Meet the choreographers and artists of CounterPointe8!

This February, Norte Maar brings forth CounterPointe8, the longest standing performance production exclusively featuring collaborations between female dance makers and visual artists. The performances will take place at downtown Brooklyn’s Actors Fund Arts Center from February 28, 29, March 1. Tickets here.

We are pleased to introduce six exceptional choreographers and their collaborating artists:

Julia K. Gleich was born in Rochester, MN. She has been described as a “restless artistic intellect” and her range of creative output attests to this. Her choreography for the pointe shoe breaks traditional notions of ballet form while embracing the conceptuality of post-modern dance. Gleich has choreographed six evening-length ballets. Recent projects include collaborations with artists Meg Lipke, Elana Herzog, Karen Schifano, and Rachel Beach. Venues, residencies, and commissions include: JoyceSoHo, NY; UB Art Galleries, Buffalo; 1285 Ave of the Americas Gallery, NY; Sundaram Tagore, NY/Singapore; Visual Arts Center of NJ; Mark Morris Dance Center, NY; Center for Performance Research, NY; The Broadway, UK, among others. Gleich splits her time between London, UK and New York City.

Mary Schwab is a mixed-media artist that lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her art making is expansive in both approach and materials and employs sculpture, painting, photography and video and sound. Her attraction is to the THINGY-NESS of things and the pursuit of the tension between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Press for her work includes mentions in Art-Slant, Hyperallergic and Two Coats of Paint.  She has been twice awarded residency fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and the the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock. Recent exhibitions include Take Me to the Double Picnic with Julia Shirar and Erin Lee Jones, Drishti a Concentrated Gaze at the UBS Center and was also featured at Bric House’s exhibition Handmade Abstract.  She received a BFA in Sculpture from Parsons, The New School and she has taught and lectured on art and artistic practice.

Mari Meade is a NYC-based artist born in California and raised outside New Orleans. In 2009, she relocated to NYC as a recipient of the Kenan Fellowship at Lincoln Center Education and founded Mari Meade Dance Collective (MMDC). Meade was awarded the 2017 University of North Carolina School of the Arts Choreographic Institute Development Residency, was selected for Doug Varone’s Devices: Choreographic Intensive and Mentorship, and was an Artist in Residence at Chez Bushwick (NYC) and Lake Studios Berlin (Germany). Currently, Meade is Triskelion Art’s 2018 Artist in Residence. She has been selected to participate in DEEP (Dancer’s Economic Empowerment Program) at Gibney Dance and will be choreographing a new work on young artists through Amalgamate Dance Company’s Guest Artist Series. An excerpt of Meade’s newest work, dialogue, was the winner of Spoke the Hub’s Winter Follies and was one of ten finalists at McCallum Theatre’s Choreography Festival in 2017.  Her company, MMDC, has shown work nationally and internationally. Highlights include: the Clark Theatre at Lincoln Center (NYC); Battery Dance Festival (NYC); FLICfest (Brooklyn); New Orleans Fringe Festival (LA); Asheville Fringe Festival (NC); Baltimore Dance Invitational (MD); Katlehong Arts Center (South Africa); and Lake Studios Berlin (Germany). She has taught master classes at University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts, Idyllwild Arts Academy, and University of Southern Mississippi, among others.  She is also a teaching artist for New York City Ballet and Dancing Classrooms. She is a graduate of UNC School of the Arts.

Margaret Lanzetta is a New York-based artist using abstract, culturally significant pattern to explore larger issues of language, political power, spirituality, and migration. Lanzetta has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Queens Museum Biennial, Jason Andrew, Norte Mar venues, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Elizabeth Heskin Gallery and Main Window, NY. International exhibitions include the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India; the National Museum, Bangkok, Thailand; 2nd Bloom, Singapore; Famous Ornament, Tokyo; Reign Marks, Rabat, Morocco; Rome, ATP Gallery, London; and the Stockholm Independent Art Fair. Awards include three Fulbright Fellowships: Global Awards to India/Singapore/Thailand, 2016-19, and India /Syria, 2007-8; the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation; the British Academy in Rome; Greenwich House Pottery; Dieu Donné; and a NY subway MTA Commission. Lanzetta received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in NY. Numerous collections hold her work: the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Yale University Museum; and the Harvard Museums. Lanzetta divides her studio time between New York and studios in India, Morocco and Japan.

