LUCINDA CHILDS began her career as choreographer and performer in 1963 as an original member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York. After forming her own dance company in 1973, Ms. Childs collaborated with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass on the opera Einstein On the Beach, participating as leading performer and choreographer (1976, 1984,1992). Since 1979, Ms. Childs has collaborated with a number of composers and designers on a series of large-scale, full-length productions, among them Dance (1979), with Philip Glass and Sol LeWitt, and Available Light (1983), with John Adams and Frank Gehry. She also received a number of commissions from major ballet companies since 1981. These include the Paris Opera Ballet, Bayerisches Staatsballett, Martha Graham Dance Company, and Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. Additionally, in the field of opera, Ms. Childs has worked with director Luc Bondy on his productions of Salome (1992-95), Reigen (1993-94), Don Carlos (1996), and Macbeth (1999). She directed her first opera Zaode for La Monnaie, Brussels in October 1995. In 1979, Ms. Childs received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1996 was appointed to the rank of Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of the most distinguished honors given by the French government for outstanding contributions to the arts.
DAVID GORDON performed in the companies of James Waring and Yvonne Rainer. Choreographed for the original Judson Church performances. A founder of the 1970's group, The Grand Union. He started the Pick Up Performance Company in 1971. Guggenheim Fellow (1981 and 1987.) Served as panelist and chairman at the NEA' dance program. Video work appeared on KTCA Alive TV, PBS Great Performances, The BBC and Channel 4, Great Britain. The Mysteries and What's So Funny?, written and directed in 1992 won a New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") and an Obie and was published in Grove New American Theater edited by Michael Feingold. The Family Business, written with Am Gordon (Associate Director of the Pick Up Company) won an Obie in 1994. Mr. Gordon directed and choreographed Shlemiel The First for the American Repertory Theater and The American Music Theater Festival. It was performed at American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco 1996 and won the 1997 Dramalogue Awards for Direction and Choreography at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Gordon was awarded Pew Charitable Trust grants in both theater and dance; a National Theatre Artist Residency grant to work with the Guthrie Theater where he directed and choreographed The Firebugs in 1995, and a 1996 National Dance Residency Project grant. In 1999 he directed and choreographed The First Picture Show (text by the Gordons) commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum in collaboration with ACT. Currently, Mr. Gordon is working on a music theater adaptation of The Wind in the Willows for American Conservatory Theater.
DEBORAH HAY Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Ms. Hay grew up dancing and was an early participant in Judson Dance Theater. In 1964 she danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Ms. Hay left New York in 1970, to live in a community in northern Vermont. Her daughter Savannah was born one year later. It was here that she began to follow a rigorous daily performance practice which continues to inform her dance. In 1976 she moved to Austin, Texas. From 1980 through 1996 she conducted fifteen annual large group workshops; each lasted four months and culminated in public performances. The group dances became the fabric for her solo performance repertory. Her book Lamb at the Altar: The Story of a Dance, Duke University Press, 1994, documents that unique creative process. Ms. Hay received a 1983 Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography, and numerous National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships. She was also the recipient of a 1996 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship. She tours extensively as a solo performer and teacher. Her third book, My Body. The Buddhist, by Wesleyan University Press, was published Fall 2000.
JOHN JASPERSE has been living and working in New York City since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1985. His work has been presented in various venues in New York City as well as elsewhere in the United States, Brazil, Israel, Mexico, Japan, and throughout Europe. His work has been supported by multiple Choreographer's Fellowships from the John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation (1998), the National Endowment for the Arts (1992,1994, 1995-6) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (1968,1994). He has been honored with various awards including the Doris Duke Award; three prizes in the 1996 Rencontres Choregraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, France; the Choreography Prize from the 1996 Suzanne Dellal International Dance Competition in Tel Aviv, Israel; and the Mouson Award from K,nstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany. In 1999-2000, he created a work commissioned by Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, Israel. In 2001, his company will have their debut season at The Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in a work co-commissioned by BAM and Ballett Frankfurt.
AMY O'BRIEN trained classically in her native San Diego, California, and on scholarship with the San Francisco Ballet. Upon moving to New York City she danced in many Broadway productions, including The Tap Dance Kid, On Your Toes, and the Tony Award winning Anything Goes at Lincoln Center. Her concert dance work includes four years with Twyla Tharp's company, highlighted by an appearance on the PBS series Dance in America, in a film performance of Tharp's acclaimed work, In The Upper Room. In addition, Ms. O'Brien has toured with White Oak Dance Project. She has worked extensively with Sara Rudner and continues to work with many emerging and established choreographers, including Lucy Guerin and Irene Hultman. As a choreographer, Ms. O'Brien has shown her work in New York at Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, Context, and the Mulberry Street Theater.
MARK MORRIS was born in Seattle, Washington, where he studied with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson. He performed with variety of companies in the early years of his career, including the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Hannah Kahn Dance Company, Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, Eliot Feld Ballet, and the Koleda Balkan Dance Ensemble. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980 and has since created over 90 works for the Dance Group, as well as choreographing dances for many ballet companies, including the San Francisco Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre. From 1988-1991 he was Director of Dance at the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the national opera house of Belgium. During his tenure there, he created 12 pieces including three evening length works: The Hard Nut (his comic book-Inspired version of The Nutcracker); L'Allegro, il Pensesoro ed il Moderato; and Dido and Aeneas, and founded White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Mr. Morris is noted for his musicality - he has been described as "undeviating in his devotion to music" - and for his "ability to conjure so many contradictory styles and emotions". He has worked extensively in opera as both choreographer and director. Most recently, Mr. Morris directed and choreographed a production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, and in 1997 the Edinburgh International Festival was the site of the premiere of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden production of Rameau's Platee. He also directed and choreographed the Paul Simon/Derek Walcott musical The Capeman which premiered on Broadway in 1998. Mr. Morris was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1991, and he is the subject of a biography by Joan Acocella.