Dance Archives - Durham Arts Network

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Anna Barker

Performing Arts: Dance

Anna is a choreographer and performer based in Durham, NC. Her company, real.live.people, recently premiered her third evening-length work, “Again, but this time with feeling”, following “Feature Presentation” in 2016 and “it’s not me it’s you” in 2014. Anna hails from Durham, North Carolina by way of South Africa by way of London. After spending 10 years dancing in Philadelphia and New York City, Anna relocated back to her hometown to pursue a secondary Pilates certification, and founded her dance theater company real.live.people with collaborator Leah Wilks. After creating her solo ‘“what about this” and other false starts’ during the 2017 Tobacco Road season, Anna brought 10 new artists into collaboration for ”Again, but this time with feeling”. Anna has presented work as part of the American Dance Festival, Duke Performances, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (2009, 2015), APAP NYC, The North Carolina Dance Festival, Tobacco Road Dance Productions, WAXworks at Triskelion Arts (Brooklyn), and at Elsewhere Collaborative, The Haw River Ballroom, The Rubenstein at Duke, The Carrack Modern Art Gallery, the Durham Arts Council, the Carrboro ArtsCenter, The Living Arts Collective, Dance New Amsterdam (Manhattan), and the New York Film School (Manhattan). Anna teaches Pilates locally at Bull City Pilates and Massage, and at Ninth Street Dance.

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Media; Multi Arts; Performing Arts: Actor/Actress, Artistic Director, Dance, Music, Radio/Television, Storytelling, Theatre, Vocal; Teaching Artist; Visual Arts: Constructions/Collage, Crafts, Earthworks, Film, Graphic Arts, Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting, Performance Art, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Textiles, Works on paper; genre fluid

Genre-fluid Afrosurrealist and Multimedia Healing Artist. https://www.afrosurrealistresearchbureau.com

Kate Gupton

Performing Arts: Dance; Teaching Artist

Kate Gupton is a graduate of The University Of North Carolina At Greensboro. She holds a BFA in Choreography and a K-12 public school teaching license in dance. Kate is currently the dance teacher at North Graham Elementary school, a public title 1 school in Graham North Carolina. Additionally, Kate is a Choreographer for the Rainbow Dance Company, a multi-generational modern dance company, in Raleigh NC. You can catch Kate performing around Durham with Shaleigh Dance works and Tony Johnson. Kate also enjoys teaching dance to all ages at private studios throughout the state. Kate has had the pleasure of training at American Dance Festival in Durham NC, Unitec in Auckland New Zealand, and Arts Together in Raleigh NC.

Ramya Kapadia

Performing Arts: Artistic Director, Dance, Music, Storytelling, Theatre, Vocal; Teaching Artist; Visual Arts: Performance Art

Ramya S. Kapadia (Founder & Artistic Director of Natyarpana School of Dance & Music) is fast making a name for herself as Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer, instructor and a Carnatic vocalist (South Indian classical dance & music forms). She received initial training in Bharatanatyam from Smt. Santha Gopinath of Kalakshetra and later from Smt. Kripa Baskaran, Brookfield, WI. Her vocal training began under her mother Smt. Gayathri Sundaresan, advanced by Late Guru V. Vamanan, Mumbai, India. Ramya has toured all over the United States & abroad to present solo & group works. She regularly provides vocal accompaniment to dancers around the world and composes music for their productions. During her undergraduate years in Mumbai, Ramya was a lead singer in a number of Indo-Jazz bands. She has lent her voice to Indian commercials and movies – “Kaho na Pyar Hai” & the Tamil-Telugu bilingual movie “180”. Ramya has Master’s degrees in Medical Physics and Neuroscience but pursues the arts full time now. She runs the Natyarpana School of Dance & Music in Durham, NC, through which she shares the rich traditions of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam with the youth of the Triangle Area. She received the Ella Pratt Emerging Artist Award from the Durham Arts Council in 2010 and the Choreography Fellowship from the North Carolina Dance Alliance in 2016. Ramya believes that art can and should tell stories that move audiences to becoming better and more compassionate human beings. The collaborators in her works are artists, scientists, literary scholars and philosophers who all share her vision of creating a better world through art. She is grateful to her many mentors for providing her with rich and varied experiences in the arts.

Gaspard Louis

Performing Arts: Dance

Gaspard Louis is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Durham-based modern dance company Gaspard&Dancers (G&D). He received a BFA in Dance from Montclair State University and continued his dance studies on scholarship at Gus Giordano’s in Chicago and Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab in New York. Following his studies, he joined the New York-based company called AllNations where he performed traditional dances from many parts of the world for US troupes across the globe. Subsequently, he performed and traveled worldwide with Pilobolus Dance Theater. He collaborated on the choreography of nine major dance works with the company and taught master dance classes both nationally and internationally. In 2012, Gaspard received an MFA in Dance from the Hollins University/American Dance Festival Program and became the Director of ADF’s year-round creative movement outreach program which provides free dance classes to youth in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill community of North Carolina. His passion for dance has continued to lead him to work with local dancers and musicians. Since forming his company he has created over 25 works, which have been shared with audiences around the world. Additionally, Gaspard has been a guest teacher and choreographer at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), Duke, Elon, and North Carolina Central Universities.

