Bobbi Jene Smith: Broken Theater

Banning Bouldin is a Nashville native who received a BFA in dance from the Juilliard School in 2002. She spent the next eight years dancing internationally, working with and performing works by Aszure Barton, Cullberg (Sweden), Mats Ek, Johan Inger, Hubbard Street, Lar Lubovitch, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alexander Ekman, Jacquelyn Buglisi, Wen Wei Wang, Camille A. Brown, and Robert Battle, among others. 

She was a soloist, master class instructor, and rehearsal assistant during her 7-year tenure with Aszure Barton and Artists from 2003-2010. In 2007, she began to research her own contemporary technique practice—developing the first iteration of an improvisation and non-binary partnering syllabus, which she taught for two years at the Theatre de la Danse and Studio Harmonic (Paris, FR). That year, she also joined long-time collaborators and fellow Juilliard-graduates Stephan Laks, Rachel Tess, Jermaine Spivey, Luis Rodriguez, and Isaac Spencer to form Rumpus Room Dance, based in Portland, Oregon, and Goteborg, Sweden. Together, from 2007-2010, they co-created and performed two evening length site-specific dance works and were nominated one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2010). 

In the Fall of 2010, Banning returned to Nashville, where she was engaged as a contemporary dance instructor and guest choreographer for the Nashville Ballet and Vanderbilt University. She has since been commissioned to create works for Visceral Dance Chicago, Springboard Danse Montréal, Northwest Dance Project (Portland), Whim W’Him (Seattle), SALT (Salt Lake City), Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts (Dallas), Groundworks Dance Theater (Cleveland), the Fine Arts Center (Greenville), the Juilliard School, Gibney Dance Company, Middle Tennessee State University, and New Dialect. She has also been featured in articles for Dance Magazine, The New York Times, Dance Teacher, and Dance Spirit.

Banning formed New Dialect in 2012 in response to Nashville’s need for a professional contemporary dance company and community centric resource, that would allow dancers, teaching artists, and choreographers the opportunity to collaborate and contribute to the wide variety of movement languages in 21st Century dance. Through her leadership of New Dialect and significant contributions to contemporary dance training, creation, and performances in the South, Banning has received several honors and awards. She is also a research artist for the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, where she is investigating new frameworks for supporting dance through NCCAkron’s Creative Administration Residency. 

Pianist Mikael Darmanie has performed as a soloist throughout the Americas, Europe, Russia, and the Caribbean. Recent festival appearances have included: The Weill Institute at Carnegie, Trinity Wall Street, Prototype, Bang on a Can Marathon, Close Encounters with Music, Berkshire High Peaks Festival, Cape Cod Symphony Nth Degree, Pianofest in the Hamptons, the Mozarteum, Mainly Mozart, and L’Académie de Musique de Sion, to name a few.

As a member of the Warp Trio, he performs throughout the world in genres ranging from jazz to hip-hop, rock, fusion, and electronic music. He DJs and teaches masterclasses and workshops to students of all levels, kindergarten through university.

Since his debut as a conductor with the Carolina Chamber Symphony in 2008, he has performed throughout the U.S., conducting various piano concerti from the keyboard and symphonic works. 

Also a composer, his works have been performed throughout the U.S. and Europe. He is currently pursuing his D.M.A. at SUNY Stony Brook under the guidance of Gilbert Kalish.

Julia Eichten—Dance artist, Choreographer and Director—is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where she received the Hector Zaraspe Award in recognition of her choreography. Eichten was a founding member of L.A. Dance Project. Since her time with L.A. Dance Project, Julia continued her work with Gerard & Kelly as a performing artist as well as an associate choreographer on such projects as bridge-s in collaboration with Solange and the Getty Museum of Los Angeles. In 2019, Eichten shared a premiere with collaborator Frances Chiaverini of It’s My House and I Live Here, at TorSpace, Frankfurt in collaboration with Whistle While You Work. In early 2020 she shared her directorial debut with Lisenka Heijboer Castanon, with Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect in Through Movement. She performed in Alex Da Corte’s reimagining of Allan Kaprow’s Chicken, with choreography by Kate Watson Wallace. Eichten has taught at Cal Arts, BeMoving, and Pieter Performance Space. In 2021, Eichten was part of Sandbox’s visual album “Seven Pillars,” and self-produced her first film, “The Body Inside Me.”

