Guest Artists
2007-2008
2006-2007
2005-2006
2004-2005
2003-2004
2002-2003
2001-2002
2000-2001
Guest Artists 2003-2004
Yin
Mei - Fall 2003
Choreographer Yin Mei started her dance career in her native China, where she was a member of a leading dance company before moving to the United States to further her study of modern dance on a grant from the Asian Cultural Council. Her work has been presented and produced by the Asia Society in New York and performed across the country. A longtime practitioner and teacher of Tai Chi and a student of the I Ching, her contemporary work, now performed worldwide, expresses a style that incorporates Chinese energy direction and spatial principles into the rubric of Modern Dance Theater. Indeed her latest work, /Asunder, is an abstract mediation on love inspired by the ancient story of a buddhist monk lured out of celibacy by his obsession with a woman. “Yin Mei has a strong sense of design and is a dancer of luminous clarity . . . a combination of delicacy and strong intention,” writes the Los Angeles Times. Yin Mei’s research into Chinese contemplative practice was recognized with a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She has been a professor of dance at Queens College since 1992.
Thaddeus Davis - Spring 2004
Thaddeus
Davis was born in Montgomery, Alabama where he began his studies with Montgomery
Ballet and The Carver Creative Performing Arts Center. After High School he
studied and danced with Barbara Sullivan’s, Atlanta Dance Theatre and
Dian Robbinson’s Tuskegee Cultural Arts Center, before attending Butler
University. In 1993 he graduated from Butler University with a BFA in Dance.
Mr. Davis has worked with Indianapolis Ballet Theatre, Fukuoka City Ballet,
Atlanta Dance Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Complexions, and Donald Byrd/The
Group. His current work with Choreographer Donald Byrd as Creative Assistant,
has been to set some of Mr. Byrds works as well as to teach master classes
in universities and dance school around the world. Mr. Davis is featured in
“Dance magazine’s” January 2002 issue, as 1 of 25 Dancers
to watch in the world for year 2002.
Marlies Yearby - DART's January 2004 Guest Artist
Marlies
Yearby, Tony Award nominated (Rent), Bessie Award winning choreographer/artistic
director of Movin’ Spirits Dance Theater, has opened up new horizons
in dance within the last several years. Born in Germany (of African American
descent), Ms. Yearby traces her earliest dance training back to the improvisational
jazz dancing of her mother and Yearby’s own initial ballet and tap training
in Okinawa, Japan as a child. Marlies Yearby’s dance experience consists
of her days as a 1970’ professional disco dancer in Oakland, CA, her
modern dance training at San Jose State University, and worked with Aaron
Osborne in San Fransisco. She spent five years as company member and rehearsal
director for choreographer Bobbie Wynn, and was an apprentice with Diane McIntyre.
Marlies toured internationally as a company member of Urban Bush Women. Her
performance influences derived from artistic relationships with performance
artists Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley. For two decades Ms. Yearby’s
choreography included explorations with text, voice and live music, resulting
in a unique dance technique integrating Limon, West African, Horton, Haitian,
Latin, Congolese, jazz, hip-hop, and modern dance styles with everyday gestures
and soundscapes. Her work creates a vocabulary that defines identity, re-examines
aesthetic values, and increases sociopolitical awareness. Yearby’s dance
is focused on "the transfer of information".