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BodyStories:Teresa Fellion Dance
www.bodystoriesfellion.org
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance
is a contemporary dance company that strives to capture and
communicate universal human encounters through dynamic,
purposeful movement. Bodystories is a multifaceted, highly
physical company laced with provocative, emotional, political,
and humorous edges. Artistic Director Teresa Fellion’s work is
highly choreographed in every moment and intellectually
oriented. The repertory is intricately technical and controlled
in each nuance, but maintains an aesthetic that is
uncontrived. The dances examine the depths of societies in
their darkest and brightest moments and inspire audiences to
physically sense emotional and psychological aspects of the
human condition on stage.
In addition to creating and performing innovative works, the
company is also committed to reaching diverse populations
through outreach and education. Fellion’s company values
international exchange - collectively speaking nine languages
and researching, performing, and collaborating with artists from
four continents. Additionally, the company’s performances often
include live music and feature collaborations across a variety
of mediums – dance, music, puppetry, lighting, costume, video,
and set design.
Teresa Fellion is a choreographer, dancer, writer, and educator
who has created dance for over ten years. As an independent
artist, Teresa has presented works at the Baryshnikov Arts
Center, Jacob’s Pillow, The Public Theater, University of
Florida, ENTPE University (Lyon, France), NYU, BAAD!, the Merce
Cunningham Studio, Naropa University, and on stages with the
rock band Phish, among others. Fellion formed BodyStories:
Teresa Fellion Dance in 2011, and, as artistic director, creates
new works in collaboration with her dancers. Since its
inception, the company has performed at many prestigious
theaters including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Alvin Ailey Citigroup
Theater, Bryant Park SummerStage, Booking Dance Festival
(Edinburgh, Scotland), Dixon Place, DNA, and the University of
Maine. Teresa Fellion boasts an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence
College. Additionally, she has earned a BA in English, French,
and Creative Writing, with a minor in Dance as a merit scholar
at NYU. In 2006 Teresa was the sole recipient of the American
Dance Guild Fellowship for Jacob’s Pillow’s Choreographers’ Lab.
Cameroonian President Paul Biya named Fellion “Artistic Liaison
between Cameroon & U.S.” during her one-year stay in the
country for performing with dance companies and percussion
ensembles, like National Ballet du Cameroun, at The National
Soccer Cup Finals
"Bodystories/Teresa Fellion Dance
have stepped bravely up to the mirror and refused to shy away
from our most unpleasant characteristics, while unfailingly
celebrating the potential for beauty within each of us. Through
repeated movements, loving touches and some of the angriest
dance I have ever seen women undertake on the stage, this group
has created true magic.” -Caroline Whitham, Edinburgh
Festivals Magazine
“Teresa
Fellion’s choreography is like a car engine of movement;
transference of energy that is constantly remolded, shifted, and
brings us to a beautiful place…”
-Celeste Miller, Jacob’s Pillow International Dance Festival
Touring Programs
Mixed
Repertory
Program
Mix of work exploring psychological states by critically
acclaimed choreographer, Teresa Fellion, developed in
collaboration with the company. Performances often include live
music.
Fault
Line, The Border Project, Erosion: Aftermath, No One Gets Out
of Here Alive, as well as excerpts from Mantises and Control
Dominion
Split Bill Program
Flipping Dominion: An Evening of Two Contrasting Works by
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance. This evening of dance gives
audiences a sense of two completely different works-Control
Dominion
and The Mantises Are Flipping (P.S. I’ll have whatever they’re
having). Can tour with or without live music.
Youth Programs:
Adolescents and Pre-Adolescents
No One Gets Out of Here Alive
NOGOOHA, for short, is
a work suitable for adults or teens/children. It is an adult
commentary on adolescent behavior with a Brechtian slant. It
investigates themes of bullying, and it travels with technique,
team-building, and conflict-resolution workshops.
Young Audiences
Fox Knocks Twice
Fox Knocks Twice, in
the style of Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, travels with
complementary workshops.
Piece Descriptions
Control
Dominion
Dancers in a cyborg society struggle with personal autonomy
versus governmental control. Opposing forces of surrender and
domination reveal harrowing pitfalls of the proselytizing hive
mind. Dynamic progressions become chocked full of manic activity
as dancers fling, throw, jerk, jump, stiffen, fall, roll, lift,
and engage sometimes beyond their capacity to control. The
electronic soundscape, composed by John Yannelli, includes
mechanical sound effects, robotic beats, and a driving pulse.
Max MSP Sci-Fi Video installation by Fellion has intermittent
systematically set timing and futuristically programmed images.
Tight, metallic, geometric suits with patched strips of honor
glow under flashes of light.
(Performed in theaters or in industrial, site-specific
locations.)
The
Mantises are Flipping. P.S. (I’ll have whatever they’re
having)
The Mantises Are Flipping
(P.S. I’ll have whatever they’re having) investigates
reactions and relationships to sound, exploring various
dualities through movement. The organization of sound and
movement in the work establishes a world in which the two
elements are indistinguishable. Musician/composer Ryan Edwards
performs live with the dancers, and the dancers contribute
sounds of varying lengths, intention, volume, and rhythmic
complexity. The piece creates a voyeuristic point of observation
into the idiosyncratic worlds and relationships among eight
individuals.
