MEDIATHEK

Liss Fain's choreography has been performed at and presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival; Belya Vezha International Theater Festival and Grodno Drama Theater in Belarus; the Contemporary Dance Forum in Poland; California State Summer School of the Arts; Southside Theater, Edinburgh Festival Fringe; Celebrate Dance; West Wave Dance Festival; Central Coast Summer Dance Fest; Theater Artaud; Cowell Theater; ODC Theater; Julia Morgan Center for the Arts; Zeum; San Jose State University; the International Computer Music Conference; Valley Center for the Performing Arts; and the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. While in Boston in the 1980's, her company performed at, among others, the Downtown Dance Festival, NYC; the Cunningham Studio, NYC; ArtCulture Resource Center, Toronto; Dance Umbrella, Boston; Harvard University; University of Massachusetts; Colby College; Clark University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Visual Studies; Portland Center for the Arts and First Night Boston. As "A choreographer who takes the chances...that matter" (Voice of Dance), Ms. Fain's approaches to performances range from concerts of all dance pieces to works integrating dance, visual design and technology. In the 1980's she began experiments in dance and video at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T. This was followed by projects with San Francisco's Exploratorium (The Physics of Dance) and the Apple Multimedia Lab (Moss Landing Project). In 1999, Ms. Fain collaborated with visual designer Matthew Antaky and video artist Peter Chang on Sojourn at Alexandria, presented in association with Theater Artaud. Sojourn at Alexandria, the first of a two-part project exploring ways in which the Internet can interface with live performance, projected images of dancers who were on a stage in the lobby onto a front scrim and rear screen on the stage, creating a three-dimensional set. ZDTV filmed rehearsals and interviewed the choreographer, set designer, video producer and Internet consultant for a story that aired several times on their cable station. MRD Media web cast the dance and created a magazine-style story. This was followed in 2000 with Quarry, a collaborative work that used the Internet to stream real-time images of a sculptor (Richard Deutsch) working on a piece-in-progress in the Napa valley into the theater. Demonstrating how technology can be used to reach out to a broad audience, Quarry was also live cast over the Internet on opening night, and streamed on demand at www.lissfaindance.org for the next two months. From 2001-2003, Ms. Fain designed and produced concerts that integrated into an evening-length piece the works of several choreographers and visual designer Matthew Antaky. The project, called Frames of Light, combined the dynamic range of multiple pieces with the cohesion of a single work, expanding the reach of dance and performance and bringing in audiences from many disciplines. In 2004, Liss Fain was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission for the creation of Eclipse, integrating dance with live video presence of Mongolian Throat singer Ulziisaikhan Lkhagvadorj. Austin Forbord created the video and Matthew Antaky the set and lighting. Liss Fain has received funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, The US Embassy in Poland, The US Embassy in Belarus, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; The Walter A. Gerbode Foundation, C.A.S.H., the Fort Mason Foundation, the Marin Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tides Foundation, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, and corporate and individual donors. She studied modern dance at the Cunningham Studio and ballet with Svetlana Afanasieva, Richard Thomas, Maggie Black and Marie Paquet. In NYC, she danced with Twyla Tharp Dance and Battery Dance Company. (Quelle: www.lissfaindance.org) / jst