Christine bonansea is a New York-based dancer and choreographer with over 17 years of international experience in conceiving, directing/choreographing and performing movement-based works. She creates performances, installations, and films. She is the Artistic Director of Christine Bonansea Company, founded in 2010. Defined by expressive, virtuosic, improvisation-driven movement, her work inhabits an experimental, interdisciplinary, and collaborative environment in which other media – theater, video, visual art and design, spoken word, and music – play an important and integral part. Having studied Modern Literature at Paris’ La Sorbonne, she cites writers and philosophers as major influences. Bonansea studied dance with such luminaries as Regine Chopinot, Catherine Diverres, Mathilde Monnier, Ralph Lemon, Anna Halprin, Nancy Stark Smith. She had the pleasure to collaborate and perform with such artists as, Nita Little, Catherine Galasso, Katie Duck, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Sara Shelton Mann, Faustin Linyekula, Tino Sehgal, Yoshiko Chuma. In New York City, Bonansea’s work has been presented by Danspace Project, Dixon Place, the Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, JACK. Her dances have also been developed in art residencies and commissioned by numerous venues and festivals worldwide, including YBCA, ODC Theater, San Francisco International Arts Festival, and The FRESH Festival (San Francisco); Headwater Theater (Portland); Atlantic Center for the Arts (South Beach, Florida); DanceMatters (Toronto, Canada); Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo, Japan); The Centre Nationale De la Danse – Paris and at DOCK11 (Berlin, Germany). Additionally, Christine is also an accomplished dance teacher in both professional / performative and therapeutic setting. Christine Bonansea Company has been supported by funds from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Dance Abroad, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Theater Bay Area the LAD-Dancer’s Group, and sponsored by New York Live Arts – NYC. www.christinebonansea.com
Russian-born Elena Demyanenko is a former member of both Stephen Petronio Company (2003-2008) and Trisha Brown Dance Company (2009-2012) and has been performing, teaching and choreographing in NYC since 2001. Her additional performance credits include Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights; Continuous Replay with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; and a lengthy engagement as guest artist with Riverdance on Broadway. A graduate of the Academy of Theatrical Arts (Moscow), Elena was a recipient of a Jerome Robbins Fellowship for the creation of Disparate Bodies with Joe Poulson at Baryshnikov Arts Center (2011). Her Blue Room (2014), premiered in collaboration with Dai Jian and commissioned by New York Live Arts, was described by the NYT as “luxurious” and “eloquently meticulous” (Kourlas). Also a maker of dance film, Elena was the recipient of an EMPAC Dance Movies Commission and was nominated for the Dance on Camera Jury Prize for her work on Kino Eye. Elena’s most recent work echo/archive will premier at EMPAC in March 2018. Elena is currently on Dance faculty at Bennington College.
