Network

Brenda Angiel

Director, Choreographer
Founder - Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company

Brenda Angiel is Argentinian, born in Buenos Aires in 1966, and created The Brenda Angiel Aerial Contemporary Dance Company in 1994. For her work, she received awards, grants and scholarships that turned her into an unquestioned referent between the Argentine choreographers. She was formed in different techniques of contemporary dance, classical ballet, improvisation, choreography, and drama. In 1988 she moved to New York, where she lived for 3 years and studied, primarily at the School of A. Nikolais and M. Cunningham. Her first works were seen in New York, at the Dance Theatre Workshop, as part of the program ”Fresh Tracks” (December 1990) and at The Kitchen as part of Working in The Kitchen (1991). In 1994, her search for new choreographic languages is geared toward the creation of a movement of a new nature: Aerial Dance. Brenda has been convened on two occasions by the Municipal Company of dances of Caxias do Sul (Brazil), for fitting two of her works and by the Ballet IUNA (National University Institute of Art). The American Dance Festival invited her as an international choreographer in residence in 1997, and in the years of 1998 and 2002, as international choreographer commission program, to create a masterpiece. As part of her international career is also highlighted the choreographic creation for the Wired Aerial Theatre in the city of Liverpool, England in 2008. Brenda founded the First Aerial Dance School in Buenos Aires, Argentina 1997, where classes are taught for kids, teenagers and adults. She has also taught workshops while the company is on tour and as part of the faculty at the American Dance Festival, at the Aerial Dance Festival in Colorado and in an intensive workshop organized by circelation organization in England. She was the dance curator of the Rojas Cultural Centre of Buenos Aires University and she is now the Artistic Director of Ciudanza Festival of Dance in the Urban Landscape of Buenos Aires.

Joanna Klass

Curator, Producer
Founder, Artistic Director - Warsaw Bauhaus Foundation

Joanna Klass is the founding director of Warsaw Bauhaus, a non-profit organization based in Warsaw, facilitating exchanges and interdisciplinary collaboration between Polish and international artists. Born in Legnica, Poland, educated in Wroclaw (an MA in American Literature), she has worked with a number of international institutions. Since 1995 she has worked as a theatre presenter and creative producer who brought a broad spectrum on contemporary theatres to the United States: over the period of twenty five years she partnered with a wide variety of arts organizations, including the Getty Center, UCLA Live, RedCat Theatre, The Odyssey Theatre, the City Garage, the Skirball Center, the Orange County Museum of Art and MOCA, CNP at California Institute of the Arts (CALARTS), The Public Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Under the Radar Festival, CUNY, NYU Tisch School and The Kennedy Center. In 2008 she was invited by the Grotowski Institute to produce as the Director of The Grotowski Year events in 23 countries for the international UNESCO sponsored Grotowski Year. Through the partnership with the Trust for Mutual Understanding in New York and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, she organized the U.S. Artists Initiative conference which allowed a large representation of a diverse mix of theatre artists from across the United States to take part in at The World as a Place of Truth international theatre festival, peak event of The Grotowski Year 2009. Subsequently, until 2019, she worked as a senior programmer of performing arts at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw where she, among other projects, spearheaded a deep collaboration between Polish and international playwrights as an editor of (A)pollonia: 21st-century Polish Drama and Texts for the Stage and a producer of a Digital Play Festival. In 2014, together with partner Wojciech Szaszor, she founded Warsaw Bauhaus - an incubator of new trends in performing arts. The organization, sponsored a few times by the City of Warsaw, organized two editions of an international festival called WarVie which tried to combine artistic practice in unusual public spaces with city activism and academic discourse. Their space on Tamka 36-Curie City has become a sanctuary for minorities (Queer City Project) and an accessible space for artists to experiment and practice collaborative projects In May 2021 Klass purchased the Gropius Granary (first architectural project of young Walter Gropius erected in 1906) for the Warsaw Bauhaus to prepare the site for the future Museum of Utopia and Architecture. Their latest project Black Mountain College Revisited opened the process of creating the Summer Institute of the Arts and Utopia. In 2021 Klass also started collaboration with the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre and Festival, selecting the program of the 2022 edition of the International Shakespeare Festival.

Richard Hand

Professor, Director of Drama
University of East Anglia

Richard J. Hand, SFHEA, FRSA, is Professor of Media Practice and Director of Drama at the University of East Anglia, UK. He has a particular interest in the cross-disciplinary exploration of culture, and his research explores adaptation using critical and creative methodologies. He is the author of books and edited collections on horror radio, Gothic cinema, Grand-Guignol theatre, Joseph Conrad, as well as translations of the plays of Octave Mirbeau and Victor Hugo. He is the founding co-editor of the international, peer-reviewed ”Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance”. In his professional practice, he is the lead scriptwriter for the US-based National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre on the Air, a podcast drama series which, in 2020, was acquired by the Library of Congress in the US in recognition of ‘its cultural and historical importance’.

