Collaborators
Racy Brand earned a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois in 2012. Upon moving to New York, she simultaneously started a dance career and began training as a paramedic. In NY, she presented work at Eden’s Expressway, Center for Performance Research, the West End Theater, and Joe’s Pub. She has had the pleasure of working with Sara Hook, Wally Cardona & Jennifer Lacey, Catherine Galasso, Kathleen Kelly, Kyli Kleven, and Catherine Tharin, among others. She was also a longtime staff member at Danspace Project. She is currently in her third year of medical school and lives in Columbia, MO with her husband and infant son.
Betsy Brandt is an interdisciplinary dance educator, dramaturg, writer, maker, and mover. A pioneer of the emergent role of dramaturgy in contemporary dance, recent dramaturgical projects include Sara Hook and Elizabeth Johnson’s Erstwhiles and Somnambulations(2017), Kate Corby’s Harbor (2016), Sara Hook and Paul Matteson’s Bored House Guests (2014), and Jennifer Monson’s Bessie-nominated Live Dancing Archive (2013). Brandt’s dramaturgical work is shaped by her history as a choreographer and performer, having danced in works by diverse artists including Victoria Marks, Lisa Race, Kim Epifano, Jennifer Monson, and Bebe Miller. In 2017/18, Brandt was one of five dance writers from across the country to be invited to participate in the pilot Dance Writing Laboratory sponsored by the National Center for Choreography at NCCAkron. Brandt’s scholarship has also been presented at a Special Topics conference of the Congress on Research in Dance, the Congress of Illinois’s Beyond Utopia conference, and as part of the Lorado Taft Lectureship series.
See more at betsybrandtdance.com
Mary Cochran (b.1963-d.2017) collaborated with Sara Hook for over 15 years, performing her work in numerous venues nationally and in New York at DanceNowNYC at Joe’s Pub, Symphony Space, Dance Theater Workshop (now NYLA) and the West End Theater. Cochran’s professional career began at age eighteen as a member of Nikolais Dance Theatre from 1981-1983 and continued as a soloist with Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1984-1996. In 1998 and 1999, Ms. Cochran was the Director of Taylor 2 creating and implementing innovative outreach programs around the country. She also founded NCNY Dance with violinist Gil Morgenstern. Through this entity she commissioned and produced works by Sara Hook, Mark Dendy, Margie Gillis and others as well as choreographed her own works, giving numerous long-term colleagues new performance opportunities and promoting the presentation of Contemporary Dance with live music. As Chair and Artistic Director of the Department of Dance at Barnard College of Columbia University, Cochran founded collaborative projects between Barnard and NYC cultural institutions such as Dance Theater Workshop, City Center, Symphony Space, WAX, the Brooklyn Museum and Dance New Amsterdam. Mary considered herself a “lifer”, dedicating herself to Dance as a performer, choreographer, administrator, teacher and passionate advocate of the art form worldwide.
Nick Didkovsky is a guitarist, composer, and music software programmer. He founded the rock band Doctor Nerve in 1983, the metal bands Häßliche Luftmasken and Vomit Fist in 2011 and 2013 respectively, the free metal guitar duo CHORD in 2018, and is a member of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. He has composed for Bang On A Can All-Stars, Meridian Arts Ensemble, ETHEL, and others. He has performed with DITHER Guitar Quartet, John Zorn, Billion Dollar Babies, and Blue Coupe. His compositions and guitar work appear on over 50 records. Album credits include Alice Cooper "Paranormal", released July 28, 2017.
Elizabeth Johnson’s professional dance training began at North Carolina School of the Arts where she studied with many historically notable classical Ballet teachers including Melissa Hayden, Duncan Noble, and Robert Lindgren. She earned a BFA with honors from George Mason University, receiving the Department of Dance Award for Academic Excellence, and her MFA in Performance and Choreography from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where she was awarded the first Patricia Knowles Scholarship for graduate student excellence and the Wanda M. Nettl prize for student choreography.
