Roda-Viva, Collaborative Performance,
NueBox 2017 Spark! Festival Residency
Premiere's March 17 & 18, 2017, 7 - 10 p.m., Mesa's Spark! Festival of Creativity
“Roda-Viva” explores metaphors of transformation by unifying form, dance and sound. Supported by [nueBOX] this project features three artists-in-residence Jenny Gerena (choreographer), Chazmier Tyler (musician) and Rossitza Todorova (visual artist) interested in the resonant pulse driving us to overcome life’s obstacles. This collaboration presents a dynamic performance of movement and rhythm that encompasses the cyclical patterns that emerge in our lives.
Chazmier Tyler, a native-born to Phoenix, is a self-taught musician. Her development as an artist has been felt through several different musical projects. The artist first began performing in 2010 as a drummer and from there she began playing with melody in experimental bands, one of which is "Triangle Shirtwaist Choir". The most prominent of musical projects is Chazmier's "Hiccups", she is the singer songwriter usually matched with a backing band. Chazmier melodically spends time with "Hiccups" trying to explain her heart to the world pulsed by slipping guitar sounds.
Previous work: Triangle Shirt Waist Choir / Five-Eh-Em / Loaded Diapers
Jenny Gerena is a performing artist and choreographer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. She is an alumna of Scottsdale Community College, Sam Houston State University, and Arizona State University where she attained a Masters of Fine Arts in Dance in 2016. Jenny has presented two evening length pieces in the Phoenix Valley, Flesh Narratives, and a work titles LAVENDER. Since 2014 she has been a resident choreographer at Scottsdale Community College, working with their pre-professional dance company, Instinct Dance Corps. In the summer of 2016 she was a choreographer at the Florida Dance Festival as well as resident choreographer with Fusionworks Dance Company in Rhode Island. Jenny had the privilege to perform and present a duet titled, From Dirt to Soil, at the Multi-purpose Dance Project in SoHo, NY and the 2017 Breaking Ground Dance Festival in Tempe, AZ.
Previous Work: Choreography Reel / Previous [nueBOX] Residency
Rossitza Todorova, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Todorova immigrated to the United States as a child. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2005 and her Master of Fine Arts degree in Drawing from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, School of Art at Arizona State University in 2013. She lives in Tempe, Arizona where she fundraises for the ASU Art Museum, teaches studio art classes at Arizona State University, and makes art in studio.
Exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, Rossitza Todorova’s artwork is in the permanent collections of the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe, Tucson Museum of Art, the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson, the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, the Painting and Sculpture Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, and numerous private collections. She is a recipient of the 2015 Phoenix Art Museum Contemporary Forum Artist Grant, and was a 2013 Squire, Sanders Art Fellow. Her work is featured in catalogs and publications including the 2013 Lark Crafts publication “500 Artists Books: Volume 2,” 2014 “Studio Visit Volume 25,” and 2016 "Superstition Review Journal, Issue 18."
Website: www.rossitza.net