ArtPile an evening of experimental music and dance The performance will be at 2501 Fawn Street, Norfolk, VA Sunday December 2, 2012. Doors open at 6.30pm/performance starts at 7:00pm. Tickets are $5 General Admission and can be purchased at the door. For additional inquiries please contact artpile@rtgdance.com
ArtPile is a group of performance-based artists in Hampton Roads who present original works created in the spirit of collaboration. We are dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers and visual artists committed to fostering a sense of community and visibility for art in Hampton Roads. ArtPile is: Rachel Thorne Germond, Dale Lazar, Ann Mazzocca, Kelly Rossum, Megan Thompson, and Suzanne Wiltgen. Additional guest artists include musicians Annie Stevens, Johnny Finn and the Steve Thorne 3 Jazz band and dancers Jen Clark Stone and Kayla Jewette. December 2nd will be ArtPile’s first event. The evening will be a combination of experimental dance and music performances.
Biographies:
RACHEL THORNE GERMOND is current adjunct faculty in the Old Dominion University Department of Dance. She has been dancing, choreographing and presenting work (primarily in Chicago and New York City) since 1990. Ms. Germond is a graduate of Cornell University and achieved an MFA in dance and choreography at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in 2000. She formed her Chicago-based dance company, RTG Dance in 2004. Rachel will be teaching a movement/alignment dance class on Wednesday nights in January at TR Dance (Todd Rosenlieb Dance) on Granby Street. See www.rtgdance.com for more information.
DALE LAZAR is the principal accompanist for the Modern Dance Technique classes at Old Dominion University. He has also accompanied for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American College Dance Festival, and the annual high school dance festival hosted by Todd Rosenlieb Dance Academy. Dale has performed with Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Symphonicity, Virginia Winds, and Norfolk Chamber Consort. Currently, he composes and performs with the Jen Stone and Megan Thompson Dance Project, Steve Thorne 3 jazz group, and teaches for Community Music Division at ODU. Interested in all forms of percussion, Mr. Lazar is a student of the North Indian tabla and has studied under Kumar Das and Pandit Samir Chatterjee. Dale holds a B.A. in Percussion Performance from Old Dominion University.
ANN MAZZOCCA relocated to Norfolk from Brooklyn, NY in 2011 to join the faculty at Christopher Newport University in Newport News as Assistant Professor of Dance. She has toured nationally and internationally with Haitian and Cuban dance companies based in NYC and has presented her scholarship and choreography nationally in cities including Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Miami. Inspired by the communal living and intimacy that she encountered in Haiti and her experiences in the diasporic Haitian folkloric dance community, her work approaches Haitian dance through Western contemporary dance methods.
KELLY ROSSUM is an international trumpet artist, improviser and composer. He has been invited to perform at multiple International Trumpet Guild Conferences, including Sydney, Australia and Bangkok, Thailand as well as repeat appearances at the Festival of New Trumpet Music and the Atlanta Trumpet Festival. He has performed everything from lead trumpet at New York’s famed Birdland jazz club, to natural trumpet in Bad Säckingen, Germany. As a recording artist, Kelly has released four albums as a leader and has appeared on over 40 recordings as a sideman.Dr. Kelly Rossum is currently Assistant Professor of Trumpet and Director of Jazz Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
MEGAN THOMPSON is a full-time lecturer in Dance at Old Dominion University. She has danced professionally in the noranewdanceco, the Li Chiao-Ping Dance Company, the Maida Withers Dance Construction Company and currently with RTG Dance. Her own work has been presented in Chicago, IL, Madison, WI, Richmond, VA, Washington, D.C. and Krasnoyarsk Russia. In 2009, Thompson, along with performing artist Jen Stone, created the Jen Stone and Megan Thompson Dance Project. Together they have taught master classes and presented their work internationally in Guatemala and Mexico and locally in Norfolk and Richmond, VA. Megan holds a BS in Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland and is certified in the Pilates Method of Body Conditioning.
SUZANNE WILTGEN earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her BA in Dance from Mount Holyoke College. Through the generous support from a fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation, she lived in Korea and studied with Sin Cha Hong and Laughing Stone Dance Theatre, and then in Malaysia where she taught and performed under Mew Chang Tsing of RiverGrass Dance Theater. She moved to Minneapolis in 2000, where she co-founded the Three Dances collaborative modern dance company with Brinsley Davis and Jamey Garner. In 2009, Suzanne relocated to New York City, and now is based in Newport News, VA.