Michelle Marroquin engages with other visual and performing artists to create original, live performances. Themes spring from lived experiences, whimsy, and social- cultural issues to create humorous fables with a wry wit. Michelle and her team seek to offer a raw, live, and thought-provoking experience of performance art.
Michelle Marroquin is committed to producing a new, multi-media live performance every two years and performing it in unusual places. In 2015, Michelle and her team produced Please Wear Appropriate Attire, an epic production in Eastworks building in Easthampton, MA. This year Michelle will premier Love Poems to my Parents, a submergence into the musical heritage of her bicultural family.
Principal collaborators include:
Tony Silva (composer) founded Chameleon Sound Studio in 1994 to create diverse musical environments for film and the performing arts by combining acoustic and electronic timbres with rich imagination. Silva’s music compositions include over 40 commissions for modern dance, theater, documentaries and live performance. The past three films he scored have won awards at film festivals. Currently, Silva accompanies dance classes at Smith College and performs Spanish Guitar at ConVino in Northampton and at La Casita Azteca in Easthampton, MA.
Pan Morigan is an award-winning vocalist, composer, poet, producer, and the music director of Chrysalis Theatre, a locally based cross cultural performance ensemble.
In 2016/17 she toured with author/actress Andrea Hairston, performing music/spoken word from Hairston’s new novel, Will Do Magic For Small Change. Pan is the winner of an MCC fellowship in Music Composition, and has toured with diverse artists and organizations such as Bobby McFerrin and the Boston String Quartet. Together with John Cabán, Pan performs in The Blackbird Effect, which features bent blues, green jazz & other Americanismos with roots to the sky.
Zoë Darrow is an accomplished fiddler and musician of rare intensity. She grew up playing Cape Breton and other Celtic music on a sheep farm in Blandford, Massachusetts. She released her first recording in 2001 at the age of 12, with her band the Fiddleheads. The Valley Advocate named them “Best Celtic Band” in 2007 and Celtic Heritage Magazine acclaimed Zoë as an artist “destined to add savory spice to the global mix.”
Zoë has toured and recorded with luminaries like banjo innovator Tony Trischka, Bela Fleck’s primary banjo guru and an instructor at the Berklee College of Music. With Tim Eriksen and percussionist Peter Irvine she has toured North America and as far abroad as Singapore.
Tracey Eller photographer
Alicia Renadette (sculpture and costumes) manipulates materials with multi-tiered associations. Often using black humor, duality and word-play, she creates theatrical anomalies in which conventional objects become signifiers of complex personal and social issues. Her work reveals a fascination with contradictions in cultural values, and captures moments of transition in flux. Renadette’s creations involve hours of tedious deconstruction and re-contextualization of familiar objects or patterns. She has a studio in Holyoke, MA.
Marya Moylan (performer) grew up in her mother’s dance studio and later majored in dance at Springfield College. While there, she fell in love with the world of improvisation, and began creating her own works. Co-Artistic director of Dance Dimensions in East Longmeadow, MA, she is committed to dance education as a means of inspiring children to express themselves, and create a strong sense of self. She teaches modern, hip hop, jazz, and lyrical dance and believes that what cannot be said in words can be expressed through movement.
Katelyn Cramer (performer) has been dancing for over twenty years. A graduate of Springfield College, she studied Dance and Disability Studies, and now teaches tap and musical theatre at Dance Dimensions in East Longmeadow, MA. She is guided by the belief that dance instills self-confidence and coordination in her young students, and provides an outlet for creative exploration.
Mayumi Doyama (performer) has returned to her first love, dance, after a short hiatus to pursue other interests such as baking and digital video editing. The world of dance opened to her while at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts high school, under of the direction of Jody Falk and Jen Polins. Mayumi was part of Catalyst Dance, a preprofessional dance company that offers rigorous dance training and performance experience. She went on to pursue a BA in dance and film from the BDIC program at UMASS, Amherst. She is pleased to be performing with the talented and courageous dancers of The Team.
Danica Arehart (performer) is a dancer, creator and healer. She is a graduate of UMASS Amherst – double major: Dance and Zoology. She has recently returned (Mendon, MA) after living and dancing in NYC for many years. Danica is a Ceramic Artist, Herbalist, Flower Essence Practitioner, Reiki Master, and a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner, who works with both humans and their animal companions.
