Performers

Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos was born in Los Angeles and went to UC Santa Cruz, where earned a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and a graduate certificate in Theater Arts. As a student he co-directed Grupo Folklórico Los Mejicas de UCSC and began creating experimental dance-theater pieces. Last year, he premiered his first San Francisco show,“STICK,” through a residency at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory and developed a solo through the “Jotos and Homeboys Project” at Galería de la Raza. He has performed in the works of Sommer Ulrickson, Erika Shuch/ESP Project, Keith Hennessey/Circo Zero, Jesse Hewit, Pearl Marill/Pump Dance Theater, Naked Empire Bouffon Company, and Jenny McAllister. He also currently serves as an arts administrator at Dancers’ Group. Besides dreaming up performance projects for the future, Jorge is a developing movie buff and constantly strives to be more like foreign/ classic film actors.

Shawnrey Notto has been known to dance, act, nude art model, play with kids, farm, make incredibly expressive faces despite herself; make equally expressive and crazy sounds; soak in copious amounts of sunshine, wish she were in nature, travel around and learn new languages and cultures, be silly, feel like she’s in outer space, .  At some point in all these activities, she went to elementary, middle and high schools in Arizona and Arkansas; then to Pomona College in SoCal; then to Korea where she taught high-school boys English, and high school teachers Salsa, and caused the entire student body to laugh at her while she danced at the all this boys’ school talent show.  She’ll never do that again.  Then she tried out NYC where she wore shiny black leather from head to toe; or nothing but chains, a whip, and fire while performing on stage for lots of celebrities and rich business people.  Now she’s in San Francisco where she sometimes dances with cool people, sometimes teaches yoga, is often nude, and always, just is.

Julie E. Phelps was born in a small town with the Mississippi River running through.   She is steeped in the magic and mystery of that river. As a child she was absorbed by the world stage, theatre and character creation became an obsession.  She metaphorizes art-making as a river that pours through space and time collecting the silt of people and places, arriving at a cloudy release that is merely another beginning.  Time has brought Julie through studying dance and art history, receiving a BA in psychology and landing her in San Francisco in 2007.  In San Francisco she has studied dance with Sara Shelton Mann, is staff at CounterPULSE, works as co-curator/assistant with Keith Hennessy, performed in Jesse Hewit’s Total Facts Known, and gets involved with a variety of other curating and performing.  Julie is frothing with excitement for the upcoming residency project at CounterPULSE under Hewit’s direction.

Loren R. Robertson is a dancer, performance/media artist, and owner/videographer/editor of Loren R. Robertson Productions [please make this a link – www.lorenRRobertson.com].  She has danced in works by varying artists Catherine Galasso, Ming Lung-Yang, Trisha Brown, Augusto Soledade/Brazz Dance Theater, paige starling sorvillo/blindsight, Penny Arcade, and now Jesse Hewit! Her video work has been presented at Root Division in S.F., the Moving Images Dance + Film Festival and the A.P.E. Movement Series in MA, and the Taos Mountain Film Festival.  Loren’s most recent video/audio design work has manifested in collaborations with Alyce Finwall, Jesse Hewit (in Total Facts Known), Catherine Galasso, Vivvyanne Forevermore, Elijah Minelli & Lily Taylor, and solo at various Bay Area gallery spaces.
Her business, Loren R. Robertson Productions is a San Francisco Bay Area-based video production business specializing in video documentation, promotion and design for performance.  LRRP works with performance venues, schools, presenting organizations, and individual performing artists and companies of all kinds who need professional framing and preservation of the events and shows they produce and would like to continually increase their potential for future funding, recognition and support.  As a performer and artist herself, her work is close to her heart and purpose.  She is thrilled to be continually investing in, giving to, and growing within the Bay Area performing arts community.

Maryam Farnaz Rostami is a performing artist working in the realms of movement-based theater and through the medium of drag. In the last year, she performed in Jesse Hewit’s Total Facts Known at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, was in two plays produced by Golden Thread Theater Company for the ReOrient Festival, has performed at SOME THING at the Stud, and in Laura Arrington’s SQUART. Maryam was trained as an architect and currently designs affordable housing. Her aspiration is to contribute to the human experience of the sublime.

Erika Chong Shuch is a choreographer and director, and big fan of Jesse!  Thanks to the wonderful support of Jessica Robinson Love, Erika was a resident artist at 848 Community Space many, many years ago, and is thrilled to be performing at the amazing Counterpulse! As an aesthetically-driven artist who flirts with everything from needlecrafts to music-making, Erika’s interdisciplinary performance work reflects her attraction to collapsing the space between multiple forms. Erika has developed work through her residency at Intersection for the Arts since 2004, through commissions by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Dancers’ Group’s ONSITE program, and under the mentorship of Joe Goode as two-time recipients of CHIME, a grant and mentorship program of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.  She co-founded and co-directed the Experimental Performance Institute at the former New College (RIP!).  She choreographs and directs for Campo Santo, Shotgun Theater Company, and in 2009, as a guest artist at Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange in Washington DC. Erika has devised new work with students as a guest artist at American Conservatory Theater’s MFA program, Naropa University in Colorado, ODC’s JAMS, and UC Berkeley’s Dance, Theater, and Performance Studies program, as well as the university’s Graduate School of Education.  A recipient of the Gerbode Foundation’s Emerging Choreographer’s Award, and the SF Goldie, Erika’s work has been supported by organizations such as the Headlands Center for the Arts, Center for Cultural Innovation, Irvine Foundation, Djerassi, Zellerbach Family Fund, and SF Arts Commission. Erika will be a resident artist at the deYoung Fine Arts Museum in September, 2010. www.erikachongshuch.org

