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 sixth 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 dramatically breaks the boundaries of conventional
dance performances.
Besides
producing yearly events, Miranda teaches community classes in aerial dance,
Axis Syllabus Dance and Feldenkrais. She hosts international artists
to teach and present their work and provides a means for emerging artists
to present their art professionally. Miranda has done extensive work
in Santa Cruz County with the
young, such as children with disabilities, incarcerated at risk
youth, and teens who attend alternative
high schools. Artistic projects for the youth have included: aerial, hip-hop
amd acrobatic dance classes as
well as
performance arts classes culminating in informal showings for students
and teachers. 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 also studies with Frey Faust, the founder of Axix Syllabus
in both Europe and North America and is certified to teach Axis Syllabus-ump™ fundamentals
since 2001 (www.axissyllabuscom). Since 1977 Miranda has studied contact
improvisation dance extensively with Nita Little and Steve Paxton. She
has studied and 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.
Miranda
has taught aerial dance and Axis Syllabus™ for the past 7 years. She
is a Feldenkrais® Guild
Certified Practitioner and is a Pediatric Occupational Therapist with both Bachelor
and Master of Science degrees in Occupational Therapy. 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.
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. |
