Mission

Špela Sterle Dance is a contemporary dance group that fuses movement with an eclectic blend of art media. It is led by dancer and choreographer Špela Sterle, whose creations have been performed at The Performance Mix Series Spring 2003 at Joyce SoHo, Spoke the Hub's Winter Follies 2003, WAX, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Construction Company, The Dance Space Center, The Bridge for Dance, and The Broome Street Loft. The company's highlight was an evening concert entitled "Verve Dances" at Joyce SoHo's fall 2003 season.

Ms. Sterle came to New York from her native Slovenia in 1997, and her experience melding the cultures of two disparate lands has inspired her ever since. Her creative process involves initial inspiration, visualization, and then improvisation and collaboration with her dancers and other artists to create complex multimedia performances that are filled with both abstract beauty and pure, visceral emotion. Her movement vocabulary is far-ranging—and she uses it to explore nature, the human psyche, social behaviors and relationships.

For the past several years, she has been working with Slovenia-based visual media artist Matej Košir, costume designer Patti Gilstrap, and an American musician known simply as Acquaman. For "Verve Dances" she joined forces with more collaborators: jazz saxophonist and composer Andy Parsons, set designer Paula DiGioia, writer Michael Eldridge, and video artist Adam Etline.

Biographies

Špela Sterle was born in 1976 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the age of six, she began taking dance classes. Three years later she was selected for a jazz/tap dance group under the direction of Mojca Horvat and over the next five years participated in many performances, competitions, and television appearances with the group. When she was eleven she began training in classical ballet. In 1995, following her graduation from the Secondary School For Music and Ballet in Ljubljana, she joined the Slovenian National Ballet.

Ms. Sterle came to New York in 1997 to study at the Merce Cunningham Studio, where she was awarded a Merit Scholarship and a grant from the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. She has been studying Klein Techique and yoga, and is also a Pilates trainer. She has performed with Elke Rindfleisch, Jeffrey Bauer, Nayo Takasaki, Tina Croll, Pat Catterson, Himiko Minato, Stephanie Lazzara, Elise Knudson, and the NuVoLe Dance Theatre. She began presenting her own choreography in 1999.

Dancers

Cara Regan was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where she began dancing at the Boston Ballet School. She later studied at Walnut Hill School for the Arts and SUNY Purchase. In 1999 she graduated from Barnard College with a BA in Dance and departmental honors. She has resided in New York City since then and has performed with Valia Alexandratou, Robert Altman, Tina Croll, Cornfield Dance, Kara Cross Dance, Theresa Ling, Neta Pulvermacher, and Chantal Yzermans. She started dancing with Špela Sterle in 2001.

Stephanie Lazzara received her BFA in dance from Emerson College. Her choreography has been presented in New York at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The HATCH Presenting Series, Movement Research at the Judson Church, The Mulberry Street Theater (New Steps Series), One Arm Red, and WAX. Originally from Long Island, Stephanie moved to New York City in 1997 and has performed throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Philadelphia in the work of Elise Knudson and NuVoLe Dance Theatre. She has recently performed and collaborated with choreographer and designer Rebecca Davis and has been performing with Špela Sterle Dance for the past four years.

Eden Mazer was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and studied dance at Barnard College. She has performed with Gina Gibney, Sue Hogan, Kraig Patterson, and Dusan Tynek, among others. Eden's own choreography has been shown at Danspace Project, Joyce SoHo, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Windhover Center for the Performing Arts, and Cleveland State University. She appears in the Paramount Classics film Just a Kiss, choreographed by Megan Williams. Eden has taught movement workshops for the Women at Work Domestic Violence Project and currently teaches creative movement at Manhattan Country School. She is excited to be a part of Špela Sterle Dance.

Paulina Danilczyk attended the Polish National Ballet School at age nine and graduated in 1998. She performed for a year with the Polish Dance Theatre company and came to New York to study in 1999. She attended the Merce Cunningham Studio and graduated last December. Since then Paulina has danced with Špela Sterle, Henning Rusbam, Daniel Gwirtzman, Ellen Cornfeld, and the Isadora Duncan Company. She has also performed her own choreography, appearing at The Construction Company and Dance Space. Special thanks to Stewart for his love and support.

Stacy Sumpman was born in Virginia and attended the College of William and Mary before moving to New York City in 1995. She studies dance at the Merce Cunningham Studio and is a member of the faculty. She performed with Špela Sterle for the first time in October 2003 when she was seven months pregnant. She has also danced with Saeko Ichinohe, Mary Seidman and Dancers, Bryan Hayes, and the Cunningham Repertory Group.

Laura Caldow was born in Scotland and trained at the Central School of Ballet in London. She performed with Ballet Central in the UK. Since moving to New York, Laura has performed with Tina Croll, Arielle Javitch, Fran Spector in California, and with Mary Seidman and Dancers from 2001 to 2003. Laura was a scholarship student at the Merce Cunningham Studio.

