Zen Monkey Project
Eigth Annual Summer Intensive / June 24-July 7 / Athens, GA

Faculty

Allison M. Waddell

is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and teaching consultant who has traveled both nationally and internationally facilitating the movement arts for the past ten years. A North Carolina native, she is a graduate of Meredith College with degrees in Dance and Speech Communication. She has been awarded numerous scholarships and awards that have allowed her to study at dance festivals such as the Bates Dance Festival and the American Dance Festival. She has performed with Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, the Zen Monkey Project, Chavasse Dance and Performance, Even Exchange Dance Theater, Immediate Theater, and she is a founding member of the contact improvisation based quartet them. Allison has been on faculty at Enloe High School, Meredith College, the Chapel Hill Ballet School, and the Durham Arts Council where she served as Education Coordinator. She has also been guest faculty at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, Turkey, and Universidad De Las Am�ricas in Puebla, Mexico. Her choreography has been presented by the North Carolina Dance Festival, Independent Dancemakers, Bates Dance Festival, the American Dance Festival, Jemal Resit Rey in Istanbul, Turkey, the Middle East Contemporary Dance Festival, in Ankara, Turkey, and various venues across the United States. Currently, she lives in Manhattan where she is a teaching consultant and artist in the New York City Public schools. Allison is thrilled to be joining the Zen Monkey Project again this summer!

Brad Stoller

has 25 years experience teaching Contact Improvisation on both coasts of the U.S. and in Europe. Brad has an MFA in Playwriting and is a black belt in Aikido. Brad performs regularly in two improvisation companies in C-Ville and is the president of the McGuffey Arts Association. He is also a certified Alexander Technique teacher and currently runs a group for children with autism spectrum disorders and designs the sets and lights for Hampden Sydney College.

Katharine Birdsall

teaches, performs, and makes dances in Charlottesville where she lives with her husband and two children. She has worked as a guest artist throughout the United States since 1990. Her early training was with Ballet Florida's School in West Palm Beach, and high school at St Paul's School in Concord New Hampshire. She received her BFA in dance from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, her certification to teach the Alexander Technique from the Virginia School, and was the director of the New Dance Space for seven years. She has also trained in Zero Balancing, Tai Chi, Pilates, and the Klein Technique. She is currently teaching at the Alexander Technique school and focusing on her private practice.

Julie Rothschild

Julie Rothschild began her modern dance training at Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, OH in 1983 and continued to pursue her interest in dance and performance at Colorado College and Ohio State University. She has worked with Prairie Wind Dancers (Lawrence, KS), Michelle D. Brown (Kansas City), Miki Liszt (Charlottesville, VA), Live Arts Theatre (Charlottesville), Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (Takoma Park, MD), Celeste Miller (Atlanta, GA), Bala Sarasvati (Athens, GA), Rebecca Enghauser (Athens), Heather McIntosh (Athens) and Zen Monkey Project (Charlottesville). Julie currently lives in Athens, GA with her husband and 2 sons. She is in her final year of training to become an Alexander Technique Teacher and is an adjunct instructor in the UGA Department of Dance. She is also one of the founding members of Warehouse Collective and curator of The Handful Series, an annual performance designed to bring regional and national contemporary dance artists to Athens.

Leah Jasmine Wilk

has been dancing and making dances since childhood. At fifteen she began studying contemporary dance, Body-Mind Centering, and improvisation with members of the Zen Monkey Project. She has continued to study, perform, and teach with ZMP, throughout her adult life. Leah's dance training led her to Virginia Commonwealth University where she studied dance technique and choreography. She has also been deeply invested in the art of improvisation and contact improvisation. In '04-'05, Leah taught, performed and researched with the improvisational dance company Group Atness in Northampton, MA, where Leah currently lives. For the past six years, Leah has immersed herself in the study of yoga. She is a certified yoga instructor and currently teaches in elementary schools, yoga studios, and privately in clients' homes.

Ray Eliot Schwartz

is a movement artist and activist who has spent the last 22 years committed to developing an experiential understanding of the body. As a co-founder of four contemporary dance projects in the southern United States: Sheep Army, The Zen Monkey Project, Steve's House Dance Collective, and THEM, he has choreographed, performed, presented other artists, and developed educational curricula for diverse populations of students. In addition, he has taught at The Mimar Sinan Universitesi in Istanbul, Turkey, and colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Schwartz has served on the faculty of the American Dance Festival, the Bates Dance Festival, MELT, SFADI, and has taught, performed and conducted research extensively in the U.S, Europe and Asia. His training includes high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts and a BFA in Dance from Virginia Commonwealth University. Additional study includes certification as Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering, trainings in Zero-Balancing, Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Traditional Thai Massage, and the Feldenkrais Method. For his MFA at the University of Texas at Austin Schwartz balanced academic research with a commitment to service and activism within the Austin, Texas arts scene. Towards that end, he directed Sheep Army/Elsewhere Dance Theater, taught classes in dance, movement, and body-work, researched the aesthetic and pedagogical implications evoked by the integration of somatic movement education and contemporary dance forms, presented papers at conferences, and published articles. Currently he is a Professor Asistente Visitante de Danza en la Universidad De Las Americas in Cholula/Puebla, Mexico.