Film

• Bios • Film • Synopsis • Screenings • Awards & Press • Production History


Nancy Allison, Co-producer/director/Dance Stager:

Nancy Allison has danced in major ballet companies, theater productions and on the concert stage. She was one of the three-member Theater of The Open Eye company awarded the prize for Best Company at the 15th International Festival de la Danse at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Her choreography has been presented by the Athens Festival in Greece, House of Composers in Moscow, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Blossom Music Festival in Cleveland, OH and Artquake in Portland, OR, among others. She is the executive producer and featured dancer of the three volume video archive, Dance and Myth: The World of Jean Erdman. She has taught on faculty and as a guest artist at universities throughout the U.S from NYU to University of Hawaii and in Italy at University of Venice and as a regular guest artist for INDACO (Indomite Incursioni di Danza e Arte Contemporanea) in collaboration with Danza Venezia. She has received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Gladys Kriebel Delmas Foundation, as well as, the Laurance Rockefeller gift in support of her work. Allison is currently artistic director of Jean Erdman Dance for which she stages Erdman's classic modern dance repertory from the 1940s and 50s on companies throughout the US.

Paul Allman, Co-producer/director/Editor:

Paul Allman has worked as a video producer, director, cameraman and editor for Broadway productions, at Radio City Music Hall and for numerous museums throughout the US and abroad. He co-directed and edited the documentary Proud to Be Verizon, which won Cine's Master Series Award for Best Non-Broadcast Production in the U.S., beating out HBO and many others. Allman edited the feature-length documentary, Speaking With Music, about a piano competition pitting child prodigies against each other, which has been broadcast on over 40 PBS stations nationwide. He directed and edited the short documentary Hidden in Plain Sight, the story of an emotional reunion of a Holocaust survivor and her rescuer, 60 years later, for the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR). Four other films he produced and directed for JFR have all won multiple awards. Allman designed several multi-screen installations for the newly renovated Normandy Museum in France, which included visually tracking the D-Day invasion in an eight-minute film entitled Beyond the Beachhead. He has also designed multi-screen exhibits for the Jamestown Museum, the Palm Beach County Museum, the United States Naval Academy Museum, the NCAA Hall of Champions and the College Football Hall of Fame. Most recently he produced a multi-screen video for SPIES: The Exhibition now showing at the Discovery Center in Times Square.

Glen Mordeci, Director of Photography:

Glen Mordeci is an award winning cinematographer, filming over 200 music videos and more than 500 commercials in his 17 year career. In 2011 he worked with The Royal Ballet on the ten short films that were part of their innovative new staging of Kenneth MacMillan's 1965 production of Romeo & Juliet when it was performed in London's massive O2 arena. In 2012 he was part of the team working under Nigel Lythgoe, creator of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, that produced A Chance to Dance, a documentary series featuring the BalletBoyz of London, which aired on the Ovation Network. Glenn also directed and shot Inspiration, and The Fight, two short dance films for the BBC's prime time Channel 4 TV show, Random Acts.

Miki Orihara, Dancer:

Miki Orihara has performed in the Broadway production of The King and I, with the Elisa Monte, Dance Troupe, PierGroupDance, Lotuslotus and in productions by Twyla Tharp, Martha Clarke, and Robert Wilson. She is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, which she joined in 1987. In addition to performing the Graham repertory, she has worked closely with the renowned Japanese-American dancer, choreographer and director, Yuriko, preserving her unique approach to Graham Technique. Orihara has presented her own choreography in New York and in Tokyo as a guest artist for Japan's New National Theater. Her teaching credentials include numerous workshops in Japan, Art International in Moscow, Peridance, the Ailey School, New York University, Florida State University, Henny Jurriëns Stichting (Netherlands), Les Etés de la Danse in Paris and New National Theater Ballet School. In June 2014, the Japanese company, mishmash released two music videos for which she was Dance Director. She also produced and curated the benefit concert "Dancing for JAPAN 2014" and her first solo concert, Resonance at the La MaMa theater in New York in May, 2014. In 2010 she was awarded the prestigious Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement in Dance.

Jean Erdman, Choreographer:

Jean Erdman, a leading figure of the post-pioneering period of American modern dance, made a significant contribution to both dance and theater during her more than fifty-year career. Born and raised in Honolulu in the early part of the 20th century her influences include ancient and modern hula and Isadora Duncan technique. From 1938–43 she was a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, originating many roles in the repertory of that period. In 1962 she produced, directed and starred in, The Coach with the Six Insides, an adaptation of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake which won OBIE and Vernon Rice Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Off-Broadway Theater, before taking off on a world tour. Her 1971 Tony-nominated choreography for Joseph Papp's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, Lincoln Center production of Jean Giradoux's The Enchanted, along with the more than fifty dances she choreographed for her own company, the Jean Erdman Theater of Dance reflect the intricate blending of world dance and theater styles and sensitive musicality that are the hallmarks of her aesthetic vision. She collaborated with some of the most innovative artists of her time, including Louis Horst, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Merce Cunningham, the filmmaker, Maya Deren and her husband, the mythologist, Joseph Campbell.

Claude Debussy, Composer:

Claude Debussy was one of the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Along with Maurice Ravel, he is known as the leading figure of musical Impressionism. Some of his most well known works include La mer, Clair de lune, Pelleas et Melisande, and Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faune based on the poem L'apres-midi d'un faune by Stephan Mallarme which became the score for the ballet of the same name by Vaslav Nijinsky. A brilliant pianist with a strong independent streak Debussy eschewed many of the formal conventions of classical music of his day seeking out a more direct sensory experience in his compositions. His use of non-traditional scales, chorded melodies and modulations without harmonic bridges influenced many composers who followed. In 2013 his flute solo Syrinx, composed in 1913, was recognized as one of the four most influential works in the development of the world-wide artistic movement, Abstraction by its inclusion in the major exhibit of the movement at the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York.

Elizabeth Brown, Flutist:

Elizabeth Brown combines a successful composing career with an extremely diverse performing life, playing flute, shakuhachi, and theremin in a wide variety of musical circles. Her chamber music, shaped by this unique group of instruments and experiences, has been called luminous, dreamlike and hallucinatory. The highly successful A Bookmobile for Dreamers is the most recent in a series of collaboration with visual artist Lothar Osterburg. A Juilliard graduate and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, Brown's music has been heard in Japan, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Australia, South Africa and Vietnam as well as across the US and Europe. She has received grants, awards and commissions from Orpheus, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Newband, the Asian Cultural Council, the Japan/US Friendship Commission, Meet the Composer, the Electronic Music Foundation, the Cary Trust, and NYFA. A new solo CD, Elizabeth Brown: Mirage was recently released by New World Records. She is currently Composer-in-Residence at Montclair State University. (http://www.ElizabethBrownComposer.com)

Karen Young, Costume Designer:

Karen Young has designed costumes for numerous dance and video art projects, which have been seen in theaters and museums all over the world. She has collaborated as a costume designer with many internationally renowned video artists, with recent projects including David Michalek’s Slow Dancing (Lincoln Center Festival, Venice Biennale), and Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation’s 89 Seconds at Alcazar (Whitney Biennial, MoMA) and The Rape of the Sabine Women. Her design work for dance can be seen in the repertoires of American Ballet Theater, Benjamin Millepied, Pascal Rioult, Armitage Gone! Dance, Elisa Monte, Keigwin + Company, Pam Tanowitz, Noemie Lafrance, and the Martha Graham Dance Company, amongst many others. Karen was recently a visiting fellow at London College of Fashion and holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. (http://www.karenyoungcostume.com)