TORI LAWRENCE

DIRECTOR-CHOREOGRAPHER

Tori Lawrence is a choreographer, filmmaker, and educator who creates site-specific multimedia performances and digital/analog dance films. Her environmentally-based work inspires an imaginative and sustainable way of looking at, thinking about, and using space.  Her site-specific choreography has been presented nationally and internationally, including three commissions by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where she created “Holding Place,” an evening-length multimedia performance featuring acclaimed Brooklyn-based musicians Bing & Ruth.  The work was created  in response to the architecture of the Barnes’ new Philadelphia campus. Philadelphia Weekly describes her site-specific work as “poignant,” “stunning,” and “arresting.” 

She was awarded the 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence and Dance Lecturer position at Middlebury College, where she taught courses in Movement & Media, Improvisation, and Contemporary Technique.  She has been a Lecturer in Dance at the University of Kansas (2017) and a guest artist at Franklin & Marshall College (2018) and Drexel University (2021).  Tori graduated from Franklin & Marshall College and received her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship.

Her screendance work has received funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), Dance Films Association, Vermont Arts Council, and Lighton International Artists Exchange. She has been awarded an artist residency from Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder and DansiT to work and live in Trondheim, Norway for 3 months in the summer of 2021, where she'll work on a new screendance project. Other awarded artist residencies and fellowships include: Yaddo (NY; 2018), Djerassi (CA; 2017), Playa (OR; 2018), Brunakra (Sweden; 2018), Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (NY; 2018), Ucross Foundation (WY; 2016), Charlotte Street Foundation (MO; 2016-17), Dance Ireland (Dublin; 2014), and Workshop Foundation (Budapest; 2013). 

Tori's choreography and dance films have been presented by Philadelphia Dance Projects, Dance Films Association's Dance on Camera Festival, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Stockholm Screendance Festival, Cape Town International Film Festival, Portland Maine Film Festival, Agite y Sirva, San Francisco Tiny Dance Film Festival, Oklahoma Dance Film Festival, Legion Arts/CSPS, Lawrence Arts Center, Albrecht-Kemper Art Museum, Mulvane Art Museum, and Cyprus International Film Festival, amongst others. 

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She is currently collaborating with choreographer Sara Shelton Mann on a new performance installation that will be in residency at Space 124 in San Francisco's Mission District January 2021.

ELEANOR GOUDIE-AVERILL

DANCER

Originally from the Midwest, Ellie Goudie-Averill is a dance artist and educator who works with dancers of all ages on technique and performance. Since graduating with her MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa in 2007, she has served as a professor at Temple University, Bucknell University, and Franklin & Marshall College. She currently teaches Ballet at Connecticut College, and will create a new work outdoors for ConnColl students in the Fall of 2020. Ellie has danced professionally for Susan Rethorst, Lucinda Childs, Bronwen MacArthur, Group Motion, and Stone Depot, which she co-directs with Beau Hancock. She is a regular collaborator and dancer with Tori Lawrence + Co. in dance films and site-specific works.

TARYN GRIGGS

DANCER

Taryn Griggs has danced with Ivy Baldwin, Yoshiko Chuma, Mary Cochran, Sara Hook, Jodi Melnick, David Neumann, Susan Rethorst, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Liz Roche/Rex Levitates, Sara Smith, Anna Sperber, Karinne Keithley Syers, Johannes Wieland and Hijack. Since 2002 she has been creating, performing and teaching with her husband, Chris Yon. Their work together has been presented, commissioned and toured to venues across the US, Canada, Ireland and France. Griggs received a Sage Award for Performance in 2009 and a McKnight Fellowship for Dance in 2012. Current projects include work with Tori Lawrence, Netta Yerushalmy, and Chris Yon. Griggs lives in Winston-Salem and teaches at the University of North Carolina School for the Arts.

JUNGWOONG KIM

DANCER

Jungwoong Kim has been a performance artist---a dancer, choreographer, designer, and film editor---for more than 20 years. Born and raised in South Korea, he had extensive training in martial arts and Korean traditional dance and ritual. He was awarded a 2015 grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage for the creation of SaltSoul, a multi-disciplinary performance project. Currently he is involved in the Philadelphia based Korean activist organization SESAMO as a choreographer, collaborating with their community members in a numerous site-specific performances. Jungwoong teaches improvisation and Contact Improvisation locally and internationally. He collaborates with Marion Ramírez, Germaine Ingram, Leah Stein, and Merián Soto. For the last two years he has been working with Tori Lawrence + Co.

JENNA RIEGEL

DANCER

Originally from Fairfield, Iowa, Jenna Riegel has been a New York City based dancer, performer and teacher since 2007. She holds an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa. Jenna has toured and performed internationally as a company member of David Dorfman Dance, Alexandra Beller/ Dances, Bill Young/ Colleen Thomas & Company and the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company. Jenna teaches at Gina Gibney Dance, New York Live Arts, and Mark Morris Dance. She has been on faculty in the dance departments of Barnard College, The Juilliard School and Virginia Commonwealth University.

