Artists & Projects Directory
Nora Chipaumire
Okwui Okpokwasili (Performer)
Okwui Okpokwasili's credits include "Leda" in Sounding at HERE Arts Center, "Goneril" in Young Jean Lee Theater Company's LEAR at Soho Rep, "Joan" in Joan Dark, a co-production of the Goodman Theater and the Linz 09 European Culture Capital. With the early support of 651Arts & FUSED, Okpokwasili premiered the 2010 Bessie Award winning Pent-Up: a revenge dance at PS 122, an original work made in collaboration with and directed by Peter Born. She recently completed a tour of Ralph Lemon's latest piece, How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?and together they were a featured duet at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. For her performance in the third installation of Ralph Lemon's Geography Trilogy, Come Home, Charley Patton, she received a 2005 Bessie Award for Performance. Okpokwasili has worked with Annie Dorsen, Richard Foreman, Josh Fox, Melanie Joseph, Richard Maxwell and Dean Moss.
Eric Ting (Director)
Eric Ting is Associate
Artistic Director at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT.
Recent directing credits include world premieres of Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present a Presentation...
(Victory Gardens Chicago) and Aditi Kapil's Agnes
Under the Big Top at Long Wharf; Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy (American Repertory
Theatre); and Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked!
An Entertainment... (Shakespeare Santa Cruz). Other credits include: world
premiere adaptations of Macbeth[1969] and
Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea, both
at Long Wharf. Recent developmental workshops
include Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate (Vineyard Arts Project), Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's A Soldier's Tale (Marin Theatre), as well as workshops and
readings at ACT, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Berkeley Rep, the LARK, the
Vineyard Theatre and the Public Theater among others. Ting's work has been
presented internationally, including France, Canada, Romania,
the Czech Republic,
Hungary, and Bali. He has taught acting, directing, mask, and puppetry
in various workshops across the country; and is a founding member of the
artists' collective INTELLIGENT BEASTS. Awards and grants include a 2012 MAP
Fund Award and a TCG New Generations Future Leaders fellowship, as well as the
Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize.
Omar Sosa (Soundscape Composer)
Cuban composer and pianist Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene
today. He fuses a wide range of jazz, world
music, and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a
fresh and original urban sound - all with a Latin jazz heart. Omar Sosa's musical trajectory has taken him
from Camagüey
and Havana to touring in Angola, the Congo, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua in the
1980s; to a sojourn in Ecuador in the early 1990s; to an extended presence on
the San Francisco Bay Area Latin jazz scene; to his current engagement with
artists from France, Cuba, Brazil, and several North, West, and East African
nations. Sosa received a lifetime
achievement award from the Smithsonian Associates in Washington,
DC in 2003 for his contribution to the
development of Latin jazz in the United States. He has received six GRAMMY nominations, as
well as two nominations from the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards, in 2004 and
2006. In 2003 he received the
Afro-Caribbean Jazz Album of the Year Award from the Jazz Journalists
Association in NYC for his recording Sentir;
and a nomination from the Jazz Journalists Association for Latin Jazz Album of
the Year in 2005 for his recording Mulatos,
featuring Paquito D'Rivera. Omar Sosa has
received orchestral commissions from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San
Francisco and the Oakland East Bay Symphony; the city of Girona, Spain and the
Festival de Músicas Religiosas y del Mundo de Girona; and from the Barcelona
Jazz Festival to present a tribute to Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue recording, featuring Afro-Cuban interpretations of the
seminal Davis work on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
Olivier Clausse (Lighting and Visual Designer)
Olivier Clausse lives in Le Mans, France. Clausse's career in lighting started in the
cinema where he worked on feature-films with Philippe de Broca, Jacques
Audiard, Philippe Harel, Pierre Salvadori, Raul Ruiz, Olivier Marchal, among
others. In 1996 he collaborated with the
performing artist Stefan Fortin, for El
Amor Es Ciego and in 1999 with Abdel Baybay for Au Hasard des Oiseaux. From 1999 to 2001 he was the resident
lighting engineer/designer of the Tapis Franc Company (street arts) and is
currently the lighting engineer/designer for Têtes d'Atmosphere. In 2001, Clausse founded Baltringos- a
collective of builders and plastic artists. Since 2005, he has worked with choreographer and performer, Florence
Loison and her company, Zutano Bazar, as a videographer and lighting designer.
Naoko Nagata (Costume Designer)
Naoko Nagata started her career as a biochemist in Japan. Her evolution into
costume making is a long story. With literally no formal training, Nagata's
first costume was created for Jeanine Durning in 1998. From that moment, she
has been creating for a diverse group of choreographers and dancers non-stop.
She has collaborated with Amanda Loulaki, Bebe Miller, Carrie
Ahern, David Dorfman Dance, Doug Elkins, David Neumann, Ellis Wood, Gina
Gibney, Liz Lerman, Nina Winthrop, Nora Chipaumire, Reggie Wilson, Tiffany
Mills, Urban Bush Women, Zvi Gotheiner and many, many others. Working closely
with collaborators, Naoko helps bring to life what she herself calls, "the
creation of a shared dream." Nagata's work has been seen on both
international and national mainstages including: The Kennedy Center
(Washington, D.C. ); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA );
Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (Tallahassee, FL); PACT Zollverein (Essen, Germany); Museum of
Contemporary Art (Chicago, Il); Royce Hall UCLA Theater(Los Angeles, CA);
Walker Art Center(Minneapolis, MN); Dance Theater Workshop (New York, NY),
Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York, NY); Danspace Project (New York, NY);
Joyce theater (New York, NY); Dance New Amsterdam (New York, NY); and Joyce SoHo
(New York, NY).