Vinson Fraley was born in Statesville, North Carolina and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He began his formal training in voice and drama at DeKalb School of the Arts. He started dancing at the age of 14 at DanceMakers of Atlanta. Fraley received his BFA in dance from NYU Tisch in 2015. During his final year of college he became a member of Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M (Abraham.In.Motion) and later joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 2017. Vinson has been a frequent collaborator with Carrie Mae Weems. He collaborated with Sterling Ruby and the Metropolitan Museum for the In America: A Lexicon of Fashion exhibition. Fraley teamed up with artist Janet Biggs in a work made for Arts at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). He was a part of Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa’s latest production Planet [wanderer] which premiered at the Théâtre National de Chaillot. Vinson has also performed at Frieze Art Fair under the direction of Stephen Galloway. Most recently Vinson debuted a duet he created for himself and Sara Mearns at the Joyce Theatre.

He has had the opportunity to present solo works in the US, Germany, and France. This past summer he debuted a new work at The Watermill Center. Vinson’s choreography and movement direction have been seen in videos by Calvin Klein, Serpentwithfeet, Vogue, Nike, and Pattern Beauty. Vinson contributed an original music composition for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s newest work titled Afterwardsness. His work has been written about and featured in various publications including The New York Times and Interview, and has appeared on the cover of V, i-D, Highsnobiety, Document Journal, and Dance Magazine.

Jonathan Fredrickson was born in Corpus Christi, TX. He attended California Institute of the Arts where he received his BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography. Jonathan danced with the Limon Dance Company from 2006-2011, and created two works on the company during his time there: The Edge of Some World and Chrysalis. In 2010, he was a winner of Hubbard Street’s National Choreographic Competition and was also honored as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 To Watch.” He then danced with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago from 2011 to 2015, where he was commissioned to create two new works on the company, Untitled Landscape and For the Wandered. His work has been shown in festivals such as Hong Kong Dance Festival, Reverb Dance Festival, and White Wave, and he has created for programs like California Institute of the Arts, CalState Fullerton, Limon Institute, and Sundance/Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre. He joined the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in 2015, where he has been performing her work internationally, and creating for the company’s choreographic platform UNDERGROUND with the works Epilogue and Afternoon Forest Birds.

Keir GoGwilt is a violinist, scholar, and composer whose work combines close listening, research, and collaborative experimentation. Both his scholarship and creative work explore the ways in which cultural and material histories shape musical creativity and meaning. 

As a violinist, GoGwilt has been described as a “formidable performer” (New York Times) noted for his “evocative sound” (London Jazz News) and “finger-busting virtuosity” (San Diego Union Tribune). He has soloed with groups including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Chinese National Symphony, Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Bowdoin International Music Festival Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Manhattan School of Music Chamber Sinfonia, Music Academy of the West chamber orchestra, and the La Jolla Symphony, among others.

His creative work combines composition, improvisation, narrative and poetic text. He has performed his original, often collaboratively-devised works at festivals/series including Luminato, PS 122 COIL, Kaufman Hall at the 92nd st Y, Stanford Live (Bing Theater), the American Repertory Theater, Carolina Performing Arts, Darmstadt, La Mama, the Momentary, the Audio Foundation, Pyramid Club, Spectrum NYC, Clark Art Museum, and elsewhere. He has released his music on 577 Records and Another Timbre; his music co-composed with Kyle Motl has been noted for its “rich tones, rhapsodic gestures” (The New Yorker), and “clinical precision” (The Wire).

