Meet the artists and choreographers for CounterPointe 2019!
This Spring, Norte Maar brings forth CounterPointe 7, a collaboration between six female dance makers and six female visual artists. The performances will take place at downtown Brooklyn’s Actors Fund Arts Center from April 26-28. Tickets here.
Introducing our collaborating choreographers + artists:
Courtney Cochran and Jamie Powell
Courtney Cochran, CounterPointe, Norte Maar
Courtney Cochran was born in Sacramento, CA and received her ballet training from Sacramento Ballet and Crockett Deane Ballet. In 2008, she presented her first work at Regional Dance America Festival as an emerging choreographer. Courtney continued her training with Alonzo King LINES’ BFA Program and Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Training Program. Since moving to New York, she has created work on DTH' s Training Program and presented work in Brooklyn Ballet's "First Look" program. This is Courtney’s second year choreographing for CounterPointe. @courtneyreneeballet
Jamie Powell was born in Fairmont West Virginia 30 miles south of the Mason Dixon Line to a family of farmers and factory workers. Her Appalachian roots encouraged a culture of reuse, repurposing, patching and stitching. She has an interest in exploring the boundaries of what paintings can be through a highly experimental process of dying, braiding, weaving, stitching and staining raw canvas. Intimate feminine domestic gestures become grand moments in her paintings. Over-sized and out of control bows pull away from the stretcher.... braided canvas falls to the floor. These paintings become physical three-dimensional objects. The scale references the body, the size of a head, the torso, or outstretched arms. Influences range from Robert Rauschenberg to Jessica Stockholder, from Arte Povera to Pattern and Decoration movements, from Formalism to Feminism. She has exhibited extensively over the last ten years including: Soil Gallery in Seattle, David & Schweitzer and Fresh Window in Brooklyn, Freight + Volume and Morgan Lehman in New York. She has received grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Vermont Studio Center and Pratt Institute. She is a faculty member at Pratt Institute and a Teaching Artist for the Studio in A School Foundation as well as co-teaches the Lincoln Center Summer Intensive Boot Camp. She lives and works in Queens, New York. jamielpowell.com
Julia K Gleich and Meg Lipke
Julia K. Gleich is an East Brooklyn-based choreographer. She co-founded Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts with collaborator and long-time friend and former ballet student, Jason Andrew. She founded CounterPointe, now in its 7th year, in response to the limited exposure for women choreographers working with ballet. Her company, Gleich Dances, has received critical notice in the New York Times, Village Voice, Brooklyn Rail, New Criterion and dancelog.com. Her research on vector movement theories is published in the Dynamic Body in Space. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Utah 2014 and a major Arts Council England grant in 2013. Gleich lived in England for 15 years and was Head of Choreography at London Studio Centre and faculty at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. In October 2017 she moved back to NY and premiered "Martha (The Searchers)" in collaboration with Guggenheim Fellow Elana Herzog. Julia is currently on faculty at Peridance Capezio. She has presented at the Laban International Conference, DSA, CORPS de Ballet International, and SDR, Higher Education Association and Middlesex University, UK. Gleich received her MFA in Dance from the University of Utah after freelancing for regional companies including Tri-Cities Opera, Ballet Binghamton, Wisconsin Dance Ensemble, Utah Ballet, among others. She has worked across the US, in Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong as a teacher, examiner, and a choreographer. gleichdances.org
Meg Lipke makes painted forms that play with the intersection of painting/sculpture/textiles and which reference the body. A third generation textile artist, Lipke was born In 1969 and raised in Vermont. Lipke’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been reviewed in Art in America, The Village Voice, New York Times, Art Forum and many others. She received her MFA from Cornell University and has taught at The State University of New York in Albany, Cornell University, and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her most recent solos show are at Gold/Scopophilia in Montclair, NJ and Lane Meyer Projects in Denver, CO. meglipkestudio.com
Mari Meade and Roxanne Jackson
