Chris Aiken has been a leader in the fields of dance improvisation and contact improvisation for over two decades. He has toured internationally and collaborated with many gifted improvisers, including Angie Hauser, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Kirstie Simson, Andrew Harwood, Peter Bingham and Ray Chung. His work has been presented by venues such as Dance Theater Workshop, Jacob’s Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, and The Walker Art Center. He recently received a commission from the National Performance Network to create a work entitled Utopia Parkway with Angie Hauser which will begin touring in 2012. Chris has received numerous awards for his work including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Bush Foundation.  He recently was appointed an Assistant Professor of Dance at Smith College and the Five College Dance Department.

DD Dorvillier is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Since coming to New York in 1989 she has created and produced many choreographic works and toured internationally. Dorvillier's current collaborators include Zeena Parkins, Heather Kravas, Walter Dundervill, Fabian Barba, Nuno Bizarro, Milka Djordjevich, and Thomas Dunn. She has worked closely with Jennifer Monson, Elizabeth Ward, Sarah Michelson, Jennifer Lacey, Trajal Harrell, and Yvonne Meier, among others. She has been a NYFA Choreography Fellow, a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, received a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for Dressed for Floating (2002) and as a performer in Parades & Changes, replays (2010). She received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship (2007) and is a 2012 John Simon Guggenhein Memorial Fellow.

Irene Dowd is currently on the dance faculty of the Juilliard School, New York University, and Canada’s National Ballet School, as well as the Hollins University/ADF MFA program in dance. Author of Taking Root to Fly, she has been teaching dance and kinesthetic anatomy for 40 years. Irene has choreographed for Peggy Baker, Margie Gillis and other solo dancers. Her work has been taught in schools and dance companies across the U.S. and Canada.

Miguel Gutierrez makes solo and group pieces with a variety of artists under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. His work has toured internationally at several festivals and venues and has received support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, United States Artists, Creative Capital, Jerome Foundation, Rockefeller MAP Fund, NYFA, NEA and NPN. He is the winner of three New York Dance and Performance Awards ("Bessies"). WHEN YOU RISE UP, a book of his performance texts, is available from 53rd State Press. He also invented DEEP AEROBICS, an absurdist workout for the radical in all of us. www.miguelgutierrez.org

Trajal Harrell is a New York based choreographer whose works have been seen in the U.S. at The Kitchen, ICA Boston, The New Museum, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, Art Basel-Miami Beach, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Crossing the Line Festival, Cornell University, and internationally in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Croatia and Mexico. Most recently, during summer 2011, his work has been presented in the prestigious festivals Festival d’Avignon (France) and Impulstanz Vienna International Dance Festival (Austria). Since 2001, he has been developing a body of work which links the parallel histories of the Voguing dance tradition and early Postmodern dance. www.betatrajal.org

Keith Hennessy works in and around performance. Born in northern Ontario, he lives in San Francisco and tours internationally. His interdisciplinary research engages improvisation, ritual and public action as tools for investigating political realities and social movement. Hennessy directs Zero Performance, whose recent awards include a “Bessie” (2009), two Isadora Duncan Awards (2009), a Bilinski Fellowship (2011), and the NDP Touring Grant. His 2011 teaching tours include Kiev, Dakar, Poznan, Berlin, Vienna/Impulstanz, Lyon, Miami and Stolzenhagen/Ponderosa. Hennessy has an MFA in Choreography and is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at UC Davis.

Juliette Mapp is a dancer, teacher and choreographer based in NYC. Juliette has taught and performed extensively throughout Europe, Asia, South America and the United States. She has been on the faculty of The George Washington University, Hunter College and Fordham University and currently teaches at The New School. Juliette was a 2004-05 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. She received a “Bessie” in 2002 for her dancing and one in 2008 for choreography.

Yvonne Meier has been exploring Improvisation in performance  and teaching Releasing Technique, Authentic Movement and her own improvisational technique “Scores” throughout the US and Europe for the past 32 years. She has been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival for the past 5 years. She has taught dance companies such as Anna Teresa de Keeresmaeker’s “Rosas” and Meg Stuart’s “Damaged Goods Company” etc. For her choreography Yvonne Meier has received two “Bessie” Awards as well as an “American Masterpiece Award” from the NEA.

Shelley Senter has been involved with experimental and post-modern dance for twenty-five years, touring the world as a performer, choreographer and teacher. She has been critically recognized for her distinct approach to movement, both as an independent artist and as a collaborator/performer with many distinguished artists. She is a member of LOWER LEFT and NON-FICTION artist collectives and is an official repetiteur of the seminal works of Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer. A renowned teacher of the Alexander Technique, she has been investigating the application of the principles of the technique to the performing body and mind for nearly two decades.