JoVonna Parks is a Philadelphia native where she began her intense formal training in Ballet, Horton and Graham techniques. She attended Ailey/Fordham under the direction of Ana Marie Forsythe and graduated with her BFA in dance in 2012. While in college she was a member of Ballet Hispanico’s BHDos under the direction of Nicholas Villenueve. Also while in college she attended Jacob’s Pillow for two summers as a student in the contemporary program under Milton Myers. Upon graduation she was invited to perform with John Mark Owen in John Mark Owen Presents…. In Requiem. She has had the pleasure of working with and performing works by Camille A. Brown, Ronald K. Brown, Donald McKayle, Hofesh Shector, Robert Battle, Jill Echo and many others. JoVonna has also had the opportunity and pleasure to work with Ty Jones and The Classical Theatre of Harlem in their productions of MacBeth(soldier/ensemble), The Three Musketeers (Kitty/ensemble), Antigone (ensemble) and most recently she served as dance captain their latest production of A Christmas Carol in Harlem. Alongside performing Elisa Monte Dance she teaches ballet, modern, and contemporary techniques in the New Jersey and greater New York area. She just finished her fifth season with Elisa Monte Dance and is excited to begin new ventures in the dance community.

Maud Bryt uses paint, plaster, paper, color, light and line to explore and share her experience of the world and the people and places around her. Deeply inspired by the play of form against form—whether the movement of bodies or of light across a room— Maud aims to embody in her work the mysterious forces which raise experience above the mundane to the poetic. Born in 1965, she earned her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from New York Studio School. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in various group and solo exhibits in the USA including Norte Maar's 2016 exhibit "Ways and Means: A New Look at Process and Materials in Art", and two solo exhibits at John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY. Her bronze sculptures were reviewed as "blunt, audacious figures" by Karen Wilkin in Hudson Review and included in exhibits at Chesterwood and Chatauqua. Her oil painting portrait of her mother-in-law was featured in the BP Portrait Award’s 2015 exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and she was the inaugural sculptor-in-residence in 2018 at the American University of Paris.

Maiya Redding was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois,graduated high school from the Chicago Academy for the Arts where she majoredin Dance. She graduated Cum Laude from SUNY Purchase College in theConservatory of Dance Program receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dancein 2016. While at Purchase Maiya had the pleasure of training abroad for asemester at Korean National University of the Arts, in Seoul South Korea. InJuly 2016, she received the “Innovative Choreographer Award” from “The Series;Volume 1”, hosted by Ballet, Inc. for her work “Thou Art Loosed”. In April 2018she was asked to be a guest choreographer for SUNY Purchase College’s “SpringFestival” and had the honor of working with the freshman class in the DanceConservatory. She was a selected choreographer for the 2019 Fall Cycle of DanceLab New York. Maiya's passion for the art of choreography and dance are evidentin her ability to communicate emotions, struggles and triumphs through thebeauty of body movement.

Emmaline Payette is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Emmaline’s artistic vision is rooted in her academic background in Environmental Anthropology. She uses recycled materials and living plants to create artworks and installations that explore the inter-connectedness of culture and ecology. Emmaline is also the founder of the collaborative project ECO AGE: happenings that merge art, sound and performance. She has shown work with Sunday Sessions at MoMA PS1, SVA, EFA Project Space, NARS Foundation and Trestle Projects. Emmaline attended artist residencies at Mary Sky, Hancock, VT; Norte Maar, Jay, NY; Governor’s Island, NY and at Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. She received her BA from Union College in 2009. In 2010, she studied with RISD and Brown University in France and then attended SAIC. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, Sorry Archive’s The Air Sheets, Ginger and Hyperallergic.

