photo: Kelly Gottesman

Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have collaborated in choreography and performance since 1978. In recognition of their collaborative work, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have been awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography. Their innovative work with video and live performance has been acclaimed for exploding the duet form into a magically populated stage where image and reality collide. Their breathtaking and catapulting partnering, deep sensuality, and surprising humor give their work a physically and theatrically riveting edge. In New York City, their work has been presented by The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, City Center Fall For Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, Lincoln Center, Danspace Project, Performance Space 122, Central Park's Summerstage, Dance New Amsterdam, and Dancing in the Streets.

Bridgman/Packer Dance is a 2007 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and a New England Foundation for the Arts Expeditions Touring Grant. Bridgman and Packer are also recipients of numerous National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships, NEA Dance Company Grants and Choreography Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. They have also been awarded five " First Light " Commissions from Dance Theater Workshop in NYC with funding from the Jerome Foundation, a Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative with support from the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, a choreography commission from the 92nd Street Y New Works in Dance Fund, a commission from Dance New Amsterdam, and two commissioning awards from the National Performance Network’s Creation Fund. Bridgman/Packer Dance was a recipient of a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts BUILD Grant, and they were selected as 2005-06 Dance Theater Workshop Digital Fellows.

As a duet company, they have toured throughout the United States, performing in festivals, art centers, and universities including:

Under the auspices of the National Performance Network, they have been presented by the Walker Art Center/M.D.A. in Minneapolis, The Dancers' Collective in Atlanta, The Dance Place in Washington, DC, the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, Columbia College in Chicago, and the Contemporary Dance Theater in Cincinnati.

Bridgman/Packer have been guest artists at over 100 universities including New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, California Institute of the Arts, Ohio State University, Arizona State University, and the University of Utah. Bridgman and Packer have appeared abroad in Scotland, France, Ireland, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, and China. In the summer of 2004, they toured Central America as part of Arts International's Performing Americas Project, in conjunction with the National Performance Network and La Red de Promotores Culturales de Latinamerica y el Caribe.

In 2002 and 2003 their work was featured on Metroarts/Thirteen, WNET's cable arts program for the New York City metropolitan area. They were featured in Dance Magazine's May 2006 issue on Great Partnerships.

Composers:

photo: Claire Folger

Ken Field (composer/performer for Under the Skin) is a Boston-based saxophonist, flautist, percussionist, and composer. Since 1988 he has been a member of the internationally acclaimed modern music ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, with whom he has recorded eight CDs. Field also leads the award-winning Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, a New Orleans-inspired improvisational brass band that performed recently at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Year of the Snake, the group's debut release, was included on best-of-year lists in NYC, New Orleans, and Milan. Field has performed in the US, Canada, France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Ireland, and Japan, and has been Composer-in-Residence at the Ucross Foundation (Wyoming), the Fundación Valparaíso (Spain), and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida). In addition to the soundtrack CD from Under the Skin, his releases include the solo CDs Subterranea and Pictures of Motion, documenting Field's compositions for layered alto saxophones, and Tokyo in F, a live recording of a spontaneously improvised Tokyo concert with three renowned Japanese musicians. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Saxophone Journal, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. Field is a Vandoren Performing Artist. His music is also heard regularly on the children's television program Sesame Street. Information and CDs are available at www.kenfield.org.

photo: Yoshiko Chuma

Robert Een (composer for Seductive Reasoning) is an acclaimed composer, cellist and singer. The recipient of a 2004 Obie Award for music composition and a 2000 Bessie Award for sustained achievement, Een has performed his music on stages and in unusual venues throughout the world, including the Buddhist caves of Ellora, India; the Shinto shrine in Tsurugi, Japan; a theater above the Arctic circle in Norway; as well as Central Park, Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum and the Knitting Factory in New York City. Known for his use of extended vocal and cello techniques, he has recorded eight albums: Mystery Dances, Expanding Universe, Fertile Fields, Your Life is Not Your Own, Big Joe , The Rook and Mr. Jealousy soundtracks, and Music from Blue Earth.

