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Sullivant’s Travels - Artist Bios

Sullivant's Travels Event Information

Stephan Koplowitz

is an award winning director/choreographer/media artist known for his work on stage, film and site. His site work aims to alter people’s perspectives of place, site, and scale, all infused with a sense of the human condition and is concerned with the intersection of natural, social and cultural ecologies within urban and natural environments. Since 1984 he has created 64 works and has been awarded 44 commissions. He is the recipient of a 2004 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (Dance), a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography in addition to a 2000 New York Dance and Performance Award, “Bessie” for “Sustained Achievement” in Choreography. Koplowitz is also the recipient of six National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships from (1988-97). His work has been seen across the United States and in Europe, most recently in the Los Angeles’ on the Red Line of LA Metro (2013), the Milwaukee Art Museum as part of Summer Dances at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (2013) and in Houston (the Water Wall, 2012, named the best ensemble performance in 2013), Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA, 2007), Mass MoCA, and the Center for New Media in Salt Lake City (2013). Abroad his work was performed at the Spoleto Open Festival, Spoleto, Italy, 2012, Plymouth, England, Dartington (2009), L’Espace, Centre Culturelle in Hanoi, Vietnam (2005) the Kokerei Zollverein Factory (1999, Essen Germany), at the British Library (1998) and at London’s Natural History Museum (1996) both commissioned by the Dance Umbrella Festival. His work was last seen in Columbus in 1988 when he created two site-specific works (Fanfare for New Building and Phantom Fenesterations for the Wexner Center for the Arts, one year prior to its opening. After living in New York City for 23 years, Koplowitz, in 2006, was appointed dean of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles) where he currently resides. He is a contributor to the first book on site-specific choreography, Site Dance, published by Florida University Press. His course, “Creating Site-Specific Dance and Performance Works” was the first dance related course on Coursera and the MOOC platform and will re-launch on September 29, 2014. He is the recipient of two Distinguished Alumni Awards, from Wesleyan University (awarded 1994), where he received his BA in Music Composition and from the University of Utah College of Fine Arts (awarded 2010) where he received his MFA in Choreography.

For more information on his work visit:
koplowitzprojects.com
Also take a look at his work on YouTube.

Marc Ainger

is a composer and sound designer whose work includes concert music, as well as computers alone and in combination with traditional instruments, sometimes in combination with other media such as film, dance, and theater. Significant commissions and performances include the Aspen Music Festival, the American Film Institute, the KlangArts Festival, Gageego New Music Ensemble, Guangdong Modern Dance, the Royal Danish Ballet, the New Circus, Streb, and Late Night with David Letterman. Awards include the Boulez Composition Fellowship, the Irino International Chamber Music Competition, Musica Nova, Meet the Composer, the Esperia Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. As a sound designer, Ainger has worked with such institutions as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tempo Reale, IRCAM, the Olympic Arts Festival, and Pacific Coast Soundworks. Before joining the faculty of The Ohio State University, he taught composition and computer music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a student, he worked with a number of composers, including Stephen Mosko, Morton Subotnik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Adams, Morton Feldman, Mel Powell, Earle Brown, John Cage, and Barry Schrader.

Sophie Clemmensen

is a choreographer and dance educator from Denmark. Miss Clemmensen holds a Bachelor of Art and pedagogy from the Norwegian College of Dance, a first-class honor Post-Graduate degree from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (UK) and a Master of Fine Art in dance from The Ohio State University. She is the founder and director of C.L.E.M Summer Art Project, a four-week summer residency in Denmark for American college dance students that focus on performance and cultural exchange. Miss Clemmensen’s work, including several dance for camera films, have been presented at various venues and festivals in United States, China and Scandinavian.

David Covey

serves as Production Coordinator for the Department of Dance and teaches dance lighting, production and composition. His research interests include lighting, choreographing and various aspects of visual arts. He remains active in the field, working with a number of artists and companies. He received a BESSIE award for lighting BAM Events choreographed by Merce Cunningham in 1998. He served as the production manager for the Bates Dance Festival for eight years. He has worked with many other noted artists in the field and continues to collaborate with the Jazz Tap Ensemble, directed by OSU alumni Lynn Dally, completing a month long, three country tour of Africa in 2012.

Carrie Cox

is a Stage Manager who has spent many years perfecting the art of stuffing magic rabbits into top hats and strategically cajoling artists on and off stages. Over the years, she has called shows for Lynn Dally’s Jazz Tap Ensemble, BalletMet Columbus, Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, Carolota Santana Spanish Dance Company, Robert Post Comedy Theatre, Momix, David Dorfman Dance, Roxane Butterfly, Karl Rogers’ Red Dirt Dance, and RythMEK. Most recently, Carrie stage managed in support of international artists Vincent Mantsoe and Yin Mei at the 2014 Bates Dance Festival, where she also serves as the festival production manager. For the OSU Department of Dance, Carrie teaches production, manages the new Barnett Theater, and composes poetry which may (or may not) encourage students to clean up after themselves. Extracurricularly, she is a proud member of the Columbus-based Available Light Theatre.

