Breach: Left Behind - The Team Part 2

Eight dancers (seven plus me) will take the space/stage on Sunday. Get to know them!

Here are the performers, in alphabetical order:

Laura Baehr is a movement artist, teacher, and researcher. She earned her dual degree in Dance and Neuroscience from Muhlenberg College and joined the Philadelphia dance community in 2012. Laura's performance experience includes concert dance, mask work and dance theater. She is a contributing artist to The Embodiment Project and a member of Femme. Collective of Philadelphia. In addition to performance and choreography, Laura is a Pilates instructor, Dance for Parkinson Disease teacher, and currently pursuing her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree at Temple University. She is so grateful to take part in Breach: Left Behind.

Photo by Bicking Photography

Katherine Kiefer Stark is a Philadelphia-based dance artist, teacher, and the artistic director of The Naked Stark.  Katherine received her M.F.A. in choreography from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and her B.A. in dance from Connecticut College. Katherine’s movement practice is founded on release-based movement techniques, which appreciate and make space for the uniqueness of each mover’s body, emphasize understanding initiations and pathways and are practiced through discovering how one’s own body moves within the movement.  She strives to build complex dance works that take apart, redefine, and consider everyday experiences of people, ideas and social phenomenon. Her work has been presented in New York, North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Hampshire as well as produced by a variety of presenters in Philadelphia including FringeArts, Mascher Space Cooperative, and First Person Arts.  Katherine received a 2012 Rocky Award, a peer-to-peer award for outstanding achievement in the greater Philadelphia dance community, for her work Looking for Judy. Since moving to Philadelphia in 2010, Katherine has performed with Eleanor Goudie-Averill, Colleen Hooper, and Jessica Warchal-King among others as well as collaborating with Loren Groenendaal and Marion Ramirez. Katherine has taught as a guest artist at Muhlenberg, University of Texas, El Paso, and Enloe High School, and as adjunct faculty at Bryn Mawr College.  She is also an Artist in-Residence at Mascher Space Cooperative where she rehearses and offers a drop-in class for the Philly dance community.

Photo by Charles Stonewall

Margaret Page has a Master's degree in Expressive Therapy and is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Psychology Associates of Bethlehem in Easton. For the past 13 years, she has worked with various populations providing group, individual, and family counseling using creative arts, dance therapy, and verbal therapy.  Margaret feels dance is healing, helps create community and is a way to tell stories. She grew up dancing and performing with the Tennessee Children's Dance Ensemble. She is honored to work with Jessica on this project.

Kelly Prentice, dancer, writer, yogini and mother, has danced with the Ballet Guild of the Lehigh Valley, DeSales University Dance Ensemble, DanceGing and Margo Clifford Ging, and most recently with the Easton Dance Collective, an emerging group of Easton dancers who debuted Carrie Rohman's work Night of Summer Stars at Alvin Ailey Dance Center. Kelly is a registered yoga instructor who teaches vinyasa flow, prenatal yoga and yoga for dancers. She recently launched a corporate yoga and meditation project called Bija Initiative. Kelly is also coordinator for Lafayette College’s Choreographers on Campus program.

Carrie Rohman is Associate Professor of English at Lafayette College and former faculty at Contemporary Dance Theater in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she taught modern technique and worked as an independent choreographer.  She is a scholar and teacher of literature, animal studies, and dance/performance studies, and is affiliated with Sakshi Productions.  Most recently, she created a sound and movement performance piece about the extinct passenger pigeon with Michael Pestel (2014), premiered “No Taking That Back,” inspired by the work of colleague and celebrated poet, Lee Upton (2015), and performed “To Know the Difference” at Ten Tiny Dances, Bethlehem ArtsQuest (2015).

Nandini Sikand is a dancer, filmmaker and anthropologist. She is the co-founder and co-director of

Plate 3 Photography courtesy of Birds on a Wire Dance Theatre

Sakshi Productions, a neo-classical and contemporary dance company www.sakshiproductions.org. She has performed at many notable venues, including Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Danny Kaye Playhouse, Hunter College, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Pace University, John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York. She is also the Associate Director/Choreographer of Harmattan Theater, a performance group committed to an environmentally and socially-engaged theater. Nandini Sikand is an Assistant Professor of an interdisciplinary film and media studies program at Lafayette College, PA.

Jennifer D. Yackel is a Philly-based dance artist whose career has taken her from ballet companies

Photo by Ellen Rosenberg

such as the Richmond Ballet and the Ballet Theater of Maryland, to contemporary companies such as Jeanne Ruddy Dance and the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company.  In addition to her company work, Jennifer has enjoyed projects with Mark Dendy, Adam Weinert, Bowen McCauley Dance, Chisena Danza, Lior Shneior, Invisible River, Victoria Hutchinson, Stone Depot Dance, and The Naked Stark.  She has performed in notable venues such as The Kimmel Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, and the Lincoln Center Plaza.  

Jennifer is currently part of the NADINE Project, a choreographic collective under the direction of Janet Soares and Libby Nye.  Her choreography has been presented in festivals and venues in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland.
 As an educator, Jennifer has taught master classes at the American College Dance Association Festival and Salisbury University.  She is currently a teaching artist for the Rock School for Dance Education.

(New for this week - the server is doing weird things with text, particularly for the folks involved in Breach: Left Behind. Thanks for reading and your understanding!)