Saturday, 3/31 2007

Inter Alia is an interdisciplinary improvisational performance group. Our name is taken from the Latin: "inter" meaning "between" or "among," "alia" meaning "others," "someone else," or "something else." Each piece we perform is created in a completely collaborative manner. We try, as musicians, dancers, visual artists and performance artists, to open ourselves to the unique vocabularies of each other's particular traditions, and to challenge and be challenged by the borders between them. In the process, we hope to create pieces which are innovative and thought-provoking while remaining emotionally accessible and at times downright fun. 
 
We are:
Yael Bat-Shimon, violinist
Emily Beattie, dancer
Andrea Cheatham, dancer
Joseph Darensbourg, vocalist
Mike Hall, digital media artist
Skye Schulte, painter
 
Performers' Biographies
Yael Bat-Shimon studied violin solo performance in Paris with Mme Miriam Solovieff. She received her BA from Harvard in Literature, specializing in French Feminism. Yael pursued graduate study in violin performance and contemporary improvisation at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore and at the New England Conservatory in Boston. She also holds an MA in Jewish Studies from Hebrew College. Most recently, she has been creating and performing music for choreographers of modern dance as well as exploring improvisation both with musicians from non-Western traditions and with performers from different artistic media. This has led to her founding of the interdisciplinary improvisational performance group "Inter Alia."

Emily Beattie is a Boston-based choreographer and dancer. Her works have been shown at Green Street Studios, UMASS Boston, and Glouchester New Arts Festival 2006. On the international front, she has recently performed in Quito, Ecuador. This summer her collaborations included shows with installation artists from Japan, Holland and Germany. Please join her mailing list via emily.beattie@gmail.com to be updated on all her upcoming shows.

Andrea Cheatham, born in Israel, grew up on the North Shore and graduated from George Washington University, where she studied Communications, Dance and Jewish Studies. In 2005 she returned to Boston from Panama City where she lived for a year-and-a-half, teaching English at a Jewish day school and performing and choreographing with the dance company Momentum. Since earning her MA in Jewish Education from Hebrew College, she has been teaching at the Cohen Hillel Academy. In 2005 she produced TRACE, a modern dance concert exploring Jewish cultural memory, for which she choreographed most of the pieces. She continues to dance in the Boston area.

Joseph Darensbourg, a New Orleans native, is a multilingual vocalist focusing on the crossroads cultures of Medieval Iberia and the Middle East. He is also a player of Arabic violin and a bookbinding artist. He performs as violinist and vocalist with Harvard Middle Eastern Studies Ensemble and aspires to create an International Music Ensemble for the Lowell Area, representing the diversity of Lowell and raising community consciousness through the arts. Recently, he has been creating film scores for a trilogy of avant garde short films.

Mike Hall is a digital media artist and software engineer living in the Boston area. As a lifelong musician and visual artist, he has specialized in the programmatic synthesis of light and sound, and has presented his work to Harvard University audiences and in performance through numerous live cable broadcasts and public events. Since 2003 he has worked with fine art galleries and museums in Boston and New York, often creating new ways to install technological art, and most recently he has focused his attention on the expressive potential of projected video feedback.

Skye Schulte has been an artist for more than 25 years, including everything from painting and sculpture to photography and metal work. Her work can been seen in homes, businesses, and galleries around the country. Skye grew up in northern Wisconsin surrounded by hobby and professional artists of all types, which helped to shape her early love of and exposure to all things artistic and theatrical. Her early experience in art and aesthetic was also profoundly affected by growing up in Foxfire Botanical Gardens, the Japanese gardens started by her family. Skye has training in martial arts and ballroom dancing, and has recently discovered bellydancing. She is excited to be working with so many talented artists as a part of Inter Alia and hopes to bring her passion for life to the audience through her pieces and performances.

For more information, please visit us at http://www.interalia.zoomshare.com/.