Collaborators

DANS SHEEHAN (stage manager) Dans is originally from Australia but currently works as a lighting designer out of New York. Recent dance designs include work by Karole Armitage, Troy Powell, Kathleen Dyer, Dwight Rhoden & Johannes Wieland. Recent theatre design credits; Alice the Magnet (dir. Pam McKinnon); Hedda Gabler (dir Cigdem Onat); Le Bourgeois Avant Garde (dir. Emma Griffin); Mourn the Living Hector (dir. Shira Milikowsky), Never As Happy & Don Juan (dir. Javierantonio Gonzalez), Dead Letter Office & Scracth (dir. Meiyin Wang), Crime & Punishment (dir. Sheila Daniels), Bed Bugs (Samuel Buggeln). She is currently touring with David Dorfman Dance and Elevator Repair Service. MFA: NYU. www.danssheehan.com
SHAUN SUCHAN (production manager) is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a bachelor of arts in theatre from Ohio State University as well as a master’s of fine arts in theatrical lighting design from the University of Florida.  Shaun has designed lights for  for the Neta Dance Company, Marymount Manhattan College Spring Repretoire, the Midtown International Theatre Festival and NYC Fringe Festival, as well as several productions with Turtle Shell Productions.  Shaun is proud to work with such a wonderful group of artist in David Dorfman Dance.

JOE LEVASSEUR (lighting designer, Disavowal), has worked closely on lighting and production with many contemporary dance artists, including John Jasperse, RoseAnne Spradlin, Sarah Michelson, David Dorfman, Beth Gill, Maria Hassabi, Ashleigh Leite, Jennifer Monson, LeeSaar the Company, Anna Sperber, Megan Sprenger, Christopher Williams, Pavel Zustiak, and Big Dance Theater.  He also lit theater pieces at the Chocolate Factory and Brick theaters, and designed the Off-Broadway play Edge. Levasseur is a recipient of a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for his body of work for the 2007–08 season. When not in the theater, Levasseur is in the studio, pursing another calling as a visual artist. For more information visit joelevasseur.com.

JACOB PINHOLSTER (media designer) is a professor of Media Design at Arizona State University in the Herberger Institute School of Theatre and Film, one of the first design training programs in the country to offer a chance to specialize in projection/video design for live performance.  Associate artist with Les Freres Corbusier. Off-Broadway: Escape from Bellevue, Dixie’s Tupperware Party, Boozy (LFC).  New York: David Dorfman Dance’s underground (BAM) and Disavowal, Dance Dance Revolution (LFC), HeddaTRON (LFC). Regional: The Pee Wee Herman Show (LA), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Center Theater Group), Hoover Comes Alive! (La Jolla Playhouse), Current Nobody (La Jolla Playhouse, Woolly Mamoth Theatre Company).
 
JANE SHAW (sound designer, Disavowal) This is Ms. Shaw's first collaboration with David Dorfman.  Recent work includes Olympia Dukakis' adaptation of The Tempest entitled Another Side of the Island, CROOKED at the Women's Project, Hamlet at Theater for a New Audience, Big Dance Theater's Comme Toujours Here I Stand, The Widowing of Mrs. Holyroyd at the Mint (Lortel nomination), and Susan Marshall's Adamantine.  She is a recipient of the NEA TCG Career Development Program 2005-2007 and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.  Member, USA 829.

MIKE VARGAS (composer) began playing music in 1959.  His curiosity has led him through many contexts, from cocktail lounges in Indonesia to underground clubs in New York, from the Kennedy Center to cancer wards, from Grimm's fairy tales to Playback Theater. Vargas has specialized in improvisation and music for dance since 1978.  In addition to his ongoing pure music work, he has composed well over 100 commissioned dance scores.  His music has been heard across the US, in Europe, Mexico, Australia and Brazil.  Vargas also teaches in the dance department at Smith College, and in collaboration with Nancy Stark Smith in workshops and festivals around the world.  He has released 9 CD's of his music.

ALISON WONDERLAND (composer/vocalist) grew up in Seattle, and  is now a happy New Yorker. Disavowal marks Alison's song-writing and dance-world debut. A singer-actor with a deep love of movement, Alison has premiered compositions by Sven-David Sondstrom, Leslie Sommer, and Mark Nichols.  Onscreen, she has been directed by Greg Lachow,  and Ry Russo-Young, and, onstage, by Claus Feldbaum, Lisa Peterson, and Rita Giomi. This season Alison appeared as Lucy in  You Wont Miss Me (Sundance Film Festival Official Selection), Evita in Lilitus Girls Cabaret (The Triad,) and sang the Soprano Solo in The Passion of St. John  and in Carmina Burana (Musica Viva NYC.) Alison graduated from Indiana University. Thank you David, Susan, Herald, Mom and Mona.

ALEX TIMBERS (co-director underground) is an Obie Award-winning writer/director and Founder/Artistic Director of New York-based company, Les Freres Corbusier. Directing credits include Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, A Very Merry Unauthorized..., Hell House, Gutenberg! The Musical!, and Heddatron. His other credits include Peter and the Starcatchers for Disney Theatricals, co-directed with Roger Rees; The Language of Trees for the Roundabout Theatre Company; Beyond Therapy for Williamstown Theatre Festival; the Off-Broadway hit Boozy; and underground at BAM and internationally with David Dorfman Dance. For Gutenberg! The Musical!, Timbers was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for "Best Director of a Musical."For Hell House at St. Ann's Warehouse, his production was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for "Unique Theatrical Experience." A Very Merry Unauthorized... won Timbers an Obie Award as well as two Garland Awards for the LA production. The show was revived in 2006 at New York Theatre Workshop and was described by The New York Times as the "Best Revival of the Year." Dixie's Tupperware Party received a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which premiered at Center Theatre Group and was workshopped at Williamstown Theatre Festival, opened at the Public Theater in New York City in May 2009 to rave reviews, and is currently in an extended run again to raves at the Public.It was co-written by Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers. Les Freres Corbusier productions include Dance Dance Revolution, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Hell House, Heddatron, A Very Merry Unauthorized, and HOOVER COMES ALIVE! at La Jolla Playhouse.Timbers graduated from Yale University. In Fall of 2005, he served as an assistant director on the Broadway premiere of Jersey Boys by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, and recently directed The Pee-wee Herman Show here in L.A.


