Relative Collider (excerpts) from Liz Santoro on Vimeo.

Relative Collider by Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard
with Cynthia Koppe, Liz Santoro, and Stephen Thompson
Sound by Brendan Dougherty
Lighting by Madeline Best
Costumes by Reid Bartelme
Administration by Fanny Lacour

Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard have been in close collaboration over the past five years. Liz began her dance training at Boston Ballet School and with Marcus Schulkind. She then went on to study neuroscience at Harvard University where she received a Bachelor’s degree. She has worked with choreographers such as Alexandra Bachzetsis, Jack Ferver, Philipp Gehmacher, Trajal Harrell, Heather Kravas, David Wampach and Ann Liv Young. After completing a Master’s degree in applied mathematics at Ensimag in Grenoble and beginning a career in finance as a quantitative analyst, Pierre resigned in 2005 to begin working in theater. He has subsequently been exploring the field successively as a technician, an assistant lighting designer, a props manager, a stage manager, an assistant director, and a director. He recently worked at LIMSI (CNRS Laboratory) on topics related to Statistical Machine Translation during the completion of  a Masters at the Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 in Natural Language Processing. Their work has been presented by Danspace Project at St Marks Church, The Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Théâtre de Vanves, L’Atelier de Paris – Carolyn Carlson, Centre Pompidou Metz, Festival Actoral, Entre Cour et Jardins, and Impulstanz Festival in Vienna. It has received support from The Jerome Foundation, FUSED (French US Exchange in Dance), and DRAC Ile-de-France. A recent collaboration, Watch It, was awarded a 2013 New York Dance and Performance, Bessie, Award in the category of Outstanding Production for a work at the forefront of contemporary dance.

Born in Singapore, Cynthia Koppe is a New York-based dancer and performer. In addition to collaborating closely with Liz Santoro since 2010, Cynthia is also a member of Shen Wei Dance Arts.

Stephen Thompson is a performance artist, dancer, choreographer, researcher and pedagogue originally from Calgary, Alberta. His introduction to movement and perform­ing was through competitive figure skater where he competed at the 1998 Canadian Olympic Trials. He received a Bachelor of Kinesiology (art and science of movement) minor in Contemporary Dance from the University of Calgary. Stephen has worked as an interpreter, collaborator and co-choreographer with numerous companies and art­ists including Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, Nicole Mion, Foundation Jean- Pierre Per­rault, Le Groupe de la Place Royale, Production LAPS (Martin Bélanger), Par B.L.eux (Benoit Lachambre), Lee Su-Feh, DANS.KIAS, Fabrice Lambert, Fabrice Ramalingom, Dick Wong, and Antonija Livingstone and Jennifer Lacey. Recent collaborations include participating in Un Gout Exquis, an inquiry into queer esthetics for the 2014 Montpel­lier Festival Danse with Fabrice Ramalingom, performing in Trajal Harrell’s 2012 Bessie award winning Twenty Looks or Paris is burning at the Judson Church, dancing with Fabrice Lambert in Solaire presented by Theatre De la Ville. He also collaborates with various visual artists including Xavier Veilhan, Kendell Geers and Laurent Goldring. Ste­phen received a Paula Citron award for the “best of 2011” for his Etude: Arms (gauche/droit).

Reid Bartelme began his professional life as a dancer.  He worked for Ballet companies throughout North America and Canada,  and later in his career worked for modern dance companies in New York including Shen Wei Dance Arts and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company.  He has also performed in works by Jack Ferver, Liz Santoro, Burr Johnson, Douglas Dunn, Christopher Williams, Kyle Abraham and Ryan McNamara.  He went on to graduate from the fashion design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology and began working as a freelance costume designer.  Reid has designed costumes most notably for Christopher Wheeldon, Lar Lubovitch, Gwen Welliver,   Pontus Lidberg, Jack Ferver, Pam Tanowitz, Burr Johnson, Jillian Peña, Juliana May, Michelle Boulé, Joanna Kotze,  and Liz Santoro.  In collaboration with designer Harriet Jung, Reid has designed costumes for the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Justin Peck, Marcelo Gomes, Andrea Miller, Emery Lecrone and Mauro Bigonzetti.

Madeline Best (lighting design / technical direction), designs dances, lighting and video and is the production manager at The Chocolate Factory. Best graduated from Ben­nington College, grew up in Durham NC and currently lives in Long Island City, Queens. She has designed lights for Neal Medlyn, Heather Kravas, Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, Keely Garfield, Milka Djordjevick, Aki Sasamoto, Beth Gill (Bessie award win­ning), RoseAnne Spradlin, Luciana Achugar’s PURO DESEO (Bessie award winning), and more. Performance experience includes work on The Chocolate Factory Theater’s Resident Projects Selective Memory and HotBox with Brian Rogers; multiple projects with Lauren Petty/Shaun Irons and with Choreographer Juliana May/MayDance.

Brendan Dougherty (sound) was born and studied in Philadelphia and has lived in Berlin since 2002 working as composer and performer of improvised, electronic and pop music. His work with theater and dance has led to collaborations with Jeremy Wade, An Kaler and Meg Stuart. As a composer and sound designer he has created music for multimedia installations, games and television. Dougherty is a founding member of Idiot Switch and Charrd. Other musical collaborators include his Kim 9 Cascene (KGB trio), Tony Buck (Project Transmit), Lukas Ligeti, Jochen Arbeit and Billy Bang. He has released albums on Utech Records, Scrapple Records, Aural Terrains and Shoebill music.

“…invites the gaze to indulge in detail…stimulates many parts of the mind: the part that wants to solve equations, crack codes, as much as the part that prefers not to have any answers”.
By Siobhan Burke, The New York Times, Published May 20, 2014

“…meticulously combines postmodern deconstructionism, raw emotion, and depth of meaning: a stupefying parabola in which the choreography releases, after nearly an hour of mechanical and extremely synchronized movement, a vision of liberated humanity, aspiring to represent what distinguishes it”.
By Etienne Leterrier-Grimal, Le Matricule des Anges, Published September 24, 2014

“…imposes a system both extremely written yet equally very open that allows a meaning that produces relationship, a meaning that has no end”.
By Charlotte Imbault, Mouvement, Published March 27, 2014