BodyStories:Teresa Fellion Dance
www.bodystoriesfellion.org

BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance exists to embody the raw, rhythmic force of universal human encounters, conversing at the core of emotional commonality. The company aims to share art that inspires audiences to physically sense emotional and psychological aspects of the human condition onstage, which can then connect to their own expansive potential. Audience members claim the resulting movement catapults the viewers’ passion, wraps it into twisting curvatures onstage and returns it with the power of a lighting bolt.

Body Stories: Teresa Fellion Dance values international awareness and interchange by speaking nine languages and researching, living, performing, and collaborating with artists in four continents. They fertilize expanding worlds of collaborative innovation in dance, music, puppetry, lighting, and costume, video, and set design.

"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 (may be interchanged for individually designed programming)

Program A, Tours with 5 dancers, Approx. 80 minutes
"BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance…illustrated the strengths of group works…with a harmony and connection which brought a depth of feeling to the stage."
Danielle Farrow (Edinburgh Spotlight)


No One Gets Out of Here Alive
Premiered at Sarah Lawrence College Master of Fine Arts Concert

A physical comedy and dance about awkward junior high and mature /immature behavior, this character-driven trio begins as adult commentary and goofy spoof on teenyboppers, then transforms into regressions and plasticity of adulthood “going prissy” or stepford wife-ish. Alive is loosely based off Teresa Fellion’s astute observations as a nerdy, shy “outsider” in 6th grade.  Through boy-short hair (when it wasn’t fashionable), coke-bottle glasses, argyle sweater vests, and 100-point GPA, I saw that cliques and power dynamics were unhealthy—and often hilarious.

Sound includes fab tunes by Samantha Fox, El Debarge, and Young MC, as well as pungent comedic scene and stand-up writing by Teresa Fellion. Props and set (tours with or without) include a brightly-stocked wardrobe area and a fine-dining atmosphere with purple chairs. Vibrant, convertible costumes alternate between womanly and adolescent eighties attire.

Vessel? Really Now. (formerly known as rat’s nest)
Premiered at Sarah Lawrence College Master of Fine Arts Concert

An excursion into the land of DaDa and absurd humor, this solo oscillates between entertaining and internal in 3 phases: movement development, music randomness /juxtaposition, and women’s roles. Three approaches serve as grounding road maps to allow this kitchen sink to both welcome nonsense and make tons of sense. Music styles ranging from Patti Page to Chris Brown to Star Wars affect the physicality, mental state, and relationship to timing as moods transition smoothly or abruptly and music and dancer continually trade control.

The set (tours with or without) is a found art sculpture spilling/cascading into the space including household and other objects: ironing board, toilet brush, vacuum cleaner, blender, masculine to feminine clothing, and a mannequin torso.

In This House
Premiered at The Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC to sold-out audiences

Journeying into two sisters’ complex familial relationship, In This House explores birth order, intimacy, and questions of communal and individual identities. Two people are extremely close, woven from similar DNA threads, but are different. Who supports? Who leads? These sisters have a bonded, cyclical relationship with deep understanding.

In This House is set to cello and electronic music composed by Teresa Fellion and John Yannelli, (can also be presented with live cello and electronic music).

Fault Line
Premiered at Booking Dance Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, Merce Cunningham Theater, and Bryant Park SummerStage’s Booking Dance Festival Preview performance.

This quartet reflects growth, repetition, contrast, intimacy, separation, and parallels of human relationships at varying levels of connection. Through challenging phrase work, partnering, athleticism, and gesture, dancers embody how relationships and movement ricochet, burst, support, harmonize, resist, and suspend. Fault Line investigates the effect of internal states on external environments. Having experienced past abuse and now in an extremely nurturing and inspiring relationship, Teresa Fellion tuned into behavioral patterns involving increasing levels of intimacy and clear communication.

Composition by Teresa Fellion includes cello, piano, and two vocalists. (Can be presented live, with vocalists actively integrated into performance as dancers’ shadows/ subconscious). The music works with harmony and dissonance, complementing the mood and emotional tones of the dancers.

Control Dominion
Premiered at The Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC to sold-out audiences
Performed at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance Haiti Earthquake Relief Benefit

Three dancers struggling between individual will and constrictive governing control in a cyborg society explore opposing forces of surrender and domination. Control Dominion examines various psychological influences (such as a hissing air conditioner, blaring horn, or an unexpected remembrance) and their effectual hold on the subconscious, and therefore, mood.