Mari Meade is an educator, choreographer, and the Artistic Director of Mari Meade Dance Collective / MMDC. Meade has received the New York Choreographic Institute (an affiliate of New York City Ballet), UNCSA Development Residency, the Kenan Fellowship at Lincoln Center Education and was an Artist in Residence at Chez Bushwick, Triskelion Arts, CUNY Dance Initiative, and Lake Studios Berlin. She has shown work at Clark Theatre at Lincoln Center; Danspace; Judson Memorial Church; Joe’s Pub; Battery Dance Festival; Triskelion Arts; ChopShop: Bodies of Work (WA); New Orleans Fringe Festival; Asheville Fringe Festival; Baltimore Dance Invitational; Lake Studios Berlin; Katlehong Arts Center (South Africa). She has been awarded a Brooklyn Arts Council regrant, and a “New Work” and Su Casa grant from Queens Arts Council. Her contemporary dance company, Mari Meade Dance Collective/ MMDC, is approaching their tenth year, and has performed nationally and internationally. MMDC's "dialogue" (excerpt) won Spoke the Hub’s Winter Follies (NYC), and was a top ten national finalist at McCallum Theatre’s Choreography Festival (CA). The evening length run of “dialogue” premiered to sold out audiences in June 2018. Mari Meade is also a board member of the Kenan Institute for the Arts and the Associate Director of the UNCSA’s Choreographic Institute. She has been commissioned by Amalgamate Dance Company, One Day Dance and CounterPointe. She is a graduate of UNC School of the Arts. mmdcbrooklyn.com
Roxanne Jackson is a ceramic artist and mixed-media sculptor living in Brooklyn, NY. Her macabre works are black-humored investigations of the links between transformation, myth and pop-culture. Press for her work includes The New York Times, Whitehot Magazine, Beautiful Decay, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, Gothamist, Sculpture Center’s Curators’ Notebook, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Ireland and New Ceramics, among others. She is the recipient of residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Wassaic Project, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, the Ceramic Center of Berlin, funded by a Jerome Project Grant, and the Pottery Workshop in Jindezhen, China, funded by an NCECA fellowship. Jackson has exhibited widely, nationally and abroad, with recent exhibitions at The Hole (NY), Cob Gallery (London), Anonymous Gallery (Mexico City), Garis and Hahn (LA), Kunstraum Niederösterreich (Vienna), Mathilde Hatzenberger Gallery (Brussels), and Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Denny Gallery, Regina Rex, and SPRING/BREAK art fair in New York, among others. Jackson is the co-founder of NASTY WOMEN, a global art exhibition and fundraising project, and Heather Metal Parking Lot, an elaborate heavy metal event sponsored by the Wassaic Project. roxannejackson.com
Melanie Ramos and Amy Lincoln
Melanie Ramos was born and raised in Miami, FL and began her dance training at the age of 4. Early in her career, she trained with the Thomas Armour Youth Ballet as well as Stars Dance Studio, a nationally recognized competitive dance center. She attended New World School of the Arts high school where she performed contemporary works by Sidra Bell and Martha Graham, among others. In 2014, she was accepted as a finalist in the prestigious Young Arts Festival in in the categories of modern dance and choreography. She continued her studies at SUNY Purchase College in the Conservatory of Dance where she performed works by progressive dance innovators such as Darrell Grand Moultrie, Norbert De La Cruz III, Nejla Yatkin, Sue Bernhard and Merce Cunningham. She also studied at Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Alonzo King Lines Ballet, Joffrey Ballet School, Hubbard Street and Ballet Hispanico. In 2015 and 2017, she was selected as a Young Choreographer presenting her own works at the Young Choreographer’s Festival under the direction of Emily Buffered. In May of 2018, she graduated Magna Cum Laude with her BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase. Following graduation, she was honored as a recipient of the 2018 Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreographer Grant. Miss Ramos currently lives in New York where she continues to pursue her passion in dance and choreography. @melanieramosss
Amy Lincoln is a New York-based artist who makes carefully observed and imaginatively colorful paintings of plants and the natural world. She has had solo shows at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York and Monya Rowe Gallery in Saint Augustine, FL. She has participated in group shows at New York galleries including Sargent’s Daughters, Regina Rex, Norte Maar, and Thierry Goldberg as well as Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrinton, MA, among many others. She has been awarded residencies such as the Wave Hill Winter Workspace program, the Inside Out Art Museum in Beijing, and a Swing Space residency from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She received an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and a BA in Studio Art from the University of California, Davis. She currently lives and works in Glendale, Queens. amylincoln.com
