INFO

Erika Tsimbrovsky 

is an innovator in the field of improvised theatre and dance performance. Tsimbrovsky has an MFA in Dance with three decades of experience of collaboratively creating artwork with diverse communities. During this period of time, she co-founded the award-winning experimental performance group EVM Laboratories to research the interaction between diverse media structures and to develop specific improvisational performance techniques. Avy K Productions is the San Francisco-based incarnation of her and visual artist Vadim Puyandaev’s 30-year collaboration, featuring their signature “audio-visual-kinetic” approach, which brings together contemporary dance, live painting, evolving material installation, video projection, and live music. 

She is multicultural and multilingual and has lived and practiced in six countries. Her practice coalesces somatic (bodily) explorations, visual art principles, and tools of movement and improvisation in both theatre and dance, resulting in experimental dance/art installation that she calls “asemic”— in other words “outside of normative understanding.” She explores new ways to engage the public as an active observer of performance. The projects she is creating are highly collaborative, emphasizing community diversity and equal opportunities for each person involved in the creative process. 

She is currently in the Ph.D. program in Performance Studies at UC Davis. Tsimbrovsky’s current research focuses on contemporary inclinations towards performance art with communities in the art/dance field. Objects of her inquiry include: dance installations, (r)evolutionary arts, somatic feminisms, notions of otherness, and the generation of engaged local communities. CV

Vadim Puyandaev
 
(visual artist/performer) has worked as a painter, sculptor, and designer for three decades and has been participating in multi-media dance performances since 1994. His fine art has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Russia, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, France, Spain, Canada, and the US. Puyandaev had also produced numerous pieces of monumental art, including a commission to design a bridge over the Red Sea in Israel. With Tsimbrovsky, he is a founding member of the creative collectives EVM Laboratories (Israel) and Avy K Productions (US), dedicated to investigating what emerges in performance at the nexus of different genres. www.vadimpuyandaev.com

Laura Maguire

originally hails from Ireland, where she studied Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue her graduate studies and received a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University in 2005. She has taught in the Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) and Structured Liberal Education (SLE) programs, as well as in the Department of Philosophy at Stanford. Laura studied many forms of dance and movement, most notably Argentine Tango and Contact Improvisation. She co-produced a number of multidisciplinary performances with Avy K Productions. With composer/musician Alex Pinto, she was co-founder and co-director of SF Offside, a jazz festival. For over five years, she has been writing about local musicians and composers under the moniker Live ‘n’ Local SF. From 2010-11, Laura lived in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai where she taught Contact Improv and formed the Dance Chiang Mai community network, which now has over eight hundred members. She worked with local performing arts collective CNX Art Connex, and produced several multidisciplinary art events. Since returning to San Francisco in 2011, Laura has served as Director of Research for the nationally syndicated public radio program Philosophy Talk. Her philosophical writing appears regularly on the blog, Philosophers’ Corner.