JONATHAN BEPLER (composer) has been doing music and sound in collaborative settings for many years. Recent projects include a mobile soundtrack for rural Japan, live surround-sound karaoke performances in NY and Europe, multi-channel sound installations at P. S. 1 and elsewhere, and a musique concrete porno score. He has worked often with choreographers including Sasha Waltz, Wendy Perron, Jennifer Lacey, Susan Rethorst, Jennifer Monson, KJ Holmes, DD Dorvillier, and Scotty Heron. He has composed the music for the Cremaster films in a ten-year collaboration with artist Matthew Barney. He won a 2005 New York Dance Performance Award (Bessie) for his score for John Jasperse’s California. Other recent projects include a commission by Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, an opera/film in Greece with artist Eve Sussman, and a multi-room collaboration with Sasha Waltz in Berlin.

CAMERON ANDERSON (set designer) Recent credits include –Opera: The Barber of Seville (The Opera Theatre of St. Louis), West Side Story (Central City Opera), Maria Padilla (The Minnesota Opera), Don Giovanni (Wolf Trap Opera), Cosi fan Tutte (Seattle Opera), The Village Singer and Lord Byron’s Love Letter (The Manhattan School of Music), Gypsy Songs (Gotham Chamber Opera/The Morgan Library), The Consul (Opera Boston), La Bohème (The San Francisco Opera Center), and Susannah and Romeo et Juliette (Festival Opera). Theatre: The Language of Trees (Roundabout Underground), A Feminine Ending (Playwrights Horizons), Emilie (South Coast Rep), Fault Lines (Naked Angels) directed by David Schwimmer, Massacre (The LAByrinth Theater Co., Public Theatre) Underground (David Dorfman Dance at BAM) Heddatron (Les Freres Corbusier), Dixie’s Tupperware Party (Ars Nova), Elvis People (New World Stages), Dead City, Anna Bella Eema and Belly (New Georges), Measure for Measure (Garson Theatre Company), and Much Ado About Nothing and Martha Mitchell Speaks (Shakespeare and Company). Upcoming projects include Cenerentola (Glimmerglass Opera), Heddatron (Center Theater Group), and La Boheme (Wolf Trap Opera). www.cameronanderson.net

JANE COX (lighting designer) Collaborations with David Dorfman include designs for underground, Older Testaments, Subverse and To Lie Tenderly.  She also has long term collaborations with choreographers Doug Varone (Bessie award, 2007) and Monica Bill Barnes. Recent theatre in New York includes: Roundabout Theatre; Public Theatre; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Playwrights Horizons; Signature Theatre; NYTW and Come Back Little Sheba and Dame Edna on Broadway. Jane designs regularly for the Guthrie Theatre and the McCarter Theatre, and designs opera for Minnesota Opera, Glimmerglass Opera and Juilliard Opera. She teaches adjunct at Princeton University and received her MFA from New York University.

BART FASBENDER (sound designer, composer) NY credits: Alex Timbers' Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (The Public); Humor Abuse (Manhattan Theater Club); A Body of Water (Primary Stages); Drunken City and Three Changes (Playwrights Horizons); Port Authority (The Atlantic); Made in Poland (The Play Company); Animals Out of Paper (Second Stage); Fault Lines (Naked Angels); A View From 151st Street and UNCONDITIONAL (LAByrinth); Democracy In America (PS122/The Foundry). Also Cherry Lane, SPF, The Exchange, Juilliard, Fordham University, Clubbed Thumb, BAM, Katharsis, Les Freres Corbusier, St. Ann's Warehouse. Regional: Williamstown, Berkshire Theatre, Barrington Stage, NY Stage & Film, CTG, Two River, TheaterWorks, Hudson Stage.

JULIE BALLARD (lighting supervisor, assistant media designer) Some of her favorite dance designs include 5 Characteristics of Brother (Marquez Dance), Rhapsody (Shapiro & Smith) and Falling on Lobsters in the Dark (Stephanie Carter).  She has worked for Hedwig Dance, Mordine & Co., Dance COLEctive, The Seldoms and Same Planet Different World.  Ms. Ballard has been a part of numerous festivals as well as American Dance Festival, and has toured nationally and internationally with David Dorfman Dance. Ms. Ballard is the lighting director and adjunct faculty at the Dance Center of Columbia College. Ms. Ballard is no stranger to theatre either, working with Signal Ensemble as an Artistic Associate designing both lights and media.  She has also worked with Irish Rep Theatre, Grey Zelda and Whitehorse Theatre Company.  Some of her favorite theatre designs include Cabaret (University of Florida), 1776 (Signal Ensemble Theatre) and I Sing (Whitehorse Theatre).Ms. Ballard earned her MFA from the University of Florida. www.overlaplighting.com
Prophets of Funk in Nashville
Join us at Vanderbilt University to see the first public performance of Prophets of Funk - Dance to the Music.

Click here for details