Eryn Renee Young is co-founder and resident choreographer of XAOC Contemporary Ballet, a New York City-based neoclassical ballet company founded in 2010. Her choreographic work has been showcased at The Ailey Citigroup Theater, Symphony Space, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival at the Paramount Theater, the White Wave Dumbo Dance Festival, the Martha Graham Studio Theater, the CounterPointe Series , the Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition, the Brooklyn Dance Festival, the Choreographer’s Canvas at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center, Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, Triskelion Arts Center, the Moving Beauty Series, the Algonquin Arts Center, Peridance Capezio Center, the Boston Conservatory, the Bart Leukede Theater at Rider University, and New York University, including a solo choreography show entitled A New Era: Elements of Dance in 2009 and another in the Gallatin Arts Festival in 2012. Awards include 2015 Edward Villella Emerging Choreographers Competition at Rider University, 2015 Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant for her ballet outreach program “Project Ignite,” 2014 Eryc Taylor Dance New Choreography Grant, selection as a mentee for the 2013 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training, and selection as a choreographer for the 2013 Women in Dance Series. Ms. Young holds a degree in Contemporary Ballet Choreography and Fine Art from New York University.

Niki Lederer is a sculptor working with found materials including discarded umbrellas and post-consumer plastic. She was born in London, Ontario and raised in Vancouver. Lederer received her BFA from the University of Victoria and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Her work has been shown at many venues including the Arsenal Gallery, Knockdown Center, Trestle Gallery, ILLE Arts, White Columns, Bronx Museum of the Arts, (NY) and Gallery Aferro (NJ). Solo exhibitions include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Rogue Gallery and Open Space in Victoria, B.C. as well as Washington Square Windows, NYU. Her work has been reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. Her sculpture is published in Die Verschränkung von Kunst und Nachhaltigkeit, a book featuring five artists exploring art and sustainability. Lederer was selected to exhibit in the Kingston Sculpture Biennial, the Portal Art Fair, the 9th Annual Governors Island Art Fair and the Outdoor Sculpture Biennial at Adelphi University in Garden City, NY. She was awarded a merit-based scholarship at Urban Glass and most recently was one of Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Visiting Artists in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center. Currently she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

and CounterPointe London alumna:

A graduate of Elmhurst Ballet School (London), Deborah Kate Norris continued her training at the Jose Limón Institute before continuing her academic studies gaining an MA in Dance at De Montfort University (Leicester). An educator she was Lecturer in Dance at Edge Hill University (Liverpool) and been a guest lecturer for the Royal Academy of Dance, British Ballet Organisation, Imperial Society of Dance, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Deborah is a PhD candidate at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and is exploring the work of ballet choreographer, Cathy Marston and feminist narratology in narrative ballet works. As a choreographer Deborah has presented works for CounterPointe in London in 2013 and 2015, and has recently formed her own company, BalletFolk, exploring the rich traditions of storytelling in ballet and folk music.  Her recent work The Sisters of Elva Hill, premiered at the Cambridge Folk Festival, in 2019. Deborah is the Programme Manager of Rambert 2 at the Rambert School of Contemporary Dance and Rambert Company, London. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Committee, a board member for the Society of Dance Research, and the British and International Federation of Festivals.

Anna Hymas is a painter and illustrator based in London. She trained as a dancer at Elmhurst Ballet School in England with Deborah Kate Norris, before studying Theatre Design at Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London, graduating in 2000. Since then, she has shown her paintings in London, New York, Glasgow, Paris, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition as well as with other galleries throughout the UK. Her paintings are bright and colorful, but also have a depth and a sense of abstraction which comes from the process of her work, where one image is often layered on top of another. Anna's work spans a range of media including painting, fabrics, rugs and ceramics. She is a published children's book author and illustrator. Her illustration work includes books, magazines and newspapers, as well as commissions for the National Portrait Gallery and a series of poster designs for the London Underground.