Miriam Seidel and Jon Gibson
Violet Fire Collaborators
Jon Gibson – composer
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Gibson is a pioneering figure in the minimalist movement. He is a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, and has taken part in numerous landmark musical events, performing in the early works of Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley. He has created a large body of works since the late 1960's—solo and ensemble, instrumental and vocal—which have been performed throughout the world. Gibson has collaborated with Nancy Topf, Thomas Buckner, the Nina Winthrop Dance Company, Elisabetta Vittoni, David Behrman, Lucinda Childs, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Jaron Lanier, and with director JoAnne Akalaitis on Voyage of the Beagle, a music theater work centered around Charles Darwin. His music can be heard on the New Tone, Point Music, Lovely Music, EarRational Records and Einstein Records labels.Miriam Seidel – librettist
Miriam Seidel is a writer, critic and curator based in Philadelphia. Her dramatic works include Interference, with composer John J.H. Phillips, broadcast on New American Radio, and The Big Picture, a monologue produced at InterAct Theatre. She is involved as librettist with the opera Judgment of Midas, with composer Kamran Ince, currently in development by American Opera Projects, and scheduled to receive its concert premiere in Istanbul in 2011. Her short fiction has appeared numerous journals including Exquisite Corpse, Washington Square and Phoebe. Her writing on visual art, dance and new performance has appeared in many publications, including Art in America (where she is corresponding editor), ARTnews, Art on Paper, Dance, High Performance, the Philadelphia Inquirer and others.Terry O'Reilly – director
Terry O'Reilly has been a Co-Artistic Director of Mabou Mines since 1973 and is a veteran of over 25 productions there as an actor, director, designer, writer, and puppeteer. He has performed in and directed productions in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Asia. His own play, Animal Magnetism, with director Lee Breuer and composer Eve Beglarian, premiered at Arts at St Ann's in 2000, and traveled to the Czech Republic's festival DIVADLO in 2001. Other theater works with original music include Henry Miller's The Angel is My Watermark, music by Carter Burwell, and O'Reilly's own The Bribe, music by John Zorn. He directed the martial arts opera Voice of the Dragon part II, with composer Fred Ho, writer Ruth Margraff and the Afro Asian Music Ensemble, at the Apollo Theater in 2004. O’Reilly’s most recent project, Brer’ Rabbit In The Land of The Monkey King, received its first performance in Hong Kong in 2009.Boris Čakširan – set and costume design
Boris Čakširan is a choreographer and costume designer based in Belgrade, Serbia. Having worked as a costume designer for over 25 years, he is considered one of Serbia’s foremost costume designers for stage, film and television. He is the founder of ERGstatus, an award-winning contemporary dance project. His work as choreographer and director with ERGstatus reflects his belief in the arts as a healing factor in the human community. He has worked in dance education at leading institutions and festivals in Israel, Poland, and Italy. His many international awards include one of the first CEC-ArtsLink fellowships, leading to collaborative performance projects with organizations including GOH Productions, the American-Czechoslovak Marionette Puppet Theatre and the Silesian Dance Theatre of Poland.Sarah Drury – media designer
Sarah Drury is a new media artist whose work explores the charged boundary between interior impulse and physical expression via responsive interfaces and dynamically-generated media. Her installations, including The Listening Microphone, Voicebox, Vocalalia and Intervention Chants, explore the expressive qualities of the voice in interaction with video and sound. Her work has been presented in national and international venues including SIGGRAPH 2005, ISEA 2002, ACM Multimedia '98, Performative Sites 2001, the Brooklyn Museum, the Kitchen, Artists Space, Hallwalls, The Worldwide Video Festival at the Hague and on PBS. Her NEA-funded project eVokability led to performances based on custom-designed wearable devices as expressive tools for performers with disabilities. Brainstorm, her current project with collaborators Anna Dembska and Valeria Vasilevski, explores climate change through a live, interactive digital environment.Jen Simmons – media designer
Jen Simmons is a multimedia designer and filmmaker. Her films Bush for Peace and Inclinations have screened at hundreds of festival venues including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Resfest, Media That Matters Film Festival, Festival of New Film and Media: Split, Croatia, Inside Out: Toronto, NewFest: New York, Frameline: San Francisco and Free Speech TV. She has designed projection, lighting, scenic and sound for over 300 shows including for Peggy Shaw, Sharon Bridgforth, Lourdes Pérez, Daniel Alexander Jones, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, and Cherríe Moraga. From 1992-2000, Jen worked with the Esperanza Center in San Antonio, Texas, a multidisciplinary performance venue for innovative arts and progressive action.Nina Winthrop – choreographer
As Artistic Director of her own company, Nina Winthrop and Dancers, Nina Winthrop has choreographed numerous dance works since 1992. Winthrop is committed to multimedia collaborations, and has worked with musician/ composers John Cale, Steve Sacks, Jon Gibson and Gary Lucas; set designers David Auden and Manuel Lutgenhorst; sculptor Jene Highstein; costume designers Anita Evenepoel and Naoko Nagata; filmmakers Morleigh Steinberg and Maria Antelman; and lighting designers Spencer Mosse and Oguri, among others. As a dancer, she performed with Wendy Perron, Susan Rethorst, Yoshiko Chuma, Sally Silvers and Kei Takei, and studied with Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham and Deborah Hay. Winthrop is the curator of Dance Conversations at The Flea. Her company’s season will take place at Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in June 2006.Mary Louise Geiger – lighting design
Mary Louise Geiger’s recent productions include The Constant Wife at Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre, and Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse at Arts at St. Anne’s. She also created the lighting design for Tongue of a Bird at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Jody Oberfelder Dance at Lincoln Center’s Clark Theater, and Oedipus at Palm Springs at New York Theater Project; and has worked regionally at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Geiger is Associate Arts Professor and Associate Chair of Design at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.Ana Zorana Brajović – conductor
Ana Zorana Brajović is Assistant Conductor with the Opera of the National Theater of Belgrade, a post she has held since the age of 18. Before the age of 20, she also gave her first piano recital at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts; was awarded prizes in competitions in Belgrade and Stresa, Italy; and received the annual October Award, the highest award in Belgrade for music achievement. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Conservatory, during which she performed in a Millennium Stage Concert at the Kennedy Center. For the National Theater Opera House in Belgrade, she has conducted the operas of Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Bizet, Donizetti, Strauss and others.