He has ongoing projects with composers Matthew Aucoin, Carolyn Chen, and Celeste Oram; he has toured his early works with choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith (A Study on Effort, With Care), and has been an integral part in the creation of new ones (Lost Mountain, Broken Theater, Pierre). He has worked closely with bassist Mark Dresser (as part of the Dresser Quintet/Septet), taonga puoro musician/scholar Rob Thorne, violinist/composer Johnny Chang, and percussionist/conductor Steven Schick.

GoGwilt has been featured at Rockport Chamber Music, the Spoleto Festival (in Italy), National Sawdust, San Diego Symphony’s “Hearing the Future,” LA Opera After Hours, LA Monday Evening Concerts, Taos, and YellowBarn, among others, and can be heard on Tzadik, Clean Feed, Another Timbre, and 577 Records. As an orchestral player he has worked with the Canadian Opera Company (acting associate concertmaster), A Far Cry, and the Auckland Philharmonia. He studied violin with Lewis Kaplan and Renée Jolles at Juilliard pre-college; he studied Literature with Jorie Graham, Helen Vendler, and John Hamilton at Harvard University, where he was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. GoGwilt received his Ph.D. in Music from the University of California

San Diego, where he was awarded the Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal for the Division of Arts & Humanities. He has presented his research on histories and philosophies of performance at conferences throughout the United States and Europe and has published articles in Current Musicology, the Orpheus Institute Series, and Naxos Musicology.

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick has recently been presented by The Gilmore Festival, the New York Philharmonic, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Park Avenue Armory, and performed with the Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Matthew Aucoin, and Christopher Cerrone. In the 22-23 season, Hanick premieres a new piano concerto by composer Samuel Carl Adams with the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen; appears with soprano Julia Bullock at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi; and performs recitals at the Library of Congress, Hancher Auditorium, Ensemble Music Society of Indianapolis, the 92nd Street Y, and elsewhere. With the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), Hanick served as an artistic director of the Ojai Festival in 2022. He is the director of Solo Piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of the Peabody Institute and The Juilliard School.

Hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for his “flawless technique and keen musicality,” cellist Coleman Itzkoff enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. Recent season highlights include solo performances with the Houston Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and chamber music performances at Caramoor, YellowBarn, Union College, and Marlboro Music Festival. Coleman demonstrates versatility and command of a wide variety of musical styles, equally comfortable with Renaissance and Baroque music played on period instruments as he is with the eclectic and evermore technically-challenging music of today.

A passionate proponent of new music and interdisciplinary collaboration, Coleman Itzkoff has premiered over 100 contemporary works in the last five years, working closely with some of the great composers of today, including Jörg Widmann, Brett Dean, Tan Dun, Vivian Fung, Steven Mackey, and Matthew Aucoin, to name a few. 

Through and beyond his work with AMOC*, Coleman has begun pushing into the areas of dancing and acting, most notably in his roles in choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith’s dance-theater pieces Lost Mountain and Broken Theater, the latter of which will be presented as a feature-length film in festivals around the world. 

Chamber Music is at the heart of Coleman’s musical life, beginning early on with weekly quartet readings with his parents, both professional violinists themselves. At the age of 10, Coleman began attending the Greenwood Music Camp where he began playing with other musicians of his generation and where his love of chamber music deepened. Since that time, he has attended numerous summer music festivals including Aspen Music Festival and School, the International Heifetz Institute, La Jolla SummerFest, YellowBarn, Music@Menlo, and Marlboro Music Festival. He has collaborated in chamber music with such musicians as violinists Pamela Frank, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Cho-Liang Lin, and Glenn Dicterow; soprano Lucy Shelton; cellists David Finckel and Johannes Moser; violist Roger Tapping; and pianists Gil Kalish and Peter Frankl.