Since 2004, her contemporary repertory company, Your Mother Dances (formerly based in Milwaukee), has produced her original work alongside established choreographers from across the country (David Parker, Sara Hook, Gerald Casel, Trey McIntyre, Molly Rabinowitz, Heinz Poll, Luc Vanier, Erika Randall, Anna Sapozhnikov, Dawn Springer) as well as emergent regional and local artists. Johnson's choreography has been seen in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Minneapolis, Louisville, New Haven, CT, Fort Worth, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and has been selected for Gala performance at the American College Dance Association.
As a professional performer, Johnson has toured nationally and internationally as a company member with New York City’s David Parker and The Bang Group and also danced with Sara Hook Dances (NYC & IL), and Molly Rabinowitz Liquid Grip (NYC). She has also performed distinguished classical and contemporary works by Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Salvatore Aiello, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer, Rachel Lampert, Mark Morris, Cynthia Oliver, Luc Vanier, Trey McIntyre, and Heinz Poll and has served as rehearsal director for works by Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Sara Hook, Rebecca Stenn, Daniel Gwirtzman, Rebecca Bryant, and Maria Gillespie.
See more here.
Paul Matteson is an assistant professor in the School of Dance at University of the Arts. His current creative research explores the imaginative intertwining of text and movement. He is working with sculptor Rosalyn Driscoll on a new storytelling solo that will premiere at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in January.
Paul was a member of the internationally touring Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2008 to 2013. He has also worked with David Dorfman Dance, Lisa Race, Terry Creach, Peter Schmitz, Keith Johnson, Neta Pulvermacher and others.
David Parker is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow in choreography and, together with Jeffrey Kazin, leads The Bang Group which they founded together in 1995. Parker grew up in Lynnfield, MA and began studying tap and ballet in Boston as a teenager where he launched his career by tap dancing on city sidewalks with Maureen Cosgrove in 1978. Parker later attended Bard College where he studied ballet, modern and post-modern dance. It was there that he began to build a polyglot form that used all he knew. His early work, Bang and Suck won a Finalist Prize at the 4th International Competition for Choreographers of Contemporary Dance in the Netherlands in 1994 following which The Bang Group was launched. He has also been commended by The Kurt Jooss Awards jury, The Monte Carlo Dance Festival's Citation of Excellence, a New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Award for design for his notorious Velcro duet called Slapstuck, an Art+Action Award from Gibney Dance Center, a Move Award from Dance Theater Workshop and a philanthropy award from Dancers Responding to Aids. In addition to performing in his own work, he has appeared as a guest artist with Doug Elkins (Fraulein Maria,) Sara Rudner (Dancing on View at the ICA,) Christopher Williams (The Golden Legend,) The New York Theatre Ballet (Cinderella) and with Caleb Teicher, Sara Hook, Catherine Tharin and Fiona Marcotty. He has created over 50 commissioned works for ballet and modern companies, universities, soloists and theater artists.
See more at The Bang Group.
Emilie Plauché Flink, a member and soloist with the Limón Dance Company from 1989 – 1999, has also performed with Annabelle Gamson, Lila York, David Grenke, Colin Connor, Martha Clarke and Shapiro & Smith Dance. In the spring of 1998, she was a Sage Cowles Guest Artist at the University of Minnesota dance program where she later taught from 2001-2007. As a choreographer, Emilie has created commissioned work for San Jose State University, Roger Williams University, Chattanooga Ballet, Of Moving Colors Dance Company, Purchase College Senior Concert Series, Baton Rouge Ballet, Ballet Arts Minnesota and Zenon Dance Company. She holds a BFA in dance from the Juilliard School. A recipient of a 2010 McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, she co-hosted the Northrop performance previews from 2011- 2013. Emilie is the mother of three daughters; Willa, Freyja and Iris. Adapted from Black Label Movement.