Lindsay Simon

joined The Ohio State University Department of Dance this past year as Costume Designer. She has been designing costumes for theatrical productions, dance and advertising campaigns for 9 years. She received her Master of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University and has been designing in the Columbus area since. Design credits include work for Actors’ Theatre Columbus, Gallery Players, New Players Theatre, Victoria’s Secret, Bexley City Schools and Dublin Schools. She grew up in Newark OH and attended Denison University.

Kevin Estes

currently serves as the music enrichment coordinator at The Gardner School of Dublin, facilitates the Victory Drummers of the JamesCare for Life Survivorship Programs, and teaches percussion at Pickerington North High School. Prior to his time in Ohio, Kevin lived in Greensboro, North Carolina where he completed his Masters of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Estes is an active chamber musician, world percussionist, and composer in the Columbus area. He frequently performs with Shiv Shakti Kirtan, Central Ohio Symphony, McConnell Arts Chamber Orchestra, MaD arts group, and the Anahata Percussion Duo. Kevin has appeared in performance master classes with Mark Ford, Michael Burritt, Brett Dietz, Kris Keeton, Susan Powell, and Joel Puckett.

Matthew Lewis

is a computer graphics researcher at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at The Ohio State University. Dr. Lewis has taught graduate courses on interactive performance and installation technologies, virtual environments, 3D animation, digital lighting, and procedural animation. He has presented evolutionary and generative art and design research at conferences internationally. His artwork has appeared on the cover of the journal 'Leonardo', in 'Performance Research', and at the Wexner Center as part of the "Synchronous Objects" project in collaboration with William Forsythe. His recent research interests include 3D fabrication, locative media, and augmented reality technologies.

Bebe Miller

a native New Yorker, first performed her choreography at NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop in 1978, after receiving her MA in Dance from OSU in 1975. She formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. Her choreography has been performed and commissioned by venues and companies across the country and internationally. A United States Artists Ford Fellow, she has been honored with four New York Dance and Performance BESSIE awards, fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is one of the 2012 inaugural class of Doris Duke Foundation Artists. A Professor of Dance at OSU since 2000, she is a Distinguished Professor in OSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Ursinus College in 2009. Bebe teaches Contemporary Technique, Improvisation, Repertory, Creative Practice and Choreography courses to our MFA anad BFA students.

 

Susan Van Pelt Petry

has had a twenty year career choreographing, performing, and teaching dance internationally. She was Artistic Director of the Van Pelt Dance Ensemble for seven years based in Columbus, Ohio and toured a solo show internationally. Susan has been a faculty member at Ohio University and The Ohio State University. She is active in advocacy for dance and dance education, was President of OhioDance, and is on the Programming Committee for Martin Luther King Jr, Center, and the Community Arts Fund panel at the Columbus Foundation. She received her BA from Oberlin College in 1979 and her MA from The Ohio State University in 1985, and continues her creative and physical practice based on Iyengar yoga, Hawkins technique, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Alexander Technique, Contact Improvisation, running, and dancing around with her two young sons.

Alan Price

is a professor in Design and affiliate faculty at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, where he designs and creates real time responsive animation and interactive systems. His background as an animator and filmmaker emphasizes narrative and cinema structure in his works with immersive and interactive storytelling. Utilizing video game technology and a combination of ready-made and custom hardware, he creates virtual environments and responsive spaces to explore alternative forms of personal expression in time-based digital media. His animation and interactive work has exhibited internationally and is on permanent display in museums of art, technology, science, and history, recently commissioned by the La Panacee Center for Contemporary Culture in Montpellier, France, and supported through grants including a 2014 OSU Award for Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities.

Mitchell Rose

is an assistant professor of filmmaking in the Department of Dance. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, he was a New York-based choreographer/performance artist. His company toured internationally for 15 years. Eventually he was drawn more to visual media and graduated from The American Film Institute as a Directing Fellow. Since A.F.I. his films have won 66 festival awards and are screened around the world. The New York Times called him: "A rare and wonderful talent." The Washington Post wrote that his work was “in the tradition of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati—funny and sad and more than the sum of both.” Mitchell tours a program called The Mitch Show, an evening of his short films together with audience-participation performance pieces. In 2009 he toured The Mitch Show in Kosovo as a U.S. State Dept. Cultural Envoy.