Take workshops with top guest artists, and learn the history and culture of art in New York City
Judy Dworin (Trinity/La MaMa Co-Founder)
Judy Dworin has been teaching at Trinity College since 1971 and envisioned the college’s Theater and Dance Department. At Trinity, Judy currently teaches classes in improvisation, InterArts, and courses relating to human rights topics and ritual and performance. She is the Artistic Director of the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, a professional multi-disciplinary performance group. Under Judy’s direction and commitment to process and collaboration, JDPE has received widespread recognition and critical acclaim for creating socially charged, visually powerful performance that often blends media, original text, song and sound score with movement. Since the Ensemble’s inception in 1989, JDPE has been presented at diverse venues across the Northeast including museums, arts centers, colleges and universities. JDPE also has toured nationally and internationally at established venues including the National Theater of Sofia, Bulgaria, The Joyce Soho, and the La MaMa Annex in NYC. Her wide-ranging repertoire of full-evening works and many shorter pieces give voice to gender, human rights, and earth-centered issues.
Judy’s collaboration with internationally-renowned Chilean poet and human rights activist, Marjorie Agosin, Donde Estas?, is the most widely toured piece in the repertory and focuses on the Mothers of the Detained/Disappeared in Chile and the Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo in Argentina. Dworin’s most recent project is a multi-arts collaboration with the women at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, CT. Time In, the public piece by JDPE and a cappella gospel singers Women of the Cross emerged from the multi-disciplinary workshops with the incarcerated women, and had a sold out run in November 2006. It is booked for multiple engagements throughout 2007-2008. In addition to her performance work, Judy initiated Moving Matters! - a long-term residency program for the Judy Dworin Performance Project, the non-profit arts umbrella organization, of which she serves as Executive Director.
Judy is the recipient of a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Individual Artist Grant and an NEA/Regional New Forms Grant as well as numerous state and private foundation grants for her work with the Ensemble and JDPP, Inc. In addition, in 1993, she was an artist-in-residence in Sofia, Bulgaria under the auspices of Dance Theater Workshop's special Suitcase Fund for Eastern Europe, the International Theatre Institute, and the Chitalishte Foundation. She has been selected by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts as a Master Teaching Artist for the state of Connecticut and is a recipient of a Distinguished Advocate for the Arts Award in 1998 and the prestigious Governor’s Arts Award in 1999. In 2001, she was awarded a Connecticut Bloomer Award by Northeast Magazine. In 2006 she received the Connecticut Dance Alliance Award for Distinguished Achievement and the Charter Oak Cultural Center Vision Award for Arts & Education. Her writing has been published in journals and books including Contact Quarterly, Northeast Magazine, Ellison Findly’s(ed) Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women and Marjorie Agosin & Betty Jean Craige’s (eds) To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11.
Michael Burke (Program Director)
Michael Burke is an award-winning NYC-based performance artist/“indie” film actor/activist/educator. He has been a member of Trinity College’s Theater & Dance Department since 2001.
A recipient of All Out Arts & New Village Productions’ “Best Performance Artist of 2003” Award, Burke juxtaposes spoken text, dance, visual imagery, video, music and sound score. His critically-acclaimed solo performance works have been presented nationally and throughout NYC at venues including Dixon Place, HOT! The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture (1999-2005), The Fuse Festival @ HERE Arts Center (2003), New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Series/The Joyce Soho (2002, 2005), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles, CA), Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The 2005 Single File Series (Chicago, IL), The Lit Lite Series, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival (2000-2003), The 2004 National Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival (Columbus, OH), Chashama, The Howl Festival, New York Dance Exchange at C.E.C. (Philadelphia, PA), The SEEN+HEARD Festival (Atlanta, GA), The Fresh Fruit Festival (2003, 2004), The GLUE Series curated by Rebecca Sloan, The Meeting House Theater (Philadelphia, PA), SVCS Theater (Hailey, Idaho), Ragged Blade Productions (St. Louis, MO), Brooklyn Arts Exchange among others. In 1999, Burke performed in the New York premiere of “NEA 4” performance artist Holly Hughes, in her show “Preaching to the Perverted.” Other performance credits include the legendary Penny Arcade’s 2007 Spiegelworld production, “Off Stage: The East Village Fragments” by the OBIE Award-winning Peculiar Works Project, among others.
