Mir & A
Company is a theatrical aerial,
modern and fire dance company that seeks
to take personal feelings, current events, and daily challenges
into probing private questions. Exploring the answers to these
questions create themes
of human experience: loss, hope, birth, conflict, love, power,
lust and others. As a perfrmance art group, Mir & A Company
taps personal stories, experiences, and somatic explorations amongst
the accumulated talent to realize dimensions to these themes. Audience
members find the final
portrayal a subject not conventionaly
talked about but relevant
to their lives. As a community, there is an
opportunity to pause, take a breath, and find unexpectantly one's
pounding heart in her or his hands. Mir & A Company members
are fearsome technical risk takers and spiritual seekers while
using the synthesis of dancing in the air, on the floor and with
fire. Mir & A
Company always collaborates artistically with local singers, musicians
and other visual artists to create a compelling
and evocative journey. In Summary, Mir & A
Company is a performance art group that acknowledges
the power of human experience as a means to grow and draw
humankind closer.
Much Love,
Miranda

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About
Miranda Janeschild:
Artistic
director, choreographer, teacher and dancer, Miranda Janeschild founded Mir & A
Company in April 2002, in Santa Cruz, California. Celebrating
their eighth year, Miranda Janeschild has produced and directed six major
theatrical dance performances: Hands Left Behind -- 2008, A Crack
in The Mask--2007,
Place of No Escape--2005, Weaving
One Peace at a Time—2004, Broken Wings Take Me Home—2003
and Caught in a Thread—2002. Mir & A
Company has
established a legacy that breaks the boundaries of conventional
dance performances in Santa Cruz.
Besides
producing yearly events, Miranda celebrates over 25
years helping others
discover their body in motion as well as teaching in academic and medical
environments.
She has studied with Frey Faust since 2001, founder of Axis Syllabus
(AS), and became certified to teach AS in 2004. Miranda holds a Bachelors
and Masters of Science in Occupational Therapy and has worked as a pediatric
Occupational Therapist for 20 years. She currently serves infants through
Santa Cruz County Office of Education. She
is Feldenkrais ® Guild
Certified Practitioner and works at North Bay Physical
Therapy in Capitola serving orthopedic & neurological challenges as well as
pain and high performance athletes, which
include: a surfer,
martial artist or gymnast. Miranda spans the ability
to work with a person from a traumatic brain injury, to a child with special
learning &/or movement challenges as well as those dancing in the air or on
the floor.
Miranda
hosts international artists to teach and present their work and provides
a means for emerging artists to present their art professionally. Through
Mir & A Company's artistic endeavors, Miranda
has done work in Santa Cruz County with incarcerated youth and
those at risk who attend alternative high schools. Artistic projects for
the youth have included: aerial, hip-hop and acrobatic dance and performance
arts classes. Miranda always provides sponsorship
and discount programs for low income to attend classes, productions, and
demonstrations.
Miranda’s
study in aerial dance began with Jo Kreiter of Flyaway Productions (www.flyawayproductions.com)
in 2001. She continues to study with Frey Faust, the founder of Axis Syllabus
in both Europe and North America (www.axissyllabuscom). Since 1977
Miranda has studied contact improvisation dance extensively with Nita Little
and Steve Paxton. She
is deeply rooted in performance ritual theater as created
by Shekhinah Mountainwater from 1982 to 1991 (www.shekhinah.net). Her
training in the 70's & 80's included theater, gymnastic competition,
circus skills, pantomime and conventional modern dance. She
maintains an advanced Iyengar yoga practice with Kofi Busia, Master Iyengar
Yoga Instructor. Miranda
works with people of all ages, abilities and challenges to heighten their sense
of being as a mover, removing harmful movement patterns and developing greater
movement options and skills whether in the air or on the ground. For
all those who cross her path, her special love is to empower curiosity and
creativity while learning movement.
Jenna
Garcia Conners:
Jenna
has dreamed of dancing since she was a child, when she would make up “routines” with
the neighborhood girls and they would perform for their families. With
this love of dance came a deep interest in health and movement analysis. In
the past two years, Jenna has dived into the depths or aerial dance and Axis
Syllabus. She has traiined with Frey Faust and is
a teacher candidate in the teachers training program for Axis Syllabus. Jenna
is an outdoor enthusiast, mountain climber, wind surfer, and gardener. She
is a local Watsu and Waterdance therapist whose 8 years of private practice
here in Santa Cruz has contributed to her ongoing study of the body in
motion. A
self taught yogini at the age of 16, Jenna was the first to bring yoga
classes to Benicia, California. At 17, she began a 13 year
stretch of teaching aerobics as a way of sharing movement and dance. Now,
at the age of 33, Jenna performs in “A Crack in the Mask” as
her debut of a dream come true. true.
René Soulier
Smith
grew up in Sonoma California, where she first discovered her fondness for the
upside down world of movement, at the age of seven, tumbling around in gymnastics
classes, and flying on playground swing-sets. She has been playing with movement and
exploring gravity ever since. As a competitive gymnast, René trained
for eight years, making her way to the national gymnastics championships in Florida. Though
eventually tiring of competition, René has never lost her passion for
the feeling of flight. Be it sky diving, hang gliding or Ariel dance, she
relishes any opportunity to fly, and is continuously intrigued and inspired by
the seemingly infinite possibilities of self expression found within movement
and dance.
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