Charles Slender has worked as a dance artist throughout Russia and in the US, Hong Kong, Poland, Latvia, Mexico, and France.  He is the founder and Artistic Director of FACT/SF – a contemporary dance-theatre company based in San Francisco.  His work for FACT/SF has been described as bringing “a leathery glamour to the Bay Area dance scene… [with] a movement vocabulary that is whip smart and sinuously stealth.”  In addition to his work as a choreographer, Charles continues to perform, most recently in works by Jesse Hewit and Laura Arrington.  Charles is currently on faculty at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and was visiting faculty at the American Dance Festival in 2007 and 2009. Before returning to the United States in 2008, Charles worked primarily in Russia, with commissions from Dialogue Dance Company, Acid Rain, and the Yekaterinburg University of the Humanities (YUH).  REMNANT (for Acid Rain), was noted for “balancing on the edge of kitsch and something more serious…paradoxical and interesting.”  He also served as the Artist in Residence at YUH in 2007/2008, and was a Visiting Lecturer at the Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University (2008) and at YUH (2006).  In 2007, The Fringe Club (Hong Kong) presented three new works Charles developed in collaboration with Emily Woo Zeller.  In 2006 and 2007, he danced for Provincial Dances Theatre in Yekaterinburg, Russia, under the direction of Tatiana Baganova.  With Provincial Dances he toured internationally, taught company and master classes, and collaborated on new works. Charles graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, with degrees in English Literature and Dance and Performance Studies.  While at Berkeley he received the Chancellor’s Eisner Award for “highest achievement in the creative arts” and the Hickman Undergraduate Scholarship for “continued excellence and achievement in dance.

Anna Martine Whitehead uses video, puppets, sound, and movement to address disremembered histories. Working within thematic discourses of diaspora, memory, melancholia, and desire, her practice narrativizes those invisible and unwritten moments where hybrid identities and collective knowledges meet.  In a range of capacities – including performance artist, puppeteer, death metal drummer, lone wolf, and cowboy crooner – Anna Martine has shown and performed at numerous theatres, bars, and backyards in the Bay Area (including Southern Exposure, the Garage, SOMArts, Climate Theatre, and Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory) and up and down the Eastern Seaboard.  She is a recent graduate of California College of the Arts, with a Masters in Fine Arts, Social Practice.   Find her on the web at withheartinmouth.blogspot.com, or in the recently published Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism.

Evan Johnson creates physical theatre and performance work through devised/ensemble strategies, is also a playwright, director and teaches young people theatre skills through the SF Rec and Parks. His solo work includes text, character, story explorations, movement, improvisation and occasionally, masks. He co-founded IT Speaks along with Jamie Van Camp in 2006, working collaboratively they created an absurd comedic showcase entitled “The Hello Show!” which premiered in 2007 and toured Northern California in 2008. A graduate of The Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA, Evan’s original play for one actor, “DON’T FEEL: The Death of Dahmer” was produced by 11.11 Art Group, at Mama Calizo’s Factory, as part of their 2010 DIY Resident Artists Program. Also at MCVF he co-created “SHAME!” with Naked Empire Bouffon (2009) and in Austin, TX, created a site-specific larval mask presentation, playing a female suicide bomber from Sri Lanka, under lots of layers of foam. Since 2007, Evan has performed as his eccentric female character, Martha T. Lipton (the failed actress) in short comedy acts, and regularly at dragshows here in SF since 2009. Johnson studied character-based comedy with Master Clowns, Giovanni Fusetti in Boulder, CO in 2007 and at Dell’Arte with Ronlin Foreman (’05 and ’06). Evan has also worked as an Intern with Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA in 2006. Some past noteworthy projects include featured performances in “Skinnyfat” the movie (’10), “Equus” at City Theatre in Sacramento, CA (’05) and touring India as a clown with Ricochet Circus Theatre (’06). Currently, he is working with The New Conservatory Theatre Center, as an Emerging Artist, where he will premiere a new full-length solo work entitled “PANSY” in 2012.

 Melecio Estrella was born in San Francisco, and grew up in less dense areas north of the bay.  He currently performs and teaches with Joe Goode Performance Group and Project Bandaloop as well as executing his own choreographies in various settings.  In the last ten years he has done things with: Scott Wells, Lizz Roman, Rachael Lincoln, Erika Shuch, Faye Driscoll, Andrew Ward, Frieda Kipar, the Moving On Center, Nancy Stark Smith and other folks. Melecio is taken by the kindness and rigor of Jesse Hewit, and happy to be working with him.