Christopher Williams from New York

Christopher Williams is a dancer, choreographer, puppeteer and performance artist based in New York. His striking choreography, immense charisma and incredible technique has prompted the New York Times to describe him as "...one ingenious guy...visionary imagination both conceptual and choreographic". He has danced with Tere O’Connor Dance, Douglas Dunn & Dancers, John Kelly, Yoshiko Chuma, the Eliza Miller Dance Company, and Rebecca Lazier’s TERRAIN, among others. He is a co-founder of a consortium of choreographers called Three Hand Star, and his own works have been presented both domestically in several New York City venues, and internationally in the Casa del Teatro Nacional in Bogotá, Colombia. He currently serves on the Artist Advisory Board for the Danspace Project, and lives in Brooklyn.

Motion-Lab from San Francisco

Motion-Lab has been called one of San Francisco's "most progressive, athletic and all-around bitchin' dance companies..." - San Francisco Metropolitan. Described as "visceral" and "vigorous," Motion-Lab's innovative mix of physical post-modern dance, underground performance art, cutting edge electronic music and fearless improvisation is sure to set the Wellspring Theater stage on fire. Motion-Lab was formed in 1998 by dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf and musician Albert Mathias as a perpetual experiment of dance and music. The drive is a shared passion in the chemistry and potency of sound and motion.

Monica Bill Barnes from New York

Monica Bill Barnes is a New York based choreographer described by Deborah Jowitt of The Village Voice as "one of the wittiest young choreographers around--she can stir your heart as well as make you laugh." Barnes has created eleven evening-length dance works for her own company, Monica Bill Barnes & Company arranging from a two woman vaudevillian traveling side show to an intergenerational dance extravaganza for fifteen performers. Her dances have been produced in over twenty venues in New York City and have been presented nationally and internationally by organizations including Jacob's Pillow, The International Fabbrica for Choreographers (Florence, Italy), and Tanz Festival (Karlsruhe, Germany), among others.

Margie Gillis from Montreal, Canada

Margie Gillis is an internationally acclaimed solo dance artist. She has been performing her dance concerts across Canada and internationally for three decades. As choreographer and performer of over 80 dance works, she has earned rave reviews throughout the world for her personal, emotional and dramatic portrayals of human hopes, fears, joys and anguish. Marilyn Tucker writes about Ms. Gillis in the San Francisco Chronicle, “In 20 years I have seen no-one who comes close to her extraordinary artistry as a solo performer…She is one of the few dancers in the world to be able to sustain a solo program on her own”.

Snappy Dance Theater from Boston

Snappy Dance Theater uses the diverse backgrounds of its members (dance, circus performing, theater, martial arts, gymnastics and puppetry) to stimulate and inspire audiences by creating an edgy, yet accessible style of dance for audiences of all ages and all backgrounds. Founded in 1996, Snappy, under the artistic direction of Martha Mason, has quickly become a major driving force of the Boston dance and performing arts scene. In December 2002, Snappy was ranked as the 9th largest performing arts organization by attendance in Greater Boston by the Boston Business Journal, during which more than 34,000 patrons saw any one of Snappy's 99 performances. The group is dedicated to creating compelling performances which "work the edge" of oxymoron - emotions and images which contradict themselves in Art, as in real life.

Alexandra Beller from New York

Alexandra Beller, a former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member, graduate of the University of Michigan and successful founder of her own company, has reworked both the conventions of dance performance to embrace text and spoken word and the conventions of traditional expectations of body type expected of a professional dancer.  The subject of a series of nudes by Irving Penn at the Whitney Museum, Beller is quickly gaining recognition as one of the dance world's most unique assets for her “slinky, slithery quality” of movement informed by her large-framed body, which is highly non-traditional for a dancer.

Urban Bush Women from New York

Urban Bush Women is well-known for their two decade history of fusing dance, music and storytelling with strong multi-cultural interest and characteristic rule breaking choreography and artistic virtuosity. Founded in 1984 by modern dancer/choreographer Jawole Jo Zollar, the Urban Bush Women ensemble weaves contemporary idioms with African-American folklore and spiritual traditions to create dance/music/theater works that celebrate the struggle, growth, transformation and survival of the human spirit.  Urban Bush Women has received commissions from the Walker Art Museum, the Lincoln Center Institute, American Dance Festival and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.  Awards include the 1998 Doris Duke Awards for New York via the American Dance Festival, the prestigious 1994 Capezio Award and the 1992 New York Dance and Performance Award.

Zephyr Dance from Chicago

Zephyr Dance of Chicago was founded in 1989 by dancer/choreographer Michelle Kranicke as "an organization committed to showcasing the strength of the feminine voice". Each new work is born out of an intensive period of improvisation involving the dancers and designers as integral parts of the creative process. Zephyr is committed to making dance accessible to diverse audiences, and to the advancement of women and girls in pursuit of creative endeavors. The all-female company performs and teaches extensively throughout Chicago and the Midwest.

Artichoke Dance Company from New York

Artichoke Dance Company was founded in 1995 by Lynn Neuman and Amy Drum with the purpose of "providing a vehicle for artists to explore and create dance and performance works in a collaborative and supportive environment and bring these works to a broad audience". Since its debut, Artichoke has presented five New York seasons as well as toured the eastern and Midwestern states. Artichoke has performed at events including the New York International Fringe Festival , Toronto 's Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and New York 's Dance Now series.

GooSayTen from Sapporo, Japan

GooSayTen, which translates to "an incidentally actualized Heaven" was founded in 1995 and has performed and offered movement workshops throughout Japan, Germany, Poland, Russia and the United States. GooSayTen's founder, Itto Morita, whose given name is Toshiharu Kasai, is also an Associate Professor at Hokkaido Institute of Technology in Sapporo, teaching behavioral and cognitive psychology and doing research into the mind-body relationship. His partner, Mika Takeuchi, works as a dance therapist at a day care program for the mentally disabled. It is the blending of psychology and therapeutic movement which make GooSayTen unique even among Butoh troupes. GooSayTen's workshops, like their performances, combine movement with psychology, working toward the integration of mind-body-spirit.

An avant-garde Japanese dance form that originated in the 1950's by Tatsumi Hijikata, butoh is difficult for the western mind to comprehend but fascinating, nonetheless. A reaction to the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and Hijikata's personal hardships, butoh speaks to the dark part of the soul, but also to the process of healing and the rebirth and renewal that follows. Sometimes called the "Dance of Darkness", butoh uses Shinto imagery and excruciatingly slow movement to set up a meditative state not only for the dancers but for the audience as well. GooSayTen founder Itto Morita says of his art form; " In the most ideal and 'essential' butoh performance, what the audience sees is not the dancer's body but a non-materialized world--as if the dancer's body has become a prism allowing the audience to see something latent behind the performer. It is evidence of a return from a pilgrimage through the split parts of the self, and a recovery or creation of his/her wholeness."