Alyssa Noble

Media; Performing Arts: Dance; Visual Arts: Media and Visual Communications, Performers and Writers

Alyssa Noble graduated with her BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010, and moved to NC in 2011. She has been a member of the Durham dance community since 2011 as a student, a community organizer with Durham Independent Dance Artists (DIDA), an independent choreographer, a dramaturg, an arts activist, and a performer. She has self-produced two evening-length works as co-director of A+A Dance Company – What You Want in 2017 and Don’t Get Any Ideas, Little Lady in 2019 – in addition to performing her own work solo and performing work by other local artists. Creatively, Alyssa is interested in finding ways that she can use dancemaking to challenge the notion that vulnerable or charged emotional exchanges should be reserved for only our closest personal relationships. She is also interested in subverting the notion that women need to be polite (i.e. not angry or emotional) in public spaces, and in pushing the audience-performer relationship beyond the traditional passive observer framework. Alyssa’s overarching artistic practice goals are to prioritize work that supports independent artist vitality and to engage audiences in critical thinking around dance. She aims to create and participate in projects that initiate and continue important societal conversations, to increase the inclusivity and accessibility levels of all of the projects that she is involved in, and to create and share resources as broadly as possible with other independent artists.

Justin Tornow

Performing Arts: Dance; Teaching Artist; Visual Arts: Performance Art

Justin Tornow is a North Carolina native, currently based in Durham, NC. She is the artistic director of COMPANY, a producer of the local artist series PROMPTS, and a co-founder and -organizer with Durham Independent Dance Artists (DIDA.) Justin’s work is often collaborative and inter-disciplinary, partnering with composers, musicians, film and video artists, and visual artist Heather Gordon. Her projects have recently been presented by CAM- Raleigh, Tanzart Atelier in Germany, 21c Hotel and Museum, UGA Dancz Center for New Music, The UNC Process Series, the Sax Open Festival in Strasbourg, France, UGA-Cortona in Cortona, Italy, Durham Independent Dance Artists (DIDA,) Triangle Dance Project, GSO Fringe Festival, DUMBO Dance Festival, CoolNY Festival, Philly Fringe, and the NC Dance Festival. In 2010, Justin received an MFA in Choreography from UNC-Greensboro; she lived and worked in NYC from 2010-2013, and relocated to Durham, NC in June 2013. Justin was the artist-in-residence at Tanzart Atelier in Kirschau, Germany in Fall 2017, and recently served as a guest artist at NC State University and part-time dance faculty at UNC-Greensboro, teaching studio courses in technique, composition, and repertory. Justin’s work will be presented by CAM-Raleigh and the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2018.

Yholima Vargas

Performing Arts: Dance; Visual Arts: Painting, Performance Art

Yholima Vargas-Pedroza is a native of Colombia. Since a very young age, Yholima was inspired by Colombian art through her mother’s visual work as a landscape painter. Since then, Yholima learned to appreciate art as an expression of the soul, an extension of human emotions and cultural identity. After moving to Canada in 1997, Yholima became a recognized choreographer. Her performing career continued for several years as she become a Social Worker. After moving to North Carolina in 2007, she got involved in the not-for profit field while developing and exploring new cultural initiatives involving children and adults. However, in recent years, she became interested in the exploration of visual arts to express her vision of the world she left behind and the ones she has learned to call home. Yholima sees the world as a place in which parallel and dynamic realities meet at one point thanks to her experiences as an immigrant. The artist describes herself as a genuine and realistic woman that understands the power of healing through artistic expressions. As a Social Worker and artist, she appreciates simplicity, humbleness, gratitude, diversity, resilience, pain, triumph, disappointment, dignity, self-respect and power of nature. She hopes to invite the viewer to see her world through a window of vibrant colors. Whether there is sadness, chaos, happiness, purpose, emptiness or meaning; there are always colors.

Ginger Wagg

Multi Arts; Performing Arts: Artistic Director, Dance, Music; Visual Arts: Mixed Media, Performance Art, Photography; Installation

I am an NC-based artist working across disciplines – music, sound, installation, visual art, and performance. Often in collaboration or co-creating, I combine several of these mediums to create live interactive public events. I am the artistic & managing director of Wild Actions, a movement-based investigative performance project. I am also an arts consultant, working with other artists and presenters to create an array of live events, as well as just starting my hand at dramaturgy. Over the last 5 years, alongside co-creators, we’ve presented three major installations that have been performed numerous times in North Carolina, New York, and Miami – andalwayswhy, Frivolous Artist, and Leaving Impossible Things Unattended. I am currently in two sound/movement installation projects – Reflex Arc, and Bowles, Bowne, and Wagg. Fake Sleeping, my yet to be published photo project, is a series that relies on friends or bystanders to take photos of my discarded body in public spaces. I participate in community organizing and believe in collective building, deep listening, and generosity. These are the principles I continue to cultivate and practice as an artist, a resident of NC, and person navigating the world in this present moment.

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