ABOUT BODYSTORIES: TERESA FELLION DANCE
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance is a contemporary dance company that captures and communicates universal human encounters through dynamic, purposeful movement. We are a multifaceted, highly physical company laced with provocative, emotional, political and humorous edges. Our mission is to examine depths of society in their darkest and brightest moments and to inspire audiences to physically sense emotional and psychological aspects of the human condition on stage. Our work is intellectual and highly choreographed in every moment. It is intricately technical and controlled in every nuance, with a look that is not controlled. Live music is an important factor in many of our works. We also consistently work via in-depth collaborations in lighting, costume, video and set design. In addition to creating and performing innovative works, our company is committed to reaching diverse populations through outreach and education and maintaining a stable business model to sustain our work. Valuing international exchange, we collectively speak nine languages and research, perform, and collaborate with artists from five continents.
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance has shown work at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow, The Public Theater, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, University of Florida, ENTPE University (Lyon, France), NYU, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Bryant Park Summer Stage, BDF Edinburgh at EICC, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center at Gibney Dance Center, NY City Center, Dixon Place, UME, ICA Boston, 92nd St. Y, Naropa University, Franco-American Cultural Center, CPR-Center for Performance Research, 14th St. Y, Merce Cunningham Theatre, The Dance Complex, Southampton Arts Center, Southampton Cultural Center, Triskelion Arts, and in concerts with Phish, among others. Collaborations on original music under the direction of our Musical Director, John Yannelli, are vitally integrated into our productions. Music collaborators include Yannelli, Trey Anastasio, Phish, Ryan Lott, Ryan Edwards, Kevin Keller, and Carver Audain. We have also enjoyed in-depth collaborations with costume designers Nina Katan, Ljupka Arsovska, and Elena Comendador, set designer, Robert Gould, and video artists Nel Shelby, Jacob Hiss, and Charles Dennis.
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Teresa Fellion founded BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance in late 2011, after working as an independent choreographer since 2004. Fellion’s work has been positively reviewed by The New York
Times, NPR, The Huffington Post, The Scotsman, Oberon’s Grove, NYTheatre.com, The Skinny Magazine, World Dance Reviews, Edinburgh Festivals Magazine, Edinburgh Spotlight, Southampton Press, Stage Buddy, East Hampton Press, The Sun Journal, Broadway Baby, and Earth Press, among others. She has received the Choreographic Fellowship from SummerStages Dance Festival and ICA Boston and the American Dance Guild Fellowship for Jacob’s Pillow’s Choreographers’ Lab. Teresa has received grants for her work from The National Endowment for the Arts Window Award, O'Donnell Green Foundation for Music and Dance, Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Fund Grant, The New York Community Trust, and space grants from ITE-Inception to Exhibition, MANA Arts/Armitage Gone! Dance, Mount Tremper Arts, Field FAR Space, and at Triskelion Arts and Mark Morris Dance Center through the Mellon Foundation. Teresa’s choreography has been commissioned by NYC Department of Transportation’s Summer Streets, chashama, Marigny Opera Contemporary Ballet, Island Moving Company, and The Hudson River Museum via the Jordan Matter Dancers Among
Us exhibit. She has led workshops and master classes, and been commissioned to set work at University of Florida, Gainesville, NYU, Pace University, Castleton State College, University of Maine, Farmington, Jacob’s Pillow, Wilson College, and at several NYC and national performing arts schools. She has taught regularly at The Ailey School, Sarah Lawrence College, DreamYard Project, and Marquis Studios, and she is a faculty member and director of the Summer Dance Program at The Ross School.
Teresa was named Artistic Liaison between Cameroon & U.S. by president Paul Biya, while performing with National Ballet du Cameroun and at the National Soccer Cup Finals. She has performed for Lucinda Childs, Sarah Skaggs, Kimberly Young, M’Bewe Escobar, Skip Costa, and Martha Bowers, and she has performed works by Twyla Tharp, Deganit Shemy, Liz Lerman, and Megan Boyd, among others. Teresa completed a Dance MFA from Sarah Lawrence under Bessie Schonberg Scholarship, Certificate from the Ailey School under scholarship, and BA in French & English Literature, with a minor in dance from NYU as a merit scholar.
Connect with us:
bodystoriesfellion.org
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Link to Press Kit: http://bodystoriesfellion.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/EPK_02_01_2016- smallest.pdf
Link to Reviews: http://bodystoriesfellion.org/press-quotes/
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance exists to embody the raw, rhythmic force of universal human encounters, conversing at the core of emotional commonality. We aim to share art that inspires audiences to physically sense emotional and psychological aspects of the human condition onstage, which can then connect to their own expansive potential. Our company values international awareness and interchange by speaking nine languages and researching, living, performing, and collaborating with
artists in four continents. We fertilize expanding worlds of collaborative innovation in dance, music, puppetry, lighting, and costume, video, and set design.
BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance uses highly athletic, technical physicality, spatial architecture, group sculptural shapes, soft touches, intense partnering, rhythmic syncopation, comedic timing, playful movement, and feats of tested balance to fully experience power, subtlety, and nuance of movement and expression. Strong influences of modern, ballet, postmodern, jazz, Central & West African dance, outdoor activities, writing, and theater inform work capturing momentum and risk of tomboys, grace of ballet dancers, rhythmic pulse of
African dancers, adventurous sense of the outdoors, dramatic intention of actors, and the precision, questioning, and profundity of intellectuals. Always human and always movement, we investigate
approaches to performativity; moments of intimate connection and conflict; female, familial, and social identities; and relations between internal experience and external worlds—natural images,
humanitarian issues, futuristic worlds. Audience members claim the resulting movement catapults the viewers’ passion, wraps it into twisting curvatures onstage and returns it with the power of a lighting
bolt.
“ Teresa Fellion’s choreography is like a car engine of movement; transference of energy that is constantly
remolded/shifted, and brings us to a beautiful place”¦”
—Celeste Miller (Jacob’s Pillow International Dance Festival)
"The fourth piece, (Fault Line) however, was probably my favourite of the entire showcase. Four female
dancers led a spellbound audience through a visual tale of romance, desire and the compromises we make
for love. BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance have stepped bravely up to the mirror and refused to shy away
from our most unpleasant characteristics, while unfailingly celebrating the potential for beauty within each of us. Through repeated movements, loving touches and some of the angriest dance I have ever seen women undertake on the stage, this group has created true magic.”
—Caroline Whitham (Edinburgh Festivals Magazine)
Learn More: http://www.bodystoriesfellion.org