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Wise Fool Artist Bios
Company Members
Associate Company Members
Company Members
- Amy Christian is a
professional performing and visual artist, teacher and community
activist. A founding member of Wise Fool, Amy has served as a
co-Director, core artist, producer and administrator since 1989.
- Deirdre Morris Currently Deirdre is working
in her seventh year with Wise Fool New Mexico as a principal performer, teacher,
choreographer, Production and Booking Agent, Studio Manager and she is in her
fourth year as the Producer of the Women’s Summer Circus Workshop Intensive.
Deirdre has also been a member of the Production team for a program in Miami, Florida
titled “Walking Tall Circus”, where she has been working with at risk youth in
the Miami
county area. Deirdre is currently working on a new performance project to be
premiered in September 2006, tentively titled Ashes & Snow: a study in the
Alchemy of Hope..
- Alessandra Ogren
Alessandra Ogren has been creating puppets, masks and performance works
as a core member of Wise Fool since 1993. She is a professional
performer, artist, lighting designer, teacher and accomplished
aerialist.
Associate Company Members
- Amy Bertucci has worked
extensively with Wise Fool since 1995, teaching puppetry, stilts, trapeze and
aerial arts to youth and adults, conducting outreach, directing projects and
performing in productions. Amy earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where she
studied language, art, history and dance including the classical East Indian
Dance of Orissi with Ratna Roy. After graduating Amy earned her license as a
Massage Practioner at the East West College in Portland, Oregon. While developing
a practice, Amy began studying trapeze and partner acrobatics with 'Do Jump'
Physical Theatre company in Portland. It was here that
Amy developed her passion for the circus arts. In 1999, she relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico and began to work
with Alessandra Ogren with whom she developed Sorelle Sora, an aerial arts
performance troupe, and The One Railroad Circus. Amy also became a part of the
Nationally touring band, The Dolly Ranchers, with whom she sang, toured and
recorded over the span of four years. Amy has received instruction in the
aerial arts from a variety of trainers including Elsie and Serenity Smith of
Cirque Du Soleil, Aerial Fabric originator Fred, and Carrie Heller, a
nationally recognized trapeze instructor who has pioneered the use of trapeze
and circus arts in therapeutic applications.
- Isabela Coelho is the co-founder of OPA,
Organization of Permaculture and Art, a nonprofit based in the city of Salvador on the northeastern coast of Brazil. Isabella is originally from Brazil, where she grew up influenced by
the country’s rich folklore and diverse artistic expressions. She began dancing
and performing as a child. In 1996 she started a career as an aerial artist
after attending circus school in Curitiba Brazil. Isabella moved to New Mexico in 2000 where she became a
performing and teaching member of Wise Fool. In 2004 Isabella added her
experience with Wise Fool to a blend of permacutlure and art to start OPA, an
innovative urban experience in Brazil. Now OPA is an associate
organization of Wise Fool, stretching the reach of the company down to South America. Please check out OPA’s website
for more info! www.opabrasil.org
- Colleen Futter: Originally hailing from upstate New York, Colleen
has been living in the "Land of Entrapment" since 1996. She discovered
Wise Fool and circus classes in 2003 and her appetite for mad skills has
increased exponentially ever since. She began her circus obsession with partner
acrobatics and that is
still her favorite. Colleen has found that circus training also enriches her
career as a Licensed Massage Therapist. In addition to producing the biannual
cabaret, Femme-O-Lition Derby, featuring the talents of queer femmes, Colleen
also performs as her burlesque alter ego, September Smith, and has charmed
audiences with aerial and stage burlesque from NYC to San Francisco.
- Cohdi Harrell was born and raised somewhere between the Pecos wilderness and
the sandy dunes of Cairo Egypt. Commited to the experiment of humans and
objects, movement and sound, ground and air; his work has taken him across
the globe in an exploration of humanism by means of circus and movement
arts. As a performer, teacher, student, and dreamer, Cohdi has found
himself in a myriad of projects and shows, ranging from nightclubs to
operas, and has been featured in various publications and television shows.
He is dedicated to the fusion of traditional movement forms with circus and
performance art innovation.
- Corinna
MacNeice is of Irish extraction, and grew up in postwar London,
England. She holds a BA from the Slade
School,
UCL, and a Post-graduate year. Corinna has exhibited in London;
Oxford;
Belfast
and Dublin
in Ireland;
Kathmandu,Nepal;
Berlin,
Germany;
Fort Worth,Texas
and Santa Fe
NM in the US.
After 45 years as a Londoner, Corinna travelled extensively in the 1980's and
has lived permanently in New Mexico
working at painting, video and theatre since the start of the 1990's. www.corinnamacneice.com
- Kayo Muller has studied theatre and dance for 7
years and participated in numerous professional plays in Brazil, where
she was born and raised. She has been working with Wise Fool NM since
the summer of 2003, developing new skills in the circus and puppetry
arts. Her training includes instruction from Wise Fool teachers as well
as intensive workshops in the aerial arts with Elsie and Serenity Smith
of Cirque Du Soleil, Aerial Fabric originator and master Fred Deb and
Carrie Heller, a nationally recognized pioneer in therapeutic
applications of circus arts. Kayo has also studied with Master Clown,
Moshe Cohen.
