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​Bios

 

Sarah Chenoweth’s family has been canoeing on the Jack’s Fork River, in Eminence, MO, since her grandmother was a young girl.  Its towering bluffs, soft morning fog and gently flowing, spring-fed water have raised and shaped her, as much as a landscape can.  Sarah is a co-founder of the Mid to West Dance Collective (midtowestdance.org) and currently performs with Nina Haft & Co. and Rogelio Lopez & Dancers.  Sarah teaches at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and writes about improvisation and new dance works.  She holds an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa and a BA in English Education from Illinois State University.

 

Kevin Corcoran grew up in Sacramento, California, not far from the Cosumnes River, the only undammed tributary west of the Sierra Nevada. He is a percussionist with an open interest in sound as medium as it moves through contexts of art, music, ecology, and communication. His work is often focused on techniques which extend the sonic possibilities of the percussion instrument emphasizing textural sound, atonal sympathetic vibration, sustained tones without audible attack and the use of found objects and field recordings placing emphasis on atmospheres rather than rhythmic pulses usually associated with the drum.

 

Nina Haft grew up near Flushing Bay in East Elmhurst, NY, where tidal patterns sounded a lot like jets arriving and departing from LaGuardia airport. After migrating west to follow the Wallflower Order Dance Collective, Nina put down roots in the San Francisco Bay dance community. Here she has had the pleasure of working for many years with AXIS Dance Company, Randee Paufve and other wonderful dance artists. Nina has her MFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where she was a Jacob Javits Fellow. She is on faculty at CSU East Bay and at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, where her company is in residence.

 

Since 2000, Nina Haft & Company has been exploring the deep nature of place through performance. The King Tide Projects began in 2013, and continue in theatrical, site-specific and live-streamed events throughout the San Francisco Bay. We are pursuing new water-inspired projects here and in other watersheds. For more info on these and other NH&Co adventures, visit ninahaftandcompany.com.

 

Jason Hoopes was born in the winter of 1975-76, in the Eel River Watershed, in Humboldt County, California. He remembers fog and redwood trees fondly. 

 

Born in Idaho and based in Oakland, Gretchen Jude is a performer and composer whose eclectic works have been heard from Seoul to Helsinki. Gretchen plays koto (a Japanese instrument which she studied in Tokyo) and sings, engaging extensively with both audio electronics and improvisation. She loves to collaborate with dancers, reflecting her interest in the body, its materiality, and its relationship to the contradictions and conundrums of contemporary human life.

 

Rebecca Johnson grew up on the east coast and spent her summers at Queen Lake in Phillipston, MA playing with the frogs and the fish. 2016 marks her 16th year performing with Nina Haft & Company. Rebecca started her modern dance career with Moving West Dance Company (MA) in 1985 and earned BA degrees in Dance and English Literature from Rutgers University. She completed her MEd from the University of New Hampshire in 2001. Rebecca has also danced locally with Paufve Dance, Dana Lawton Dances and ahdanco. She is honored to serve as the Executive Director of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.

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Peiling Kao, Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, is a Taiwanese choreographer, educator and dancer. She was born near the Danshui River (淡水河) in northern Taiwan. The river flows along a north-south direction and into Taiwan Strait as part of the East China Sea. Peiling works with choreographers of different aesthetic frameworks, collaborates with interdisciplinary artists, as well as creates her own work. www.peilingkaodances.com

 

Edmer Lazaro grew up in San Jose near the Lower Silver and South Babb Creeks that make up, in part, the Coyote Watershed of that region. This is the area where he discovered his love for dance and performance through color guard. He eventually found his way to CSU, Hayward and met Nina. Edmer is blessed to have journeyed through his own kind of dance watershed system finding his way to mentors and dance artists like Nina, Laura, Carol, and the dancers of Nina Haft & Company that provide a continuous flow and source of inspiration for him.

 

Rogelio Lopez was born and raised in a little town in Mexico call Ejido Tehuantepec. The main source of water was from the water table. Rogelio moved to the USA when he was 13 years old and earned an MFA in dance emphasis in choreography from California State University Long Beach. He is currently full time faculty at Saint Mary's college and teaches at Shawl-Anderson dance center.

 

Andrew Merrell was born near the beaches of Southern California; spanning the northern surf capitol Huntington Beach to the southern surf paradise of San Clemente Beach. Though he never learned to surf, he spent many nights speeding on coast highway and ditching class to take ferry trips to Catalina Island.  Andrew has tried to hug the California coast throughout his life while pursuing a dance education at CSULB and at Saint Mary’s College.  King Tide inspired Andrew with the idea of the different levels of submersion we have experienced in our lives and the watermarks that may have been left behind. 

 

Frances Sedayao was born in a small town between Manila Bay & Laguna de Bay in the Luzon region of the Philippine archipelago where typhoons are common & tropical showers frequent. Frances moved to the US at 14, was introduced to dance in college & has since performed w/ wonderful Bay Area artists over the past 20 years. She has done collaborative & independent dance works both locally & internationally, is a Serpent Source grant recipient, Featured Dance Artist for SF Apature, & a Dance Resident of Art OMI International in NY. She currently works with Bandelion Dancetheatre, Anne Bluethenthal & dancers & is a collaborator for a Slovakian touring project, Bonjour Monogramista. She recently worked on a video project with Ian Heisters, & a theatre-dance project w/ Jay Loyola & Alleluia Panis of Kularts. Frances is grateful & excited to continue her journey with Nina Haft and Co.

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Ian Winters grew up near the Youghiogheny River, which turns into the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and then the Ohio River. Ian is an award winning live video & media artist working at the intersections of physical performance, temporary site-specific interventions, and interactive time-based media based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works both as solo artist and frequent collaborator with composers, directors and choreographers across the US, Europe and Pacific. He also teaches and lectures widely on live media, installation and performance and studied video and performance at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts & Tufts University.