2002 Festival Choreographers:

Please click on a choreographers name below to read their biography.

Deborah Cohen
Ilaan Egeland
Monica Favand
Carmela Hermann
Hahn Nguyen
Banafsheh Sayyad
Eryn Schon

Deborah Cohen

Deborah Cohen is a dancer/choreographer/video artist and architectural designer. Her dances and installations have been produced in Columbus, Ohio, Buffalo, New York, Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, and in Los Angeles. She grew up in Hollywood, danced in films and on television. Cohen received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in 1998. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Southern California Institute of Architecture, The Ohio Arts and Humanities Councils. She has published two limited edition books and taught at Loyola Marymount University, The Los Angeles Job Corp, The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Marymount College, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), where she is an educator in the Public Outreach program.

e-mail Deborah

return to top

Ilaan Egeland

Ilaan Egeland is a bi-coastal choreographer/performer. She danced with David Rousseve/REALITY from 1997-2000, touring the acclaimed work, Love Songs. She also worked with Victoria Marks, Susan Rose, Heidi Duckler, Yoshiko Chuma (Lexington Center for the Arts), Bebe Miller (Atlantic Center for the Arts). In Los Angeles, her choreography has been presented by Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), UCLA's Hammer Museum, the Japan American Theater, Beyond Baroque, The Getty Museum, and Sushi (San Diego). Her work has twice been funded by the Cultural Affairs Department of Los Angeles. Ilaan danced in the LA productions of From The Horses Mouth and White Oak's Past Forward. Her one woman show, Stripping the Veneer, was premiered at Highways and had runs at Sushi, UCLA's Hammer Museum and last December at Joyce SoHO in NYC. Also in New York, Ilaan's dance group, (ie)dance, performed at Dixon Place, HERE, The Knitting Factory, Context Studios, Dia Center for the Arts, Mulberry Street Theater and P.S. 122. While in NYC she founded the ongoing, monthly dance series UNDER EXPOSED at Dixon Place. Ilaan has been on the faculty of UCLA, Cal State Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount, and Long Island University in Brooklyn. She has guest taught at many schools including Long Beach State, UC San Diego, Eastman School of Music, and Montana University. Ilaan also teaches the Gyrotonic Expansion System. Most recently she completed commissions for the University of California, San Diego and Rio Hondo College, LA. Last March Ilaan was a Djerassi Resident Artist to develop new work and experiment with a creative processes she calls "Capturing." This is the same process she will be employing to make a new work for the Dance Moving Forward Festival 2002. Ilaan holds her MFA from UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures and a BFA from Cal Arts.

e-mail Ilaan
http://home.earthlink.net/~ilaan

return to top

Monica Favand

Monica Favand is the Artistic Director of TRIP Dance Theatre, a Los Angeles based collective of dancers & musicians creating thought-provoking and provocative dance-theatre in Los Angeles since 1996. Her choreography has been performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Group Motion Company of Philadelphia and TRIP Dance Theatre, filmed by PBS, performed in the U.S., Europe and South America, and broadcast on public television in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Locally, TRIP and Monica Favand have been presented by the John Anson Ford Ampitheatre, Cal State Longbeach/Martha Knoebel Theatre, the James Armstrong Theatre, UCLA's Armand Hammer Museum, Occidental College, and the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, among many others. Monica's work has been supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the James Irvine Foundation. She is a graduate of the Baltimore School for the Arts and received her B.F.A. in Dance from Temple University. Currently, Monica is directing TRIP Dance Theatre in 'Full Moon Burning" of which the work featured in DMFF 2002 is a part. She is co-facilitator of the Sacred Spaces Workshop, a community-based improvisational movement workshop with live music offered each Thursday evening at the Church in Ocean Park in Santa Monica. Monica would like to gratefully acknowledge composer Charlie Campagna and each of the dancers for their contributions to this new work.

e-mail Monica

return to top

Carmela Hermann

Carmela Hermann M.F.A, creates choreographed and improvised dances. She has appeared in such venues as Highways Performance Space, Sushi Performance and Visual Art, The J. Paul Getty Center, and Judson Church, performing her own work and in the works of artists such as Simone Forti, Victoria Marks, Tom Young, Lower Left Dance and Luke Johnson. Carmela is the founder of Making Dances Workshop, a workshop that provides a forum for artists of various backgrounds to create and perform dances with the supportive feedback of fellow artists. In addition she has spent the last ten years studying and teaching the Feldenkrais Method, the Dance Alive Method and other forms of movement that bring deeper awareness into the connection between the mind and the body. She maintains a private bodywork practice and is a certified Applied Feldenkrais Instructor and Dance Alive Instructor.