Central to Mr. Itzkoff’s career in music is his dedication to community outreach and education. Wherever in the country he may performing, Coleman always makes a point of engaging in the broader community to bring music to the people, whether it be in schools, senior centers and nursing homes, or hospitals. He has received several grants and awards for these purposes, including the Sviatoslav Richter Grant for Music Outreach from Rice University, the Roman Goronok Fellowship from the 2016 Irving Klein Competition, and, in 2015, the Cleveland Clinic Arts and Medicine Award for his engaging talks and accessible performances for clinic patients. Additionally, Coleman is a devoted and dynamic educator of young musicians, and has taught and given masterclasses across the US at such institutions as the International Heifetz Institute, the Lev Aronson Cello Festival, Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center, NYU, and

Harvard University. Coleman has continued this work in the time of COVID, partnering with PMHU’s “Vital Sounds Partnership Grants” to bring live, one-on-one performances to hospital patients across the country, from Los Angeles to Boston.

Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Coleman Itzkoff was born in 1992 into a musical family and began playing cello at the age of 4. He holds a BM from Rice University and his Master’s Degree from the Thornton School of Music at USC where he studied under the tutelage of Ralph Kirshbaum. Currently, he is enrolled in The Juilliard School’s prestigious Artist Diploma program studying with Timothy Eddy, Richard Aaron, and baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai. He performs on a 1730 Gennaro Gagliano Cello, generously loaned to him by the Amatius Foundation of Austin, TX.

Jesse Kovarsky is a performer and movement director. He earned his Masters in Performance from Trinity Laban in London and has worked with choreographers all over the world including Hofesh Shechter, Sidi Larbi Cherkoui, Punch Drunk, Alexander Ekman, Ryan Heffington, Russell Maliphant, Bobbi Jene Smith, Arthur Pita, Sonya Tayeh, and Celia Rolson-Hall. He gravitates towards more theatrical work having originated roles in Punch Drunk’s The Drowned Man and performed in their hit show Sleep No More. He has appeared on Broadway in Fiddler on The Roof and The Bands Visit and has danced in various Films/TV including “Anna Karenina,” “The Muppets Most Wanted,” “Tick Tick Boom,” “After Yang,” and “Harlem.” He has collaborated with notable brands such as Netflix, Amazon, Hermes, Virgin, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nike.

Gregory Lau was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He began his training at Mid-Pacific Institute School of the Arts, is a graduate of LaGuardia Arts High School and attended The Juilliard School, under the direction of Lawrence Rhodes. He received additional training from the Alvin Ailey School, French Academy of Ballet, Cedar Lake, Nutmeg Conservatory and The Canadian National Ballet School.

After attending The Juilliard School, Gregory joined Nederlands Dans Theater 2 from 2013-2016 and has been dancing for Nederlands Dans Theater 1 since 2016-2019. Gregory has been a recipient of the NFAA YoungArts Level 1 Award in Modern Dance and Ballet. He has created and performed works by Jiri Kylian, Crystal Pite, Ohad Naharin, Sharon Eyal, Marco Goecke, Paul Lightfoot & Sol Leon, Hans Van Manen, Johan Inger, Edward Clug, Marne & Imre Van Opstal, Medhi Walerski, Alexander Ekman, Jiri Pokorny, Jose Limon and Camille A.Brown. His choreography has been performed at the Bright Steps Gala in Tokyo, RGB Gala in Osaka and “Switch” by NDT.

Yiannis Logothetis is a queer interdisciplinary artivist and teacher with a focus on performance, dance improvisation, and movement medicine. His base is New York although he is constantly on the move. His passion for learning multiple disciplines, meeting different cultures, celebrating the virtue of the body through the wisdom of music, dance and literature allows him to travel around the world observing, performing, creating, teaching, and expanding his studies on qigong, contemplative action practices, and decolonization. He is currently engaged in project-based works with AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), Corpo Maquina under Evangelos Biskas, and Yang Zhen Company.

