The Vision of Sound concert is a collaboration between
composers, choreographers, dancers and musicians to
produce new choreographic works with live music written
by composers primarily within the last five years.
The pieces on the concerts all reflect the most current
aesthetic sensitivities of the representative composers and
choreographers. The dancers and musicians are
sincerely committed to the promotion and performance of
new work by living composers and choreographers.
Melanie Aceto is a modern dancer and choreographer. She has worked with New York based contemporary choreographers including Barry Blumenfeld, Ellis Wood (www.wooddance.com), Monica Bill Barnes (www.monicabillbarnes.com), Hilary Easton and Guta Hedewig (www.gutahedewig.com). Her own work has been performed in Toronto, New York, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, in Ohio as part of the Heidelberg New Music and Dance Festival, at Wittenberg University, and in Rochester, NY as part of the ImageMovementSound Festival. Her creative interests are in contemporary choreography and improvisation. Melanie has worked extensively with contemporary composer Mark Olivieri on projects including the ImageMovementSound Festival and the Heidelberg New Music and Dance Festival. Her work in improvisation includes a recent project based on Kelly Kaczynski’s Scene from ‘Olympus Manger’ and an Electronic Poetry project with UB Media Study faculty member, Loss Glazier. Melanie is currently performing with Jim Hansen's Assemblage Dance Company and Leslie Wexler’s Buffalo Contemporary Dance. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has been a professor of dance at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo, SUNY Brockport, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and is currently Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo.
Bill Evans was artistic director of the Bill Evans Dance Company (based in Seattle and Albuquerque) for 30 years. BEDC performed in all 50 states and was the most-booked company in the country for several years under the Dance Touring and Artist-in-the-Schools Programs of the National Endowment for the Arts. He founded the Evans Rhythm Tap Ensemble in 1992. He was formerly Artistic Coordinator of Utah's Repertory Dance Theatre and Artistic Director of Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous fellowships and grants from the NEA as well as state, regional and private arts agencies. He received the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and two Bravo Awards from the Albuquerque Arts Alliance for Excellence in Dance. He earned an MFA from the U. of Utah and is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. He is Professor Emeritus at the U. of New Mexico, Permanent Guest Artist in the Professional Program of Winnipeg's School of Contemporary Dancers and Artistic Director of the annual Bill Evans Dance Intensives and Evans Technique Certification Program at Centrum, Port Townsend, WA. He teaches Evans Modern Dance Technique and Repertory, Rhythm Tap, Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals, Dance Conditioning/Applied Kinesiology, Improvisation, Choreography and Dance Pedagogy. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Dance Education Organization and produced the 2003 NDEO Conference in Albuquerque. He was featured in the October, 2003 issue of Dance Magazine.
Dr. Darwin Prioleau, chair and professor of dance, previously she served as the head of the dance division and, more recently, assistant dean of the College of Fine and Professional Arts at Kent State University.
Prioleau's professional training credits include the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre (as a merit scholar and apprentice) and the International Center de Danse in Cannes, France (as a merit scholar). Her professional career spans over ten years in New York dancing with various dance companies, including soloist with The Nat Horne Company, Contemporary Dance Spectrum and Ed Kresley Dance Company, and featured dancer in several off-Broadway musicals.
Dr. Prioleau has worked intensively with such dance masters as Alvin Ailey, Jimmy Truitte and Matt Mattox. She has been a free-lance modern and jazz dance choreographer and master teacher in the Ohio, Massachusetts, New York and European professional dance communities. Her areas of expertise include jazz, modern, dance pedagogy and choreography.
Nationally, Dr. Prioleau is actively involved in arts education advocacy and has published articles in Journal of Dance Education and Arts Education Policy Review and has presented papers on "Leadership of the Arts in Higher Education" at various national conferences. She has served on the board of trustees of the National Dance Education Organization, Northeast Ohio Dance Company, American Dance Guild and Ohio Dance.
Kista Tucker (M.A., M.F.A., C.M.A., R.S.M.E.), director of the Kista Tucker Dance Company and Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University, has performed and had her work presented throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, Mexico, and Canada. She has a wide range of performance experiences, from the role of the Old Mother/Gentleman in Black in Kurt Joost’s The Green Table to an unnamed character in Tucker’s own Fractured where she shares the stage with five coffee makers brewing coffee as the dance develops. While primary topics of interest are centered in choreography and performance, she also shares interests in somatics, writing, and photography/design. Tucker received a $26,500.00 grant and nearly $10,000.00 in additional funds to create and tour a choreographic work based on the Korean War Veterans Memorial located in Washington, DC. With this work she delves into Laban Analysis as a means of bridging sculpture and movement. Tucker is a member of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) Management Committee, on the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) board of directors, and she co-coordinated the 2004 LIMS Biennial Conference. She is a former member of the Bill Evans Dance Company and teaches in his summer intensives. She is also an instructor with the Eastwest Somatics Institute. She has taught in the capacity of Visiting Assistant Professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC, The State University of New York, Brockport, and at the University of South Florida. Past scholarly research presented at Congress on Research in Dance conferences includes: “Maga, Intuition in Choreography, Performance and Life: The Laban-Jungian Connection;” “be, Timelessness & Stillness: Creative Process and Laban Movement Analysis;” “Silent No More: Finding Personal Voice—Uncovering Personal Style;” and “The Korean War Veterans Memorial Project.” She has also presented her work at other conferences (International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS), Women’s Lives, Voices, Solutions: Shaping a National Agenda for Women in Higher Education; Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies; and Not Just Any Body). She was the CMA of the Month April/May, 2005 at LIMS. She conducts workshops, acts in the capacity of Guest Artist, and performs throughout the United States. Tucker has received numerous awards and commissions for her work.
Jenny Showalter is a dancer and choreographer from Aurora, IL. Her work has been shown at the American College Dance Festival, Dance Chicago 2004, and Lincoln College in Illinois where she was also a guest artist. Most recently Showalter was commissioned to choreograph a work to an original score for the Heidelberg Music Festival in Ohio. As a certified personal trainer, she has been working with college dancers encouraging them to seek healthy training to prolong their careers. She has been teaching Pilates, dance, and gymnastics classes for the past four years. Showalter holds a BS in P.E. Exercise Science from Western Illinois University in 2004 and is currently pursuing her MFA in dance choreography and performance at State University of New York College at Brockport.