams (Performer) is a dancer, choreographer, and puppeteer based in Brooklyn. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and has worked with Rebecca Lazier since 2000. He also dances for Tere O’Connor Dance, Douglas Dunn & Dancers, and Yoshiko Chuma’s School of Hard Knocks, among others. He has performed in the work of puppetry artists Basil Twist and Dan Hurlin. His own works have been seen locally at City Center, Dance New Amsterdam, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, BRIC Studio, Galapagos Art Space, The John Houseman Theater, HERE Arts Center, P.S. 122, Dixon Place, La Mama, the Mulberry Street Theater, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and internationally in the Casa del Teatro Nacional in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2005 he received a New York Dance & Performance “Bessie” Award for his work Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. |
CURRENT COLLABORATORS
| Heidi Barr (costumes designer) brings more than twenty years of experience as a dancer to her work in costume design. She received a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle) in 1987 and danced professionally for the following ten years. In 1997, Heidi moved east and began creating costumes for theater and dance. She has designed costumes for over 70 choreographic works since beginning her own business in 2000. Heidi manages Drexel University’s Mandell Theaters’ costume shop and teaches costume design at Philadelphia University. She received the Leeway Foundations’ Window of Opportunity Grant in 2004 for her collaboration on The Fold. |
| Michael Clark (Projection Designer) is a designer in the film and video medium for live events. Recent projects include MACBETTO (Washington Opera), SAVING AIMEE (Signature Theater) THE WIZ (La Jolla Playhouse) BLAST II (Japan Tour), FOR THE GLORY (Gettysburg, PA) BURLEIGH GRIMES (Off-Broadway) RING OF FIRE (Broadway) THE PERSIANS (Shakespeare Theater, DC) and JERSEY BOYS (Broadway). Other credits include 700 SUNDAYS, LENNON, ELEPHANT MAN, DRACULA the MUSICAL (Broadway), COMPANY, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (Sondheim Celebration). THE LAST FIVE YEARS (Philidelphia) HEDWIG, ALLEGRO, and ONE RED FLOWER (Signature Theater VA) MANON LESCAUT (Washington Oprea) SPIDER-MAN LIVE (National Tour) MUSIC FROM A SPARKLING PLANET (Drama Dept) AEROS (National Tour) and DINNER WITH FRIENDS (ACT). |
| Aaron Copp (lighting designer) has designing lighting for TERRAIN since 2002, and has worked for such companies and choreographers as Merce Cunningham, New York City Ballet, Kronos Quartet, Sara Rudner, Paradigm, Jamie Bishton, Martita Goshen and the Second Hand Dance Company. Aaron received the Bessie award for his lighting of Merce Cunningham’s Biped. He has an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, is a member of United Scenic Artists, and has been on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College since 2001. |
| Mary Jo Mecca (Costume Designer) is a New York-based actor/designer. She designed Terminal and is working on Lazier’s new piece Coming Together. She designed dance thesis productions at Princeton University in 2008 and 2009 . She assists Catherine Heiser who creates custom couture for world-renowned opera singers and conductors. Ms. Mecca studied couture design with Miss Alice Sapho of Paris and New York. |
| Gregory Spears (composer/sound designer) music has been played by the American Composers Orchestra, the NOW Ensemble, So Percussion, the Eighth Blackbird Ensemble, the vocal group Ars Nova, the Zapolsky Quartet, the Synapse Chamber Orchestra (Montreal) and his own group, the Owen Quartet. He was awarded a First Music Commission in 1999 to write a piece for the New York Youth Symphony, which was given its premiere in Carnegie Hall. Since then his music has won multiple prizes from ASCAP and BMI as well as grants and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and Yaddo. Recent commissions have come from the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra and the Present Music Ensemble in Milwaukee. Spears studied composition at the Eastman School of Music, Yale University, Princeton University and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen as Fulbright Scholar. (www.gregoryspears.com) |
| Jeremy Olson (Production Stage Manager & Installation/Set Designer) is a dancer and stage technician. He has performed most recently with Lindsey Dietz-Marchant, Faye Driscoll, Amiti Perry, and WORKS/Laura Glenn dance. Jeremy is a freelance stage technician specializing in audio-visual and lighting for Terrain as well as the Joyce Theater, Baryshnikov Dance Foundation and the Trisha Brown Dance Company. |