His recent and past artistic collaborations and studies include prestigious contemporary artists such as Bobbi Jene Smith, Crystal Pite, Andrea Miller, Maxine Doyle, Daria Fain, Bonnie Cohen, Boaz Yakin, and Elton John. Following his dance degree from Marymount Manhattan College, he joined the cast of the award-winning production of Sleep No More NYC by Punchdrunk International. While still performing, creating, and sharing his collaborative works globally, his focus does not seem to disengage from a constant connection with self-healing work through qigong, somatics and antiracism studies, and continuous exploration of his inner being dismantling anything that obstructs his creative and authentic self. His love for connecting people through dance and music led him to cofound the Warrior Poets in 2017, a team of artists that creates and produces work seeking to connect people through live dance and music performances, parties, and workshops all around the world.

Born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, Yiannis’s professional dance training includes contemporary, hip hop, popping, house, ballet, modern, ballroom and standard dance; Greek folklore, contact improvisation, Argentine tango, and more. “When I connect with the polyrhythmic groove of nature, my essences are awakened; when awakened, the essences bring my prenatal and postnatal qi in harmony and my spirits can flow unrestrained; in such a state my mind is free from knowledge, and meditation becomes a way of being rather than doing.”

Or Schraiber is a dancer, actor, and choreographer. He danced with the Batsheva Company from 2010 to 2017. In parallel to his time in the company, he served at the IDF for three years. After moving to NYC, Schraiber starred in or choreographed films such as Boaz Yakin’s “Aviva” and Terrence Malick’s “The Way of the Wind.” He played the role of Zelger in the national Broadway tour of “The Band’s Visit.” His choreography has been presented by numerous dance companies including Batsheva Dance Company, L.A. Dance Project, The Royal Danish Ballet, Corpus, and more. Schraiber has choreographed and performed in several commercials, short films, and music videos. He has also directed his own short dance films: “Obsidian,” “Gallop Apace,” “Bloodroot,” and “Shivta.” He is an alumnus of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and the Stella Adler Studio for Acting.

Bobbi Jene Smith is a director, choreographer and dancer who makes work for both live theater and film. Her work explores affect and apathy, domestic politics, and the rhythmic and formal connections between music and movement. She danced for the Batsheva Company from 2005-2014. Since then she has choreographed original work for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Los Angeles Dance Project, VAIL Dance Festival, CORPUS of The Royal Danish Ballet, the Batsheva Dance Company, and others. Her dance and music theater works have been presented and supported by the American Repertory Theater, PS 122, La Mama, ODC Theater, Stanford Live, Carolina Performing Arts, Kaufman Hall at the 92nd st Y, Luminato Festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and others. Additionally, she has starred in or choreographed films including Elvira Lind’s “Bobbi Jene,” Georgia Parris’s “Mari,” and Alex Garland’s “Annihilation.” She has directed her own dance films including “Broken Theater” and “Gallop Apace.”

Smith is an alumnus of the Juilliard School, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Royal Winnipeg School. She is a founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). In 2019 she was awarded The Harkness Promise Award and was The Martha Duffy Resident Artist at Baryshnikov Art Center. Smith is currently an Artist In Residence at LADP.

Mouna Soualem has been acting since the age of 11, having appeared in such films as: Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” (2006), Amos Gitai’s “Later You Will Understand” (2008), Hiam Abbass’s “Inheritance” (2012), Hafsia Herzi’s “You Deserve a Lover” (2019), Boaz Yakin’s “Aviva” (2020), and Dina Amer’s “You Resemble Me” (2020). Up next, she will play the female lead in the Disney+ series, “Oussekine,” by French director Antoine Chevrollier and will be seen in French director Dominik Moll’s next feature film, “La nuit du 12.”

Mouna earned a degree in cinema at the University of Paris 8, where she made her foray into theatre, starring in lead roles such as Nina in “The Seagull,” directed by Hélène Babu. She was then accepted into the Gabriel Fauré Conservatory in Paris 5 and later moved to New York where she studied at the renowned Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

A multi-faceted artist, Mouna showcased a creative piece at the 2018 Avignon Festival Section OFF in France. In 2020, she was an artist-in-residence at The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. She recently wrapped rehearsals on a dance show, set to premiere in 2022, called Broken Theater, directed by Bobbi Jene Smith and created at the La Mama Experimental Theater Club in New York.