Kayo has performed in major Wise Fool productions such as Circus
Luminous 2004 and 2005, and Baggage 2005. She is also a children's
trapeze teacher in the Studio Teachers' Collective and has taught in
such educational programs as the Miami Performing Arts Center's
"Walking Tall Circus" 2005 and 2006 and the "Wise Fool Kids Circus
Camp" 2005 in Penasco and Santa Fe, NM.
- Chioma Mary Oruh is originally from Nigeria and grew up in Washington, DC. In 2001, she graduated from George Washington University with a major in Sociology (with a
concentration in Human Services) and a Creative Writing minor. From 2001 to
2003, she packed her bags and went back to West Africa as a rural community health Peace
Corps volunteer in a small village called Houeyogbe of the Republic of Benin. There she assisted the Center of Public Health with HIV/AIDS education. As soon
as she got back from Africa in 2004, she got to work in Washington, DC with Know-Your-Rights education
with the American Friends Service Committee and worked for the Nader 2004
Presidential Campaign. Chioma was also dedicated to educating the DC community
about the unification between Africans on the continent and Africans in
thediaspora through a collective called the African Freedom and Justice
Coalition. Along with her dedication to a wholistic approach towards
international development that does not sacrifice one aspect of the planet
(i.e. ecosystems) to spare the other (i.e. humanity), Chioma is also a
writer--using poetry, prose and political commentary to convey her spirited
messages. In addition, she has an affinity for the stage. She is a performance
poet and singer and has been in a couple of productions such as the Baggage
Show with the Wise Fool Theatre Company here in Santa Fe. Chioma is also trilingual in
English, French (African style) and Igbo. www.journeywomanchi.com
- Jasmine Quinsier is a performance artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her experience ranges from Middle
Eastern dance, clowning, and fire performance to visual arts, media arts,
choreography, and stage managing. She is an associate member of Wise Fool New
Mexico and a collaborative member of Masnavi Dance Collective.
- Nancy Fatima Safie-Phillips: Is a graduate of the University of New Mexico in Cultural Anthropology.
She spent her formative years with her Persian side of the family in Iran. Her social culture involved
dancing with family and friends at family functions and wedding
celebrations. Due to the Iranian Revolution and her father's concern for
her well being she left her Iranian life and family in 1979 to live with her
American side of the family. In 1997 she began to formaly study Middle
Eastern dance with hopes of reconnecting to her roots. Middle Eastern
dance gave her that and much more. Since 2000 she has been teaching
children in various capacities the art of self possesion and empowerment through
the medium of movement. She is the founder and director of the Creative
Global Movements dance program that has been offered in the Santa Fe Public
Schools for two consecutive years. She is a founding member of the
multi-faceted performance art group the Masnavi Dance Collective.
It is her intention through dance to raise the consciousness of people by
unifying through diversity. To raise awarness of the social injustice issues in
current world affairs and to encourage people to find and celebrate their own
personal beauty.
- Cynthia Ruffin is a theatre activist, writer and
educator from Montreal, Canada. She has been doing social justice
work, creating theatre with performers and non-performers of all ages for over
10 years. Her specialty is in adapting personal stories into healing theatrical
performances as she believes strongly in the power of art to heal. She is published in the anthology Cootie Shots: Theatrical
Inoculations against Bigotry and her plays have toured middle schools, high
schools, colleges and universities across the US. She is currently working on a young adult fiction series
called the Social Justice League that
deals with the power of young people to be activists and make change in the
world.
- Christina Sporrong is an artist,
blacksmith and teacher. Originally from Stockholm Sweden, she currently
lives in Taos NM where she runs
her own metal shop and forge, Spitfire Forge. To de-mystify metal and empower
other women in this medium she teaches locan and national women’s welding workshops.
Visit http://www.spitfireforge.com for lots more info!
- Rulan Tangen has 20 years of experience as a dedicated dance artist,
performing professionally with ballet, modem and powwow dance companies in New York, Canada, California and Europe. She believes in dance as healing
and transformative, is involved with anti-oppression workshops through Wise
Fool New Mexico, and works closely with Journeys Through Knowledge, an
initiative for health and wellness of body, mind and spirit for Native youth.
Her choreography has been recognized as "an unusually successful fusion of
modem dance and Native American movement.”. In 2003 Rulan was appointed
Director of the Indigenous Dance Program/Earth Dance Theater at the Native
American Cultural Center in San Francisco, CA and was featured alongside
lifelong dance collaborators at the Red Rhythms Symposium on Native
contemporary dance at UC Riverside. In 2004, she created Dancing Earth as a
culmination of her deeply personal yet universal vision, creating innovative
choreography with longtime collaborators and emerging artists. As a survivor of
cancer, she profoundly believes in this luminous expression of global
indigenous arts and cultures as a profound source of universal healing. Please visit Dancing Earth’s website at www.dancingearth.org/
- Rain Willson grew up in southern Florida where she studied and performed
theatre, dance, and music from a very young age. She recently graduated
with honors from the College of Santa Fe, NM with a self-designed major in
“Performance for Social Change” Since living in Santa Fe, Rain has explored
different movement forms including Middle-eastern dance, African dance,
contact improvisation, acrobatics and aerial arts. She has studied circus
with Wise Fool, NM, at Circomedia in England, and with various teachers
around the country. Recently Rain has been working with interdisciplinary
projects, combining her theatrical background with aerial dance and circus
arts to create conceptual and multimedia work.
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