VALERIE PRESTON-DUNLOP
Dr. Preston Dunlop is a consultant at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance where she pioneered the development of choreological studies. A practical scholar, she received her initial training from Rudolf Laban, Lisa Ullman, Kurt Jooss and Albrecht Knust. While a young teacher of modern dance she developed Laban’s concepts for educational dance and for notation. Always innovative introduced and developed the Motif Writing.
Her current research interests are sacred geometry in human movement, recover and re-create the works of the twenties of Laban and the development of interactive mapping methods for documenting the creative process in the first place for the multimedia dance theatre William Forsythe. She published several books, including Rudolf Laban: An Extraordinary Life (winner of the Dance Perspectives book of the year 1999).
KARIN HERMES
Karin Hermes, choreographer, performer and teacher for dance and movement notation.
Education: Ballettakademie Zürich, School of American Ballet, Musikhochschule Köln, Conservatoire National Supérieure de Paris (CNSMDP), Cycle de perfectionnement au CNSMDP in analyses and notation (Laban) in 1998, Fellow of ICKL since 2005, Chair of ICKL-Research Panel since 2011. Teaching international, artist in Residence at the Centre National de la Danse Paris in 2008.
Founder and director of hermesdance: Productions of contemporary dance, international tours in Europe, Israel, South America.
Artistic research of re-creating dance works in 20th century: Productions and publications on dance heritage, dance documentary for national television.
STEFANO TOMASSINI
Stefano Tomassini studied dance and acting; he teaches at the University of Lugano in Switzerland (USI) and he is Dance Adviser for LuganoInScena; in 2008-2009 he was Fulbright-Schuman Research Scholar (NYC); in 2010 Scholar-in-Residence at the Archive of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (Lee, Mass.) and, during the 2011’s fall semester, Associate Research Scholar at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University (NYC); he participates to the international project Commedia dell’Arte in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015). From 2013 to 2015 he has been collaborating with Virgilio Sieni to the programs of Biennale Danza in Venice. He wrote on Salvatore Viganò (Marino Moretti Prize); on the musical and dance libretti on the myth of Adonis (Pacini Fazzi); on Enzo Cosimi (Zona), and he edited the dance writings of Aurel M. Milloss (Olschki) and, with Alessio Fabbro, the lessons of the pioneer of the American modern dance Ted Shawn (Gremese). He edited for Treccani (Enciclopedia italiana) a collection of works of Carlo Goldoni and, for Treccani too, an essay on the theatrical and musical response of the poem of Ludovico Ariosto. He is writing a book on the choreography-response to the music of J. S. Bach in the Atlantic and Continental theatrical dance during the XXth century.
ALISON CURTIS-JONES
Alison Curtis-Jones, Artistic Director of Summit Dance Theatre, is an internationally recognised dance artist and leading exponent of Rudolf Laban’s Dance Theatre work (1913-1928). Ali is a specialist in Choreology and teaches on the Dance Faculty at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London.
Ali’s re-creations include Laban’s Nacht (1927), in London 2010, 2011 and 2014 and with Summit Dance Theatre for Laban Event in Ascona, Switzerland, 2013, Green Clowns (Die Grunen Clowns, 1928) with Transitions Dance Company for The Laban International Conference: The Dynamic Body in Space, 2009, with Trinity Laban dancers in 2008 and commissioned to re-create Green Clowns in 2014, to commemorate the centenary of World War One and the Auschwitz Memorial in the UK, 2015.
The Swiss Office of Culture awarded in 2014 the project to re-create two Laban works and Summit Dance Theatre will perform re-creations of Laban’s Ishtar’s Journey into Hades(1913) and Dancing Drumstick(1913) in Monte Verita, in October 2015.
MARIA CONSAGRA
Maria Consagra is a founding member of Farfa theatre Group (part of the Nordisk Laboratorium Center, Odin Theatre). Taught for various years at ETW, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Is presently teaching at the school of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and at the Scuola D'Arte Drammatica Paolo Grassi. She has collaborated with director Luca Ronconi and actor/comedian Paolo Rossi. Founding member of THYMOS.
PATRICK PRIMAVESI
Dr. Patrick Primavesi is professor at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig and director of the Dance Archive Leipzig where he is leading a research program on body politics and dance institutions (with a focus on Weimar Republic and the German Democratic Republic). He also worked as a dramaturge (with William Forsythe and Mario Schröder) and established a master-program in dramaturgy (together with Hans-Thies Lehmann) at the University of Frankfurt/Main. He published widely on contemporary theatre, dance and performance art, and on the public sphere as context and challenge for the development of performing practices. His actual publication project is a source book on body politics and movement choirs, edited together with the German media and performing arts collective LIGNA.
