Stephanie Sleeper (artistic director) holds a B.F.A. in Modern Dance from the University of Utah and has worked as a freelance performer, choreographer and costume designer. The emerging choreographer has shown work at The Festival of New Musics (Dartmouth College), The Womens Art Center (Salt Lake City, Utah) The Hart School (Connecticut), as well as Raw Material, Waxworks, Studio A.I.R. and Williamsburg Freefest. As a performer she has worked with Ellis Wood, The Zuvuya Collective, Amy Caron, Jaxdance, Wasatch Dance Collective, SB Dance, Repertory Dance Theatre, and Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Stephanie also co-produces/curates Studio A.I.R., a monthly experimental performance series.
Angela Helland (dancer) is originally from Minnesota and currently makes her home in Park Slope, Brooklyn. After dancing in Minneapolis and Boulder, CO she decided to move east, despite her longstanding dream of living in a treehouse in the tropics. While living in New York she's had the wonderful opportunity to perform the work of Ellis Wood, Melinda Lee, David Dorfman and others. She's very grateful to Stephanie and the Sleepdance company for their patience, hard work, sense of adventure, and willingness to tour with a four month old baby. All her love to Nate and Oscar.
Jen Kosky (dancer) graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2004 with a BFA in Dance and a Minor in Film. She moved to Brooklyn shortly thereafter and has continued to pursue her passions for dance and video art. Jen has danced with Martha Williams/The MovementMovement, White Road Dance Media, Stephanie Sleeper/Sleepdance, Mare Hieronimous and Ellis Wood Dance. Jen also creates dances for the camera and other multi-media work and is currently working with the Zuvuya Collective.
Stephanie Griffin (violist) Acclaimed by the New York Times for her "fiery, full-throttle performance" and "virtuoso flair," Stephanie Griffin is a founding member of the Momenta Quartet and has performed internationally as a soloist and a chamber musician. Her greatest commitment is to the music of Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo, with whom she has collaborated since 1997. As a soloist, she has worked closely with a wide variety of composers, among them Kee Yong Chong; Matthew Greenbaum; Arthur Kampela; Ursula Mamlok and Tristan Murail. She is a regular guest with Continuum, and member of Argento, Transfiguration, String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC), the Riverside Symphony and the Princeton Symphony, where she serves as principal violist. An active improviser, she has worked with traditional Indonesian musicians and free jazz legend Butch Morris and performs regularly with Carl Maguire's avant-jazz band Floriculture. Ms. Griffin has recorded for Aeon, Koch, Arte Nova, Centaur, Harmolodic, Siam Records and Aksara, an independent Indonesian label. She studied viola with William Gordon, Paul DeClerck, Wayne Brooks and Samuel Rhodes and holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School.
Chris Mannigan (Alto saxophonist) began playing the saxophone in a remote region of northern New York state at age ten and hasn't stopped yet. He received degrees in composition and classical performance from Syracuse University where he studied with Ronald L. Caravan, Joe Riposo, Joseph Downing, Daniel Strong Godfrey and Harvey Teres. As a performer he's played ska in Columbus OH, bass saxophone in Sigurd Rascher's living room, Steely Dan covers in desperate upstate bars, Christmas music in the Borsht Belt, the Rocky Horror Show on Halloween, Polish folk songs in the Financial District, and with Carl Maguire's Floriculture in an idyllic village in Belgium. He has composed music for austere concert stages, dingy jazz venues, bad films, and mediocre theater. He's had the great fortune of making music with several of the best bass players on the planet, including Edward Owens, Trevor Dunn, Mark Dresser, Thomas Morgan, Matt Clohesy and John Hebert. He's appeared on recordings for betweenthelines, Arabesque, and SUR, though the Arabesque recording was uncredited and substantially underpaid. He's set texts by Tobias Wolff, Paul Bowles, Walt Whitman and Mary Karr to music, and you couldn't have done it any better. He views this whole dance project with suspicion but enjoys working with such talented and lovely people, and never backs down from a dare.
Low Water (musicians) Low Water's work has garnered praise from NPR, Amplifier Magazine, AM New York, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, West Coast Performer, Cincinnati CityBeat and The Davis Enterprise, among others. They have played hundreds of live "rock" shows, and have had two videos on FUSE On Demand; the most recent of which ("Go") was done in collaboration with modern dance troupe sleepdance and members of The Momenta Quartet.
John Arroyo (composer) is a composer, producer and DJ born and raised outside of Dallas, Texas. He moved to New York City after studying Computer Engineering and Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University. While living in New York he worked professionally as both a programmer and a DJ. His work searches for ways to combine disjointed areas of sonic exploration by taking from his background in DJ culture, new music (modern classical), and electro-acoustic music. After working, performing, and composing in New York for many years, he returned to school to focus on music composition. After attaining a graduate degree in electro-acoustic music from Dartmouth College, he moved to Los Angeles to continue his musical journey. He is currently scoring art films, composing for modern dance, and developing a derivative music community (www.remixin.com).