Electronic soundscape composed by John Yannelli includes mechanical sound effects, robotic beats, and a driving pulse. Max MSP Video installation created by Teresa Fellion reflects big brother/ sci-fi atmospheres from another angle with intermittent systematically set timing and futuristically programmed images. Tight, metallic, geometric suits with patched strips of honor provide stylized, constricted uniforms that glow under flashes of light.
(can be performed in theaters or in industrial, site-specific locations.)

Program B, Tours with 7-10 dancers, approx 90 minutes
“Teresa Fellion explores borders that are invisible and political, and those people find when they cross them, such as "metaphorical borders" in language, culture, and class. Movement choices include several wonderful moments and well-crafted phrasing. The work is conceptually brave.”
Donald K Atwood MFA. Ph,D. (World Dance Reviews)

The Border Project
Premiered in Lyon, France at Le Reuteleu Festival, ENTPE University to rave reviews. Performed at The Baryshnikov Arts Center and Naropa University to sold-out audiences
Includes dancers from Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Madagascar, and the U.S.

A physical response to the dilemma of human migration, The Border Project carves out a corporeal map of the familiar and the unfamiliar, addressing the subtler psychic borders that occur among the displaced and their pursuit of happiness and identity.

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 deep interest in cultural differences and assimilation. If a border were simply a line drawn in the dirt…

Christopher Cathode’s composition integrates percussion, electronic sound design, music, cross-cultural sound collages, and poignant French text. (can also be presented with complementing live electronic improvisation.)
Can be performed with or without audience inclusion in performance space and/or outreach.

Halfer
Premiered to sold-out audiences in Concert for Peace, Chicago, IL, on a shared program with dancers from Joffrey Ballet, Luna Negra Dance Theater, and Ballet Chicago.
Created with Hamilton Nieh, nominee for 2009’s Princess Grace Award.
Plans to travel to Hong Kong in 2013.

Hannah and Hamilton Nieh reveal a rare and deep brother-sister connection through concert dance expression that translates their experiences migrating from Hong Kong to the United States; the emotional, physical, and sensory journey of transition between cultures, collision with an onslaught of United States’ ideas, and their family’s continued back and forth, long distance relationship with two home countries.

The score includes recorded music, dancers’ monologues, and interviews of immigrants to the United States. Video collage includes interviews from wide-ranging populations of immigrants with varied, emotional stories and shares images of their past and present geographical homes—how they are in reality and how they are perceived and remembered to be—a glimpse inside a migrating mind. 

J’Arrive, C’est Quoi-la?
Selected to close Global Harmony Festival at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Joan Weill Center for Dance to sold-out audiences.

Combining movement dynamics of traditional and contemporary Cameroonian dance with influences of American modern and contemporary dance, this polyrhythmic, fun, sensual piece has emotional moments of power, strength, identity search, and facing transition. Quick footwork, undulations, athletic partnering, and multiple coordinations keep this dance moving!

J’Arrive, C’est Quoi-la? encompasses Teresa Fellion’s experiences gathered growing up on “4 Little Lane” in one-stop light town, “Sandwich, MA” and living and performing as a dancer and percussionist in Cameroon, Central Africa for one year. She had the opportunity to perform with Ballet National du Cameroon, the National Soccer Cup Finals, and many percussion and dance community groups. President Paul Biya titled me “Artistic Liaison between Cameroon and the United States” on Cameroon Public Television.

Erosion: Aftermath
Premiered at Sarah Lawrence College Master of Fine Arts Concert

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. The dancers connect to form a community or disconnect into individual self-absorption, causing individual highlights or the entire dance’s expansion, acceleration, or erosion as one large, single organism.

Teresa Fellion had been volunteering and researching victim experiences and reactions to many natural disasters in the past ten years: earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, fires, and volcanoes. She wanted to understand how such experiences shape communities and give these people a voice onstage.

Women in War
Selected to close Global Harmony Festival at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Joan Weill Center for Dance to sold-out audiences.
Includes dancers from Germany, Greece, Guadeloupe, Japan, Mexico, and the U.S.
Received rave reviews and recommendation for future performances with Amnesty International as a humanitarian voice during war.

Three vignettes involving women’s roles in war throughout history, as demonstrated by the text “Battle Cries and Lullabies” by Dr. Nancy Smith, mix strong and vulnerable passages. Through sensitive, exposed, ferocious, determined, combative, and expressive movements, dancers embody warriors, nurses, prostitutes, and a saddened, almost vengeful mother anguished over her son’s death. Dancers don and shed army fatigues as well as partner with layered, tattered dresses. With black poles, floor, and body percussion, they create ritualistic syncopated rhythms and perform various weapon drills.