Wan-Jung Wei

Executive Director - OISTAT
Dance Critic

Wan-Jung Wei is the youngest Executive Director of OISTAT since its inception, also the first with diplomatic training. She holds an MA degree in Arts Politics & Public Policy in New York University and joined OISTAT in 2011 to combine her passion for dance, theatre and international affairs, applying this blend of skills to her daily works. She continuously explores the relation between performing arts and politics with a focus on women’s rights and gender equality.

Yuri Kordonsky

Theatre Director
Professor - Yale School of Drama

Yuri (Yura) Kordonsky holds M.F.A. degrees in both Acting and Directing from St. Petersburg State Academy of Theatre Arts, Russia, where he studied under the direction of Lev Dodin. He has taught, performed, and directed internationally since 1989. In the period of 1989-2001, he was a resident actor and director at the renowned Maly Drama Theatre-Theatre of Europe in St. Petersburg. His directing credits include his original play ”Disappearance” and ”House of Bernarda Alba” by Lorca (Maly Drama Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia); ”Uncle Vanya” by Chekhov, ”The Marriage” by Gogol, ”Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky, and ”Bury Me Under the Baseboard” by Pavel Sanaev (Bulandra Theatre, Bucharest, Romania); ”The Lower Depths” by M. Gorky (Theatre d’Esch, Luxembourg), ”The Encounter” (UNESCO ITI Congress, Manila, Philippines), ”Fatherlessness” by Chekhov (Orkeny Szinhaz, Budapest), ”Last Day of Youth” by Tadeusz Konwicki (National Theatre “Radu Stanca”, Sibiu, Romania) The ”Seagull” by Chekhov (German National Theatre, Timisoara, Romania); ”Peer Gynt” by Ibsen, ”Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles, and ”The Bald Soprano” by Ionesco (Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT), ”A Diary of a Madman” by Gogol (West End Theater, Gloucester, MA), and ”Canterbury Tales” by Chaucer (Riverside Theater, New York), among others. Yura’s productions have won numerous international awards including Golden Light, Governor’s Award, and Bravo Award for the Best Production (Russia), Union of European Theatres’ Award for the Best Production (Italy), UNITER Awards for Best Production and Best Director (Romania), and the Special Prize of the Romanian Ministry of Culture. As a performer and director, Yura has toured in more than twenty countries and taught acting and directing in Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Romania. Since moving to the US in 2001 with his family, he has taught at Wesleyan University – where he served as Professor and Chair of Theater Department – as well as at Columbia University, UC San Diego, George Washington University, and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Boloroo Nayanbaatar

President
ITI Mongolia

Boloroo Nayanbaatar is the President of ITI-Mongolia since 2015. In cooperation with Bee Theatre Mongolia, intimate space laboratory theatre, she has initiated two major projects: ”Reflection” drama which has aimed to give a platform for young emerging female artists; and Mono Month project aimed at encouraging monodrama script writing and creation of monodrama. She has been serving ”Saint Muse” International Theatre Festival, one of the biggest and longest running festival in Mongolia, to promote collaboration between local artists and guests from abroad through performances workshops and so on.

Tomasz Wiśniewski

Professor - University of Gdansk
Founder - Between.Pomiędzy Festival

Dr hab. Tomasz Wiśniewski is a Professor at the University of Gdansk – Department of Performing Arts. He was Deputy Director for Research in the Institute of English and American Studies at the University of Gdańsk (2016-2019). He is a founder of the Beckett Research Group in Gdańsk and the Between.Pomiędzy Festival. He has published ”Complicite, Theatre and Aesthetics” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), ”Kształt literacki Samuela Becketta” (Universitas, 2006), and (co-)edited several academic publications, including ”Samuel Beckett. Tradycja – awangarda” (UG Press, 2012), ”Back to the Beckett Text” (UG Press, 2012), ”Beckett w XXI wieku. Rozpoznanie” (UG Press, 2017) and ”Beckett w Polsce” (Tekstualia, 2018). He is on the editorial board of the literary quarterly ”Tekstualia” (Warsaw), a Regional Managing Editor for The Theatre Times, a member of the board of the Polish Association for the Study of English (since 2018), a member of the Progamme Boad of the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre (since 2018), and a member of the Editorial Board of Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance. At present his research concentrates on Irish drama and theatre.