Fault Line
A quartet reflects growth, repetition, contrast, intimacy,
separation, and parallels of human relationships at varying
levels of connection. Complicated phrase work and partnering
embodies how relationships and movement can ricochet, burst,
support, harmonize, and suspend. Fault Line establishes complex
roles of two co-existing relationships, both isolated and
intertwined, and the dissolution of each. Natural images include
blossoming flowers, disintegration into imbalanced rumbling, and
the explosive elements of an earthquake.
Composition by Teresa Fellion
includes cello, piano, and two vocalists. Work can be presented
with vocalists integrated into the performance.
Erosion:
Aftermath
Six female dancers emerge as distinctive individuals through
their physicality, living in a storm and its aftermath. Their
various psychological responses propel movement that creates
community, isolation, nurturing, tantrums, fear, rebuilding, and
support. Developed partnering, phrases, and interactions during
intense passages “challenge the retina” and create a “puree” of
movement that seamlessly connects. There are sculptural,
weighted, foreboding, chaotic, aftershock, and apocalyptic
moments. In conclusion, dancers lead a ceremonial procession
with planks to construct a square, stepping inside to convey
coming home or common ground.
Scenic design (with or without) is four distressed pine boards
dancers carry, use for ritual, and for building a communal
frame. Ominous wind and sound effects, swirling and rhythmic
intensity, and nurturing sensitive strings comprise John
Yannelli’s composition. Lighting is shadowed, which highlights a
psychological/apocaplyptic nature. Costumes are period,
reminiscent of Dorothea Lange photos and Grapes of Wrath, as
well as distressed earthy layers of bleached, burlapped, tea
dyed designs by David Moyer.
The Border
Project
A physical response to the dilemma of human migration, Border
carves out a corporeal map of the familiar and unfamiliar,
addressing subtler psychic borders that occur among the
displaced and their pursuit of happiness and identity. In this
journey, dancers embody what happens on the social level and
recreate it on a magnified, human level. On an athletic, highly
technical, and emotional trajectory of movement, dancers build
and climb multilevel walls, collide, press, travel, wind,
delineate, and reach. If a border were simply a line drawn in
the dirt…
Through study of languages including French, Spanish, Italian,
Swahili, and Bulu, living abroad in four countries, and work
experiences at UN African missions, Teresa Fellion has a vested
interest in cultural differences and assimilation. Her company
examined their own and researched others’ experiences of
immigration in order to create a psychological, political, and
emotional basis for this work.
No One Gets
Out of Here Alive
A comedic dance-theater piece about the awkwardness of junior
high and the plastic regressions of adulthood, NOGOOHA explores
the differences between mature and immature behavior via adult
commentary with a Brechtian Slant. The clothes thing, boob
thing, boyfriend thing - nasty, gossipy, destructive behavior,
and much more are all illuminated through an excitingly quirky,
deconstructed dance vocabulary that includes hormonal dance
movements, quick physical mood shifts, provocative tableaux,
slow motion fight scenes, lip-syncing, athletic partnering,
exaggerated facial expressions, situational comedy, dream
sequences, and “inventive” committed social dancing.
NOGOOHA is loosely based on
Teresa’s astute observations as a nerdy, shy, 6th grade
“outsider.” Through boy short hair (when it wasn’t fashionable),
coke bottle glasses, argyle sweater vests, and 104 point GPA,
Teresa saw that cliques and power dynamics were unhealthy—and
hilarious.
Fox Knocks
Twice
BodyStories partners with schools and youth programs. Fox
Knocks Twice is an interactive children’s dance-theater
performance relative to Dr.
Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat with athletic, imaginative
movement, expressive action and faces, and lively narration.
Students first read the tale, are then incorporated into the
show, and afterwards discuss themes and relay personal
reactions.
Fox is often
accompanied by lecture-demonstrations, a Q&A, dance classes,
and workshops, which include a “write your own ending contest”
(that the company performs), teamwork building, conflict
resolution, text and movement, character analysis, daily life
problem-solving, trust building exercises, and role-playing
improvisations where children identify characters’ emotional
patterns and make comparisons to their own lives. Students also
create an orchestra where they are responsible for making sound
effects for assigned words, facilitating musical awareness, and
extending focus. Program is customizable and can be geared for
grades K–4, older, and special education students. Accepted
by DOE NYC standards for creative arts programming.
Outreach
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance
has an extensive outreach program that involves technical
instruction and creativity with a hands-on approach. The company
designs programs specifically for each client, which match the
unique hopes and needs of individual communities.
Certified and well-equipped to
teach a wide range of populations: Professional, Young Adults
(pre-professional and recreational dancers), Young Children
(pre-K through elementary), “Non-Dancers” (ranging from
corporate business groups to juvenile hall programs), Special
Needs (alternative arts programming for physical and mental
disabilities or disorders), Senior Citizens.
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