The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals

Artist Biographies
	Karesia Batan is a Queens-based dancer and producer. She has danced for Abby Bender/Schmantze Theatre, Anne Zuerner, Jenny Rocha, Emma Grace Skove-Epes, VESSEL, Neville Dance, Nancy Meehan, as well as various film and installation artist collaborations. With her dance group, The Physical Plant, Karesia's choreography has been presented at Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, Northside Townhall, Triskelion Arts, WAH Center, Theaterlab, Secret Theater, Gibney Dance, and in Martha's Vineyard and Connecticut. She also currently dances for Craig Hoke Zarah. Karesia is director of the Queensboro Dance Festival and dance curator for the LIC Arts Open. www.karesia.com Photo credit: Rachel Neville
Bridget Cronin grew up in Liverpool, NY where she received her dance training from Linda Facciponte at the Dance Arts Center and Movement Studies. She has a BFA from University of Massachusetts where she performed works by Merce Cunningham, Ohad Naharin, Camille A. Brown, Monica Bill Barnes, and Janis Brenner. Bridget has performed with New York based companies Mazzini Dance Collective, Reject Dance Theater Ballaro Dance, Aimee Plauche and Gallim Dance, in collaboration with Marta Minujín and Frieze NYC 2016. Bridget currently dances for Beth Soll, Heath in Progress, and Nicole Colbert and is on scholarship at the Taylor School.
	Dewey Emadoo has been drumming for over 20 years. He composed and performed music for Elizabeth Disharoon’s Retreat and Beth Soll’s Adventure in Janet Aisawa’s 2012 event entitled Generations. In 2015, he participated in Beth Soll and Janet Aisawa’s Spring Together with his music for Janet Aisawa’s Dancing in Circles. In 2016, he composed and recorded music for Janet Aisawa’s multi-media performance Them.
Ina Hahn (1929 – 2016) was an icon in the modern dance world. She graduated in 1950 from Wellesley College and then developed a rich, varied dance career in New York and Boston. Ina starred as a dancer in the original 1950's Broadway productions of Can-Can, The King and I, and Plain and Fancy, working with choreographers Michael Kidd, Jerome Robbins, and Helen Tamiris. As Gwen Verdon's understudy in "Can-Can", Ina became a Broadway star overnight. She also danced under the direction of Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, and later, using Labanotation, she reconstructed many of Humphrey's works and presented them internationally and at Windhover, the performing and creative arts center she and her husband founded in Rockport, Massachusetts. In the 1960s Ina began teaching dance in academic contexts, including Radcliffe, Smith, The Boston Conservatory, Northeastern University, Walnut Hill, and Boston Arts Academy. In addition, she presented her own works through the Windhover Dance Company, performing in Boston, Cambridge, the North Shore and European Festivals for the next 50 years. For her work, she was given The Walker Hancock Award in 1999, in recognition of her ". . . outstanding contributions to the arts and humanities" on Cape Ann. During the last five years, she produced site-specific "Quarry Dances" with the Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre, combining her passion for the granite quarrying industry on Cape Ann with her love of dance. Ina wrote and produced a film, "A New Dance for America: The Choreography, Teachings, and Legacy of Doris Humphrey." This film about her dance mentor's life and work premiered to much acclaim at Lincoln Center's "Dance on Camera Film Festival" in 2011.
	Kristen Hedberg was raised in Richmond, VA, where she was magnetically drawn to dance at an early age. She has a BFA in Contemporary Dance from the North Carolina School for the Arts. Kristen spent her fourth year of college dual-enrolled with the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, where she worked as a School Assistant. She is currently a New York-based dance artist, dance critic, and grant writer. Recently, Kristen has performed works by Megan Curet, Fernando Moya Delgado, Beth Soll, and Merce Cunningham restaged by the Merce Cunningham Trust. She currently works as an archival intern for the Merce Cunningham Trust, and is a contributing writer for TiLLT Magazine. She also runs her own website: kristenhedberg.weebly.com, where she publishes her dance reviews commissioned by New York-based choreographers.
James Kolditz is a freelance lighting designer based out of New York. Recent lighting design work includes Cruel Intentions: The Musical (Sucker Love Productions), On the Town (NYU), Loving Repeating (NYU), Queensboro Dance Festival (Secret Theatre), The Altar Boyz, A New Brain, Jacques Brel's Lonesome Losers of the Night, Most Happy Fella (Theo Ubique), and Carousel (Timber Lake Playhouse). James also frequently lights concerts at Poisson Rouge. James is a graduate of The Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University in St. Louis, MO with a degree in Directing.