Since 1998, Burke has collaborated with the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, a multi-disciplinary modern dance company, as a performer and teaching artist. Burke has danced for Australian choreographer Catherine Hourihan/tilt Performance Company and Shizu Homma. He has acted in leading roles in films by several established directors including multiple features by Todd Verow, Mike Kuchar, Maria Maggenit and Aron Kantor.
Burke is a member of New Dance Alliance’s Artist Advisory Panel, a resident artist at Dixon Place, and recipient of a 2003 Harkness Choreographer’s Grant at SUNY Purchase. He is the curator of the Moving Men series at Dixon Place. Burke has been a guest artist at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and taught performance workshops while touring his shows across the U.S.
Resident Acting Instructors
Polina Klimovitskaya holds an MFA in Directing from State Theater University, Moscow, Russia, and a Ph. D. from Yale University. She started her work as an actress and director in Moscow. She studied with disciples of K. Stanislavsky and E. Vachtangov, and directing with the last assistant of the great stage innovator, V. Meyerhold. In the U.S. she has performed at Yale Repertory Theater, and played Mama in the Academy Award-winning film Molly’s Pilgrim. Polina has directed numerous productions in Europe and in America, and is the founding director of the Terra Incognita Theater. She is a recipient of both the BACA Center for the Arts Award for her direction of Ida at the Window (Terra Incognita), and a Ruthberg Foundation Award for innovative teaching at Yale University. In addition to teaching at Michael Howard Studios, Polina has taught at Yale University, New York University, The National Shakespeare Conservatory, Stella Adler Studio, and Hunter College.
Grace Kiley studied acting with the renowned Broadway actress and teacher, Uta Hagen. She has taught acting for film and stage for 25 years, both privately and through other venues such as the New School for General Studies, Burlington College, and Johnson State College. She has also worked for the Farrelly Brothers through Fox Pictures as a private acting coach. Grace is the founder of Vermont Actor’s Workshop where she taught acting, directed and developed original scripts. She co-created the touring production, Theatre on Families, an educational program addressing social and family issues. Grace is a Life Coach specializing in the arts. She has a Masters in Counseling Psychology, and was Chair of Psychology at a liberal arts college where her teaching focused on dreams, unconscious communication, and Jungian theory. She has designed and hosted conferences on “Creativity in the Clinical Setting” and “Creativity, Process and Form.” Throughout her life she has produced and performed in countless professional theatrical productions and independent films. She is currently a member of SAG, Equity, and the HB Ensemble at HB Studio in New York City where she will be seen in “Summerfolk” directed by Austin Pendleton this September.
Selected instructors from SITI Company
SITI Company is an ensemble-based theater company whose three ongoing components are the the creation of new work, the training of young theater artists, and a commitment to international collaboration.
SITI was founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki to redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the United States through an emphasis on international and cultural exchange and collaboration. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, New York, SITI has expanded to encompass a year-round program based in New York City with a summer season in Saratoga. SITI believes that contemporary American theater must necessarily incorporate artists from around the world and learn from the resulting cross-cultural exchange of dance, music, art, and performance experiences. SITI Company is comprised of nine actors, four designers, a playwright, a stage manager, associate managing director, and managing director.
Lauren Moore (Program Assistant)
Lauren Moore is an alumna of the Trinity/La MaMa Program and a graduate of Trinity College. Lauren spent her youth in the prestigious pre-professional Cumberland Dance Company and later discovered a passion for acting and diverse genres of dance and performance in college. After moving to New York in 2001 and pursuing a professional career in performance, she later discovered a new passion - martial arts.
For the past four years, Lauren was the Program Director for The Manhattan Tae Kwon Do School and also taught martial arts. Lauren is excited to now be back at Trinity/La MaMa and working at the place that first opened her eyes to a multitude of NYC performance mediums