Janice Rosario and Joy Curtis
Janice Rosario is a NYC-based contemporary dance choreographer. A native of Upper Manhattan, Janice studied on scholarship at Ballet Hispánico, Ballet Academy East, Boston Ballet, and The Alvin Ailey School. She is a graduate of F.H. LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts and a 2015 alumna of Hunter College, where she majored in Dance. Janice recently created new works for Columbia University, Hunter College, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, the Dance Institute of Washington, The Alvin Ailey/Fordham BFA Program and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden. Currently, she has been commissioned for the Alvin Ailey/Fordham BFA Program’s Senior Solo Concert, The Alvin Ailey School’s Solo Jury Evaluations, Frank Sinatra High School for the Performing Arts’ 2019 Spring Concert, Joffrey Dance Academy at Fort Hamilton High School’s 2019 Spring Concert, the School of Performing Arts at Passaic County Technical Institute’s 2019 Spring Concert, The Thatcher School’s Dance Program, the Joy of Motion Dance Center's Youth Dance Ensemble and the Irvine Valley College Dance Department’s 2019 Spring Concert. Janice has taught guest classes at The Alvin Ailey School, F.H. LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, Frank Sinatra High School for the Performing Arts, Fort Hamilton High School's Joffrey Dance Academy, Sacred Heart University, Hunter College, Harvard University, High Tech High School, the American Youth Dance Theater, Irvine Valley College and at the Contemporary Dance Festival in Tobago. janicerosarioandcompany.com
Joy Curtis is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from Ohio University in 2002. She has had four solo shows at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (NY), and has been included in exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum (CT), The Bronx River Art Center, Zieher Smith and Horton, CRG, Lu Magnus, Leslie Heller, Nurture Art, ISE Cultural Foundation, Triple Candie, and The Wassaic Project (NY). Curtis is the recipient of fellowships from Socrates Sculpture Park and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been reviewed in the New Yorker, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, and Saatchi Online, and featured on Gorky’s Granddaughter and James Kalm’s Rough Cut video blogs. joycurtisartist.com
Michelle Thompson Ulerich and Justine Hill
Originally from California, Michelle Thompson Ulerich trained at San Francisco Ballet for nine years. She moved to Texas and joined Ballet Austin in 2001. During her 14 years with Ballet Austin, she performed in works by Stephen Mills, Balanchine, Tharp, Ulysses Dove, Nelly van Bommel, KT Nelson, James Gregg, Thang Dao, Greg Dolbashian, Jimmy Orrante, Amy Seiwert, Gina Patterson, Thaddeus Davis, Jennifer Hart, and Sidra Bell. Also during her time in Austin she completed a Dance and Humanities degree from St. Edward’s University. Columbia Ballet Collaborative, Ballet Hartford, Ballet Austin, Ballet Spartanburg, Blanton Museum, Motion Dance Theater, SUNY Purchase, Spark Movement Collective, and The Hartt School have commissioned Michelle for choreography. She was chosen as the Women’s Choreography Project winner in 2017 by Avant Chamber Ballet in Dallas, and has recently created works for Arts On Site, Translate, Theorist Fest, and her own self produced evenings. Michelle’s Illusory Impressions collaboration and co-directorship with composer Catherine Davis was given an award by the Austin Critics’ Table for excellence in a Site-Specific work as well as Robert Faires’ Top 10 Classical Music/Dance Treasures of 2016. She is an adjunct professor at SUNY Purchase and she teaches with NYC Yoga Project, which brings yoga to under-served populations. She substitute teaches at Ballet Arts, Ailey Extension, Peridance, and NYC Community Ballet. She performs in New York with XAOC Contemporary Ballet and Spark Movement Collective. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and children. michellethompson.org
Justine Hill (b. 1985, Tarrytown, NY) received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA and her BA from the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. Hill’s most recent exhibitions include Bookends at David B. Smith Gallery (2019), Freestanding at Denny Gallery (2018), and Movers and Shapers with Ali Silverstein at Victori + Mo in Brooklyn (2018). She has been in critical group shows such as Surface of a Sphere curated by Daniel Gerwin at Klowden Mann (Los Angeles), Metamodern at Denny Gallery and Immediate Female at Judith Charles Gallery (New York). Her work has been reviewed or featured in Art in America, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, The Observer, The Huffington Post, The Art Newspaper, Artsy, Artspace, Arte Fuse, and Two Coats of Paint. Hill currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. justinehill.com