MARIE LYNN HAAS

DANCER

Marie Lynn Haas is a New Orleans based mover, composer, organizer, and educator who centers her work in improvisational practices and processes. Her research is situated at the crossroads of dance, science, autism, and healing. Marie’s interest in the field of autism emerged from her collaborative dance practice with Emily Climer, their work with Susan Sgorbati’s Emergent Improvisation Project, and her subsequent correspondence with neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni. Marie is currently working with Climer to develop an online resource for artists through the Improvisation Initiative at Bennington College's Center for the Advancement of Public Action. Marie approaches her work in improvisation as an interdisciplinary, transformational practice— one that weaves art-making with critical inquiry and attempts to engage creative problem-solving strategies not only across the arts and autism but within a broader range of contexts and systems of knowledge.  

EMILY CLIMER

DANCER

Emily Climer is a dancer and writer based in Brooklyn, NY.  She has recently shown her choreography as part of Sundays on Broadway (NYC), Split Bill at Triskelion Arts (NYC), The Third Barn (PA), and the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (MA). As a performer, she has worked on projects by Mina Nishimura, Emma Rose Brown, Susan Sgorbati & Elliot Caplan, Tyler Rai, and Tori Lawrence + Co. Emily regularly collaborates with improviser Marie Lynn Haas, as well as teaches Susan Sgorbati's Emergent Improvisation. She is an administrator for Cathy Weis Projects. In addition to her dancing, Emily writes and edits materials for emerging readers as part of the Humanities Team at Great Minds, an education non-profit. She has a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from the University of Iowa.

COLE BJELIĆ

MUSICIAN + COMPOSER

Cole Bjelić is a writer, musician and performer based in New York City and Belgrade, Serbia. He has performed at venues in New York including The Knockdown Center, New York Academy of Art, the Center for Performance Research (CPR) and Judson Memorial Church and internationally at The Fringe Festival (Edinburgh), Brunakra (Sweden) and the San Marino Street Festival (Italy). He is a frequent collaborator with Tori Lawrence + Co. and is a member of the Commons Choir, directed by Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik. With Faïn, he is working on a book to be published as a part of her retrospective at The Chocolate Factory (NYC) in 2021. He holds a BA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from Brooklyn College (CUNY). He is a founding editor of the art/lit magazine 叵CLIP.

SETH WENGER

MUSICIAN + COMPOSER

Seth Wenger is a vocalist and instrument designer captivated by the relationship of sound and space. “Wherever we are sounds relentlessly try to speak with us. Harmony and dissonance are synonyms for consent and dissent--my creative practice makes use of sound and space to complicate this binary. Carefully learning how to listen to a space precedes my decision of how to answer it musically. This chorus of tones--environment and response--is not only transformed by, but transforms the material environments we inhabit. Intentional and imaginative sonic conversations with our environments transcend fixed material understandings of place.” Originally from Iowa, Seth has a background in choral and folk music. In collaboration with the Brothertown Indian Nation, Seth is currently working on an experimental humanities research project around a collection of tunes from Thomas Commuck’s 1845 manuscript, Indian Melodies. He recently graduated from Yale University, where he studied music and ritual in nineteenth century North America.

ENCLOTHED COGNITION

CLOTHING DESIGNERS

Enclothed Cognition is a collaborative project from Dutch fashion designer Bregje Cox and Barbadian visual artist Mark King. The collaboration is informed by King and Cox's shared interests in cognition, science fiction, functional clothing, architecture and future technologies. Enclothed Cognition has been presented and exhibited at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Cube Design Museum, Ethno Tendance, FASHIONCLASH Festival and Tate Modern. 

BING + RUTH

MUSICIANS

​Brooklyn band Bing and Ruth is an 11-piece ensemble led by composer and pianist David Moore. Described by the NY Times as "making the most of layered and atmospheric melody," the band utilizes clarinets, voices, cellos, and a buffet of other acoustic instruments to craft expansive soundscapes and quiet microtonal textures. The ensemble enjoys it's reputation as a unique live experience, and it's recent performances in the New York area include the 2009 MATA Festival, the Wordless Music Series, Darmstadt New Music, the WFMU Festival, and Stochastic Brooklyn. Bing & Ruth's most recent album, the double LP City Lake (2010), was praised by the Village Voice as being "...tender, optimistic, uneasy and impossibly gorgeous." They were recently the subject of one of La Blogothèque's infamous Take Away Shows, shot by legendary filmmaker Vincent Moon on a snowy Coney Island beach. An anthology of their scores "The Music is Bing & Ruth" will be published in summer 2012 by Mel Bay Publications.

VICKI BROWN

MUSICIAN + COMPOSER

Vicki Brown's unique manipulations of sounds derived mainly from the violin have been described as "alluring", "transporting", "cinematic moodscapes".  The versatility of her approach to layer and weave sonic geographies and an openness to collaborate and cultivate with others keeps her surrounded by creativity as her music translates mood and pace for time-related projects.  She is a member of Tucson's Movement Salon, an ensemble of dancers, writers and musicians who practice and perform compositional improvisation where the only parameters are space and time.  Music from her two self-produced critically-acclaimed albums, Winter Garden (2006) and Seas & Trees (2009), is featured in the Academy Award nominated documentary film Gasland (2010).  She has been collaborating, composing, recording, touring and performing as a solo artist and with several bands in the US and Europe since 2006.  Most recently she plays violin and sings backup vocals with ex-Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Australian artist Hugo Race & The Fatalists, and Tucson's Amy Rude & Heartbeast and Brian Lopez.