e-mail Carmela

return to top

photo: Carol Peterson

Hahn Nguyen

Hanh Nguyen earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance and Choreography from the California State University, Long Beach. Before focusing on performance and choreography, Hanh worked six years as a Business Application Programmer/Analyst for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Corporation, now Boeing. Hanh has attended the Martha Graham Contemporary School, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, American Dance Festival, and Trisha Brown workshop. Hanh has previous training in gymnastics and currently has a International Degree level training in Martial Arts towards First Degree Black Belt at the school of Oom Yung Doe. She holds yoga teacher training certificate with Eric Schiffmann at the Costa Mesa Yoga Place and Ashtanga yoga teacher training with David Swenson. Also among her credits is staging student work ‘Gotcha’ and ‘Excerpts from What’ at the Doug Varone workshop in Purchase, New York and a showing of works at Dance Space in New York City in which she brought her trio ‘Pure Strings’ with music composed by Andre Gribou. Hanh has gone on to merge her talents into Orange County based Notoriety, Inc. Hanh is founder, and president of Notoriety, Inc. and serves as Executive/Artistic Director and lead Board of Directors member of this eclectic modern dance company. Notoriety, Inc. is a contemporary dance company that combines modern dance with Asian cultural influences of Martial Arts and Yoga. Hanh’s first large scale production was held at the Martha B. Knoebel Theater on the campus of the California State University Long Beach and was co-sponsored by the Dance Department. Hanh’s recent accomplishment was staging her evening length work at “The Space” in Irvine and becoming a yoga teacher at Irvine Dance Academy. Notoriety, Inc., will perform in the LA Arts Day, October 5th, 2002 at the Warner Grand Theatre, San Pedro and is collaborating with Santiago Youth String Group Orchestra for a performance on April 6, 2003 at the Irvine Barclay Theater. Hanh has studied with Jeff Slayton, Keith Johnson, Della Davidson, Loretta Livingston, Susan McLain, Doug Varone summer workshop, among other New York choreographers. Hanh’s work has been viewed by the notable organization, Doug Varone and Dancers. This is Hanh’s first attempt to set work for the Dance Moving Forward Festival and to perform at Highways Performance Space.

e-mail Hahn
www.notorietydance.org

return to top

Banafsheh Sayyad

Banafsheh Sayyad, dancer, choreographer and Artistic Director of Namah Ensemble is interested in navigating in the unknown with physically charged yet quietly intuitive movement. Her dances are an interplay between trance and directed movement. In her work she fuses her extensive background in Flamenco, Tai Chi and Persian dance with eastern philosophy. Banafsheh studied in the MFA program in Dance at UCLA where she also taught Persian Dance. A licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, she is interested in the healing dimensions of dance. Her work with Namah Ensemble has been presented twice by the SF Ethnic Dance Festival, LATC, Skirball Cultural Center, The World Festival of Sacred Music at UCLA, Dance Kaleidoscope 2000, The UK Festival of Persian Music & Dance in London, The Festival of Iranian Theater in Hamburg, The Persian Arts Festival in Cologne, Germany, The Persian Arts Society in Los Angeles, The Museum of History & Industry in Seattle, WA and the SF World Music Festival. “Part whirling dervish, part flamenco femme fatale, sensuous and audacious, Sayyad’s Cycle of Fire is a mesmerizing foray into the body as trance mechanism; a DNA strand, supple, fluid and noble, come to life.” (Victoria Looseleaf, Los Angeles Times)

e-mail Banafsheh
www.namah.net

return to top

Eryn Schon

Eryn Schon was born in Willits, California in 1979. She danced her way through childhood studying Modern, Ballet and Jazz. She went on to attend Cornish Collage of the Arts in Seattle, Wa, where she graduated with a BFA in dance in 2001. Eryn has danced with choreographers such as AC. Peterson Dance, Erica Rebollar, Eko Supriyanto, Carol McDowell, Corrie Beffort, Alison Van Dyke, Joe Goode, and many others. In the summer of 2000 she was one of four American choreographers to tour and teach workshops in Indonesia. And in the summer of 2001 she returned for four months to Indonesia to tour more of her choreography, teach and collaborate with artists there. She moved to LA in January of 2002, and is currently dancing for Erica Rebollar and Carol Mc Dowell. Eryn has been working on her own choreography as well as collaborating with a fellow Cornish graduate Darcy Rubel who is living in Seattle. Together they have established Maaj, a collaborative cross-disciplined theater company, which will debut “Mixed Emotion” in the spring of 2003. Eryn’s belief in arts education for children has carried through to LA. At present, she is part of a group of artist that guest teach in the Glendale School district. Eryn is also a photographer and video artist. She has been collaborating with director and editor Carol McDowell. Their dance video works have shown at Highways, the Electric lodge and UCLA. Eryn is also working on a visual art collage project that has spanned over the last three years. When she is not lost in art projects she works four days a week at Orchid Fever, which is a series of four green houses filled with orchids in Culver City. She also goes dancing and hiking, and loves to visit friends.

e-mail Eryn

return to top

photo: Carol Peterson