After September 11th and the reactions of the United States abroad, Teresa Fellion researched the effects on women and children in war here and in Iraq and Afghanistan. She then became fascinated with the complex web of roles women have played in wars since their beginning.

Full evening length work

Phish Collaborations
Tours with 10-12 dancers, Approx 70 min
Part 1: Phish Suite
Premiered performing with rock band, Phish for audiences over 100,000
Adapted performances for Main Stage, Second Stage, and site-specific, outside locations, including grass hills in sculpture garden and atop sculptures.
Future planned performances with Trey Anastasio and residencies in Burlington, VT.

Juxtaposing dancing as play with and against complex rhythmical structures, Phish Suite brings Phish’s 5th album, Rift, alive with fun, vibrant movement and musicality. Dancers interact, fly and catch in athletic partnering feats, hoe-downs, virtuosic movement, tender duets, body sculptures and towers, and a bit of jazz. There are several intricate group spatial patterns, canons, humorous sections, and explosive instants, as well as softer, quieter moments.

Teresa Fellion began creating this suite in 2004 for Phish’s presumed final tour as a tribute to my brother, who is a huge fan of their music. Their music is so magically vibrant and polyrhythmic, that I couldn’t help but want to dance.

Part 2: Escape is Shifting
Premiered at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance to sold-out audiences
Created with Trey Anastasio’s debut orchestral album, Seis de Mayo, and poetry, Guyute.

Guyute is the ugly pig nestled uncomfortably in our innermost thoughts that playfully haunts our social exchanges. It is desired and feared as it nurtures and destroys. Guyute is the thought or object we cannot release.

The Lotus Flower
Tours with 9 dancers, Approx 50 min
Premiered at McGuire Theater and Dance Pavilion at University of Florida to sold-out audiences
Originally created and set during a residency at UF, Gainesville Department of Dance

A dance theater opera with contemporary ballet and modern dance based upon well-known Korean folk tale, The Story of Shim Choung, is composed in an overture and six scenes starring Shim Choung, her blind father, villagers, a monk, the sea dragon king, and sea ladies. The story is based on Buddhist themes of reincarnation (represented by the lotus flower) as well as the Korean tradition of female sacrifice.

Live (or recorded) chamber orchestra and electronic music is created by Korean composer Chan-Ji Kim. Instrumentation includes flute, alto flute, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, violin, viola, double bass, piano, percussion, mezzo-soprano sung in Korean, and electroacoustic music.

Full scenery and props (tours with or without) include wicker baskets, wooden ladder, human-sized lotus flower, silken scarves, papier mache mountain cliff, and track cushion. Costumes range from traditional village dress to surreal underwater world. Video installation of underwater shadow dancing transitions Shim Choung to the sea world.
Can be performed in a theater, community or youth performance.
May also incorporate child and adult community members as villagers and sea ladies

Fox Knocks Twice
Tours with 7 dancers, 35-50 min performance, lecture-demonstration, day/week residencies.
BodyStories partners with several schools and youth programs in NYC, New England, and MN. Accepted by DOE NYC standards for creative arts programming
Program is customizable and can be geared for grades K–4, older, and special education students.

Fox Knocks Twice is an interactive children’s dance-theater performance relative to Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat. Professional dancers, actors, choreographers, and teachers wrote our original story and developed it into performance focusing on children's active engagement.

Q&A, master dance classes, and workshops can accompany the performance. Workshops include “write your own ending contest” which the company performs, teamwork, conflict resolution, text and movement, character analysis, daily life problem-solving, trust building exercises, or role-playing improvisations.

Composition by Kevin Keller includes lively circus-esque music and sound effects. Fox Knocks Twice travels with (or without) a full, colorful, free standing Dr. Seuss-like set or video projection. Costumes including a fish in a fully finned bodysuit, a dapper fox, and imaginative attire for “thing one and two” are very vibrant and attractive to children.

Outreach

BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance’s educational and teaching backgrounds include Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Julliard School, Jacob’s Pillow International Dance Festival, Sarah Lawrence College, Arts Access Program at Matheny Medical & Educational Center, New York City Public School Programs, Senior Citizen Centers, Early Childhood Development Centers, New York University, UBS Investment Bank, Barnard College, Conservatoire de Rouen, and The University of Florida Dance Department, among others.

BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance is certified and well-equipped to teach all ages and levels; professional, young adult, children, non-dancers, senior citizens, and special needs populations. Some examples of programs we have offered are lecture demonstrations, performances, master classes in various dance techniques, repertory, and workshops in partnering, composition, improvisation, team-building, conflict-resolution, theatre skills, text and movement, creative writing, and rhythm for dancers.