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The activities that occur at Ponderosa are organised and curated by several different people and groups.
For many years, the artistic director of Ponderosa has been Stephanie Maher. At present, however, a transition is taking place, under which several people and groups will be involved in the artistic directorship of events and artistic projects that occur at Ponderosa. At the same time, Stephanie Maher’s work will from now on be presented under the name Tipping Utopia. The artistic directorship are introduced below.
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Artistic and curatorial directorship
Stephanie Maher (2000–present) / Tipping Utopia (2017–present)
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Stephanie Maher is a dancer, choreographer, improviser and teacher, originally based in New York, and then San Francisco for fifteen years. She is known for her breathtaking physicality and for creating works that express a unique blend of intimacy, sensitivity, and wild humor. She has been teaching performance making, release-based techniques, and contact improvisation in an international setting since 1992.
In 1998, she relocated to Berlin, Germany, where she continued to perform, organise, develop and teach in the community-based settings of K77 Studios in Berlin. At the same time, she founded the Ponderosa Tanzland Festival, and — together with Kathleen Hermesdorf — P.O.R.C.H., a module-based school for aspiring artistic professionals, in Stolzenhagen, Germany. Improvisationally structuring and unknowingly creating a life of curating dance between the urban and the rural, Maher’s focus has deepened towards the integrated engagements of the international dance scene, trying to create an avenue of support for self-realised, grassroots, and non-profit organisations. This includes the facets of liminal, spontaneous, curious, and often outspoken performance-installations that are able to occur within the events of Ponderosa — work and art made at home. Since 2000, Maher has defined and undefined the use of personal story and the relationship to accepting chaos as a composition tool, creating identity-based work and defining home as a collective experience. Maher recently finished an MFA in choreography from Smith College. Deep thanks and acknowledgement must go to her intimate art collaborators: Kathleen Hermesdorf, Peter Pleyer, Maria Francesca Scaroni, Keith Hennessy, Jess Curtis, Jules Beckman, Howard Katz Fireheart, Sten Rudstrom, Yoav Admoni, and Jen Polins. Stephanie Maher is the initiator of the Tipping Utopia project.
Stephanie Maher is part of the artistic team presenting Tanzkongress 2019 in June 2019 in Dresden. |
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Kathleen Hermesdorf (2003–present)
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Kathleen Hermesdorf is an international dance artist, educator and producer based in San Francisco. She directs ALTERNATIVA, with musician Albert Mathias. Hermesdorf has been dancing in the Bay Area since 1991, and teaches, performs, improvises, creates, and curates around the world. Her work has been presented in the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Dakar, amongst other locations, in commission for universities, companies and independent dancers, and in collaboration with art partners worldwide. She was a member of Bebe Miller Company, Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and co-director of Hermesdorf & Wells Dance Company with Scott Wells and Collusion with Stephanie Maher. She is the co-director of P.O.R.C.H. at Ponderosa, and WILD [West Cork Contemporary Dance Festival] in Ballydehob, Ireland. Hermesdorf brings over 20 years of experience from the field, studio, and stage to her work, and holds a BFA and an MFA in Dance Performance + Pedagogy.
ALTERNATIVA, directed by dancer Kathleen Hermesdorf with musician Albert Mathias, is an apparatus for deeply integrated contemporary dance and music via collaboration, creation, improvisation, performance, production, curation and education. Active in San Francisco since 1998, the organization supports the creative work of the directors, known for radical dance classes, performance projects and musical endeavors delving into the corporeality and ineffability of human conditions, behaviors and other curiosities. Activities, including an annual FRESH Festival, ongoing classes and workshops in the Bay Area, residencies at universities, festivals and studios worldwide and PORCH/Ponderosa in Germany, engage an extensive population of artists, audiences and participants. ALTERNATIVA is fiscally sponsored by Dancers’ Group and has received support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, William + Flora Hewlett Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Dancers’ Group’s Matching Grant and CA$H Grant, CHIME/MJDC, the San Francisco Arts Commission and The Suitcase Fund. |
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Joy Mariama Smith (2017–present)
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A native Philadelphian currently based in Den Haag, Netherlands, Joy Mariama Smith's work primarily addresses the conundrum of projected identities in various contexts. A sub-theme, or ongoing question in their work is: What is the interplay between the body and its physical environment? Rooted in socially engaged art practice, they are a performance/installation/movement artist, activist, facilitator, curator, and architectural designer. They have a strong improvisational practice spanning 20 years. Smith is the co-founder of the COLLAGE Festival, they co-facilitate Couples Therapy, a lab focusing on collaboration between artists. Smith has been actively involved with the Ponderosa community for several years, and was part of the inaugural Poppy group. When they choose to teach, they actively try to uphold inclusive spaces.
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Peter Pleyer (2000–present)
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Peter Pleyer studied dance and choreography at the European Dance Development Center, ArtEZ, in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Since then he has worked internationally in the independent field as performer, choreographer, teacher, dramaturg and curator. Between 2007 and 2014 he was the artistic director of Tanztage Berlin. With The Ponderosa Trilogy and Visible Undercurrent, he successfully returned to his own choreographic work in 2014. He is a guest professor at the UdK/HZT Berlin.
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Maria F. Scaroni (2016–present)
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From Italian TV dance productions to release-based and post-modern dance techniques, from contact improvisation to literature studies and theoretical engagement, Maria Francesca Scaroni is moving through the complex network of learning and making dances since 1996. Scaroni’s works focus on the process of collaboration, play with durational experiences, and are featured by a crossbreeding between performance, choreography and installation. Recently Maria is involved in researching dance as a possible divination form or Oracle. She has created theatrical/installative/durational events with Jess Curtis, Vania Rovisco, and with Frank Willens. Since 2011, Maria is creating and touring works with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, (Until Our Hearts Stop, Sketches/Notebook, Built To Last). She has also collaborated as dancer/creator with Tino Sehgal, Jeremy Wade, Wilhelm Groener, Peter Pleyer and Hanna Hegenscheidt. She teaches in Berlin’s University HZT and is actively involved in forging other independent training programs (including P.O.R.C.H.), where she is developing methodologies focusing on the body as material. She holds a Masters degree in Italian Modern Literature, with a focus on Media and Communication and a thesis on education and dance.
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Yoav Admoni (2016–present)
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Yoav Admoni is a multi-disciplinary artist working with sculpture, dance and performance with an emphasis on the public space. His works travels between site-responsive, socio-political conceptual performance and between sculptures and installations that often involve an image of nature, in its imitation or in its fusion with domestic images.
Admoni is an artistic advisor and mentor and currently is undertaking the creation and curation of betOnest, an artist residency space in Stolpe, Germany. |
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