His scores for film include; My Horrible Year, Mr. Jealousy, Trouble on the Corner, The Rook, Guts, and the documentaries Misty Isle Out and Carnival Train. Robert Een's music for theater and dance can be heard in the repertories of Liz Lerman, David Dorfman, Yin Mei, Jennifer Muller, Yoshiko Chuma, Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig, Ron K. Brown and others. As a teacher he has been a guest lecturer and an artist-in-residence at colleges, universities and professional schools around the globe. His long association with Meredith Monk culminated in their evening-legnth performance duet, Facing North. For more information, please visit www.Roberteen.com.

photo: Douglas Dubler

Glen Velez (Composer for Memory Bank and Carried Away) is an internationally recognized frame drummer, composer, scholar and teacher. Velez has created his own musical style inspired by both Western percussion and frame drum performance styles from around the world. A member of the Paul Winter Consort from 1983-1998, and of Steve Reich & Musicians from 1972-1987, Velez's own music has recently been featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, John Schaefer's New Sounds, and in feature articles in the New York Times, Village Voice, Christian Science Monitor, and Down Beat Magazine. In addition to ten recordings and several instructional videos under his own name, he has recently recorded with such diverse artists as Pat Methany, Paul Winter, Lyle Mays, Marc Cohn, Suzanne Vega, Glen Moore and Rabih Abou-Khalil on labels such as ECM, CBS, RCA, GRP, Vanguard, Deutsche Gramophone, Geffen, Nonesuch, Capital and Living Music. For more information, please visit his website at www.glenvelez.com.

Technology:

	Peter Bobrow (video collaborator for Seductive Reasoning, Under the Skin, and Memory Bank) is an independent filmmaker, director, and producer with a background in independent and experimental film. His credits include work for 20th Century Fox, HBO, Forensic Films, the BBC, Discovery Channel and PBS. He has worked on over 25 feature films. His recent projects include line producing the films The Wreck, A Very Serious Person and Building Girl; production managing on the films New York City Serenade and Off The Black and supervising music videos for The Secret Machines and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He also co-produced The Welcome Table, a short by Marta Renzi. www.peterbobrow.com (In photo: Peter Bobrow testing the harness system during green screen shoot for Memory Bank.)
	Jim Monroe (video collaborator for Seductive Reasoning and Under the Skin) is a multimedia producer, director of photography and editor.He has worked in music, theater and television production. He is currently teaching nonlinear video editing at SUNY Rockland and is a certified Apple Trainer. Monroe's company, Act One Video Productions, Ltd., in New City, N.Y.,is a full-service commercial and entertainment, multimedia production company. Act One's services range from scripting to production to post-production. For more information call (845) 634-0312 or visit www.actonedigital.com. (In photo: Jim Monroe during video shoot for Memory Bank)
	Matthias Oostrik (custom software designer for Memory Bank) is the founder of MAGDATT, an interactive video company in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Last year MAGDATT made installations for the Blueman Group, Sharp and the TU Delft. Matthias finished his studies of interactive media at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam in 2004, where he was trained to be a bridge between artist and technology. For the past two years he has worked as a freelancer, making video theatre and video installation productions. As an artist he collaborates with other artists from various disciplines. Matthias is a founding member of Amsterdam Cyber Theatre. www.magdatt.nl

Production:

Frank DenDanto III, lighting and visual designer for the past ten years, received his MFA in Design from NYU's Tisch School. His design credits include Full Circle's Solar Powered at the New Victory Theater, HBO's Reel Sex 24, Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn, and Off-Broadway productions of Blind Alley at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Only You at the Jewish American Theater, and Shadow Box at the Hudson Guild Theater. He has designed for Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Karen Finely, Tim Miller, Deb Margolin, Ann Magnuson, John Kelly, Holly Hughes, Sarah Michelson, Lava Love, Stacy Dawson, David Neumann and the White Oak Dance Project. Awards for his light installation/sculptures include First Runner Up in Light Forums 98, and a Jerome commission in 2002. His work and designs have been displayed at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, The Museum of Art and Architecture and The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC. He is co-founder of the not for profit arts support organization, Mother's Milk, based north of NYC, and has constructed a workshop rehearsal space where artists can fully integrate all the components of a new work prior to moving into a rented venue. He has worked with Bridgman/Packer Dance since 1997.

Liz Prince (Costume Designer for Carried Away and Seductive Reasoning.) has designed costumes for the dance companies of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, Doug Varone, Mark Dendy, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Project and Bebe Miller. Prince's costumes have been exhibited at the New York Public Library of Performing Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. She is the recipient of a 1990 New York Dance and Performance Award for costume design.