	Carolyn Lord is a composer and a choreographer. Her choreography includes over sixty works created for her dance company, Carolyn Lord and Dancers. Her music works have been performed at Greenwich House Music School, Mannes College of Music, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Merkin Concert Hall, and in other New York City venues and in Belgium. She has composed scores for choreographers Bryan Hayes, Sally Silvers, Beth Soll, Ariane Anthony, and Jeffrey Bauer. She is currently the Executive Director of The Construction Company.
Michelle Amara Micca is a Queens-based movement artist originally from Winchester, CT. She began her dance training with her mother at Valley Ballet and later received a BFA from Elon University. During the past 5 years, Micca has presented her choreography at many venues, including the IRT Theatre, Queensboro Dance Festival, Greenspace Blooms, and Elon University. She often collaborates with other artists to create films, theater and site-specific works, and music and dance performances Her collaboration with Space Guns won Best Film in the, Sparrow Film Festival 11. Micca is a founding member of Lu, which has presented works at the LIC Arts Open, experi-MENTAL Festival and others. She has been featured as a local artist in two Queens magazines. Micca is a member of Kinesis Project Dance Theatre and currently performs Shandoah with Goldman’s Carte Blanche and Beth Soll & Company.
	Emma Pressman began her professional training at Sarasota Ballet and graduated from The Harid Conservatory. She danced professionally with Texas Ballet Theater, Connecticut Ballet, Verlezza Dance, and JKing Dance Company. She has a BFA in Dance from Montclair State University. She has danced in works by Martha Graham, Bill T. Jones, May O’Donnell, José Limón, Antony Tudor, and Larry Keigwin, amongst others. She received the Cento Amici Scholarship in 2014 and 2015 and the Dean’s Scholar/Artist Award for the College of the Arts in 2016. In 2017, she choreographed Carmina Burana for MSU's Dance Department and the Cali School of Music in 2017. She has been teaching ballet to students ages 3-18 since 2011 and has been an Adjunct Professor at Montclair State University since 2016.
A native of Germany, Theresa Salomon (violin) came to New York in 1993. She has performed in numerous international festivals, such as Festival Presence, Paris; Gulbenkian Festival, Lisbon; Prague Spring Festival; and Ostrava Days for New Music, Czech Republic, where she was a soloist with the Janáček Philharmonic. Ms. Salomon performs on both baroque and modern violin in New York with ensembles such as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, REBEL Baroque Orchestra, New York Collegium, SEM Ensemble, and others, and she has performed in and curated numerous concerts of new music at The Construction Company. She has recorded for the labels Vandenburg and Tzadik. Theresa is on the adjunct faculty of Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music, teaching historic performance practice and baroque violin.
	Beth Soll directed her own company in Boston from 1977-1997 and in California from 1997-2000. With her company, she has performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia and has worked with dance companies in the Midwest and with Dance Collective, the Ina Hahn Company, and the Harvard Dance Center companies in Boston. Ms. Soll’s goal is to choreograph dances that evoke feelings, offer insights, and present the viewer with the familiar seen in a new light. Throughout her career, she has been committed to doing collaborative projects with other choreographers, musicians and composers, and visual artists. In 2016 and 2017, she was invited to Romania and Germany to choreograph and present two dances in honor of her childhood dance teacher, Iris Barbura, a renowned avant-garde Romanian choreographer, whose career spanned the years between the two World Wars. Her choreography has been supported by seven Choreography Fellowships and numerous Dance Company Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, many grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and other state and civic agencies, and funding from many private foundations and corporations, such as Jacob’s Pillow, the LEF Foundation, the Bank of Boston, the Polaroid Foundation, and the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation. Ms. Soll, who has a Ph.D. Dance from the University Professors Program at Boston University, has been on the dance faculties of the University of Wisconsin, Boston University, the Harvard Summer Dance Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where she directed the dance program for 20 years), UC Santa Barbara, Hofstra University, The New School, and numerous private organizations. She is currently performing and choreographing in New York City and is an adjunct faculty member in Dance at Manhattanville College and teaches at the American Language Institute NYU. Soll's book, Will Modern Dance Survive? Lessons to be Learned from the Pioneers and Unsung Visionaries of Modern Dance, was published in 2002.
Lea Torelli is a New York based dance artist. She has performed with Kinematik Dance Theatre, Post Election Therapy, Regina Nejman, Reber Dance, Atlas Circus Company, Kelley Donovan and Dancers, and Thea Little. She is also certified Pilates instructor. Lea's own choreography has been presented at Mark Morris and Triskelion Arts.

The Window: Visions and Ordinary Rituals

Artist Biographies