Camilla Aarvåg graduated from the National College of Ballet and Dance, Oslo- Norway. She continued her dance studies on a scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio in NYC. She performed with several NYC-based choreographers, among them Špela Sterle. Camilla currently lives and works in Oslo, Norway.

Natalie Agee (guest dancer) has had the good luck to dance with her friends and inspirations: d9 Dance Collective (Seattle); Llory Wilson's Tallulah Dance Company (Seattle), with which she toured nationally and had residencies at Jacob's Pillow; Leslie Partridge; Isabel Gotzkowski; Patricia Wolf; Adrienne Truscott; Tanya Gagne; and other special people. She is a member of Sarah East Johnson's Lava and teaches acrobatics and trapeze around town.

Collaborators

Matej Košir is an artist working and living in Slovenia. In 2001 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana, where he is now studying for a master’s degree. He has won several awards for his work and has been awarded with two scholarships: the Scholarship for Exceptionally Talented Students and the Scholarship for Postgraduate Studies of Arts from the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. He has exhibited works on paper at Kudos Gallery, Sydney; The Long Gallery, University of Wollongong, New South Wales; the State Library of Queensland in Australia, and the International Video Workshop and Exhibition in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and he exhibits extensively throughout Slovenia.

Acquaman hails from Rockaway Park, New York. In addition to his musical collaborations for dance, he also plays guitar and drums for New York City bands The Desert Fathers and The Forms.

Andy Parsons is emerging as one of the most distinctive jazz composers and musicians of his generation. His music has been described as "eclectic" by critic Ira Gitler and "masterful, full of wonderful colors and surprise twists and turns" by jazz great Bob Mintzer. A new crop of Andy's compositions will be released in January 2003 with Flip, his third recording as a leader on the Sons of Sound label. Andy attended the Eastman School of Music, where he taught jazz theory, and earned his masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He also holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University. Among his most influential teachers are Jerry Bergonzi, Bob Mintzer, and Maria Schneider. As a student, Andy won numerous scholarships and awards, including a first place finish in Downbeat magazine's student music competition. He is proud to be a BMI composer and music publisher via his company Fundementia Music.

Michael Eldridge is a documentary and screenplay writer with years of experience and more than 150 programs to his credit, including the Emmy-nominated Attack on the Pentagon and episodes of American Justice (A&E), Biography (A&E), Wrath of God (History Channel), The Unexplained (A&E), and the History Channel/New York Times Times' Capsule Millennium Special. He is also the head writer on National Geographic's Interpol Investigates. He has recently finished a feature film for Emerging Productions in NY, Forget Me Nots, directed by Ann Hu (Shadow Magic).

Mr. Eldridge is also a short story writer whose work has been featured in the Knitting Factory Reading series. He is currently at work on his first novel, Intake.

Adam Etline is a professional web developer and the founder of Broken Meter Productions. He has received two bachelor degrees from Binghamton University and a Certificate in Digital Video Production from New York University. He created the film for the Špela Sterle Dance work "To Every Story" which was shown at the Joyce SoHo in New York City and was selected for Long Island University's Big Mini-DV Film Festival in Brooklyn, NY. He has worked on documentaries for Fill in the Blank Productions and Marshall Curry Productions, and he has volunteered at the Bicycle Film Festival. He is currently in development on multiple documentary projects with Back of the Class Productions, for which he is also a founder, and with Fill in the Blank Productions.

Paula DiGioia (set designer) attended private art school before entering Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Paula received BFA in communication design in May of 2003. She has recently worked with US Weekly and The L magazine. She is versatile freelance artist and graphic designer with an original and unique style.

Patti Gilstrap (costume designer) holds a BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 1996 and 1997 she attended the American Dance Festival on scholarship as the costume assistant. In 1997–1998 she toured as the Wardrobe Supervisor for the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble. She has designed costumes for many choreographers, including Sharon Kinney, Judith Steele, Incidents Physical Theater, Heather Harrington, Allen Danailson, Heidi Latsky, Teresa Wimmer, Ali Kenner, Pat Cremins, Sue Bernhard, K. J. Holme, Hudson Vagabond Puppets, Jen Chin, Špela Sterle, Mariana Marquez, Dana Doggett, Chris Ferris, and Aviva Geismar. Her designs can also be seen in Brooklyn at her clothing boutique, Flirt.

Julie Ana Dobo has been working in production management and lighting design for concerts, national festivals, special events, fashion shows, and performance art. She has been Technical Director and independent lighting designer at Joyce SoHo since 1998. Julie Ana has had the great pleasure of being involved with such artists as Urban Bush Women; Ralph Lemon; Bill T. Jones /Arnie Zane & Co.; David Rousseve/Reality, and Meredith Monk. She has also worked with such events as the Smithsonian Institute's annual Festival of American Folklife; the Lollapalooza Music Festival; the torch relay for the 1996 Olympic Games; the 1996 Cultural Olympiad at Centennial Park; the 2000 National Black Arts Festival; the 2001 Welcome Back to Brooklyn Festival; Picture: Red Hook 2002 (by Zaccho Dance Theater), and the annual Dancenow Festival.