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Erika Tsimbrovsky

 

is an innovator in the field of improvised theatre and dance performance. Born in Kazakhstan, she studied modern and contemporary dance in Belarus, Moscow, Amsterdam, and the USA. Tsimbrovsky has an MFA in Dance with 20-30 years of experience as an innovative multidisciplinary artist. 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. Tsimbrovsky explores new ways to engage the public as an active observer. In her approach to art-making, she uses the principles of visual art, she draws inspiration from the tools of physical movement and improvisation in both theater and dance, resulting in an experimental dance/art installation. Her projects are highly collaborative with an emphasis on community diversity and equal opportunities for each person involved in the creative and research process. 

She is currently in the Ph.D. program in Performance Studies at UC Davis. Tsimbrovsky’s current research focuses on transformations that constantly happen in the contemporary dance field and their inclination towards performance art to create new discourses. Objects of her inquiry are dance installations, avant-garde arts, feminist arts, and notions of otherness. CV

Vadim Puyandaev

 

(visual artist/performer) has worked as a painter, sculptor, and designer for over twenty years 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.