Susan Banyas, Writer
Susan Banyas is a dancer, storyteller, and writer whose artistic roots as an improviser, dancer, and experimental performance artist led to collaborations through SO&SO&SO&SO Inc. Her current performance projects, No Strangers Here Today, and The Hillsboro Story, are centered in Highland County, Ohio one hundred years apart and dance between memory and American history from the Civil War to the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. It's Been a Busy Week is in development as a performance ensemble using practices from Everyday Dancing to make dynamic, witty dance poetry from the residue of our busy lives.
She co-founded Dreams Well Studio (1991-2003), a low tech performance and teaching laboratory, where she produced and directed poetry shows, Soul Stories evenings, dance/theatre pieces, and gender-inspired shows in collaboration with some of Portland's finest theatre artists, poets, musicians, and dancers. The studio was home to her innovative classes and workshops, which she continues to offer in various venues. She has also taught extensively in schools, colleges, and universities and is a creative consultant to organizations and individuals.
She has published essays on art and politics and is currently a member of the Maya Angelou Writers Guild in Portland and the International Society for the Study of Time. Music/spoken word CDs, visual books and image cards from her scripts, short stories, paintings, and photography emerge from the improvisation experiments at the heart of art practice. Her work fuses movement, language, and music into physical images that "speak" about the times we live in, the encounters we experience, and the memory places we inhabit.
David Ornette Cherry, Composer
David Ornette Cherry, Collaborator and Performer for No Strangers Here Today, is a composer, arranger, and band leader as well as the winner of the "2003 ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music." David was born the same year Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry recorded their first album, Somethin Else. The ambient music streaming through his childhood was generated by the early collaborations of his dad, Don Cherry, with Coleman and the musicians who visited his parents' Mariposa Avenue home in Los Angeles.
Cherry studied music composition at Bishop College in Dallas and concentrated on world music at California Institute of the Arts. He spent challenging and unforgettable summers attending the Creative Music Studio at Woodstock, New York. These summer experiences gave him the space to compose and create music with Trilok Gurtu, Olatunji, Jai Deva, and Foday Musa Suso and to explore the relationship of jazz and music from other cultures. While jazz remains both the root and sustenance of his sound, he often incorporates the sounds of the world in what he calls "multi-kulti" music.
His background includes performances with Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Nana Vasconcelos, Olatunji, Hassan Hakmoun, Carlos Ward, Jim Pepper, Collin Walcott, Wadada Leo Smith, Phil Ranelin, Ralph "Buzzy" Jones and Justo Almario.
David forges ahead with his own invigoratingly fresh sound punctuated by driving rhythms, memorable lines, and improvisational space. David states, "The music never stopped. Jazz is dynamic. It's not about JUST referencing the past. It's about keeping the momentum going like a ball that keeps rolling along. My compositions are a musical fusion of cultures laid firmly down on a foundation of purely garage-style beats. It's a union of textures, sounds, lifestyles, surroundings, and messages in a universal language emphasizing a positive state of mind."
Acoustic piano, electronic keyboards, melodica, wood flute and douss'n gouni are his instruments. Recent releases are available on-line: Organic Roots/Diatic Records and Ensemble for Improvisors/Big Fish. For additional information, please visit: davidornettecherry.com.
Gregg Bielemeier, Choreographer
Gregg Bielemeier is an Oregon-born dance artist who has worked on the West Coast and in Europe as a featured choreographer, performer and teacher for over 35 years. He is a frequent improvisor/collaborator with musicians, actors and visual artists, creating suave, witty dance works that have been described as "wonderfully inventive," by the Los Angeles Times, and as "marvelously goofy," by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
A founding core artist at Conduit Dance in Portland, Oregon, Bielemeier's work has been presented in Los Angeles by Dance Kaleidoscope, in Seattle at On the Boards and Northwest New Works Festival, at Holland's International Dance Festival, and in Portland by PSU's Contemporary Dance Season, Portland Art Museum, Imago Theater, Performance Works Northwest, and for White Bird's inaugural subscription series, a dance work titled, "Odd Duck Lake."
Recent projects have included the critically acclaimed Poodle Farm: City Boy Born in a Country Boy's Body, collaborations with Susan Banyas, including No Strangers Here Today and It's Been A Busy Week (in process), choreography for the Jefferson Repertory Dancers, Polaris Dance Theater, Tere Mathern Dance, and his most recent dance creation, Half of Some, Neither of Either, commissioned by dance presenters White Bird, with lighting sculptures by Hap Tivley, and music score by David Ornette Cherry, which premiered in December 2008.
LaVerne Green, Actor
LaVerne Green is excited to make her debut in The Hillsboro Story. She recently appeared Profile Theater's hit, The Sunshine Boys, The Adventures of Barrio Grrrl at Miracle Theatre, Artists Repertory Theater's Nickel an Dimed, and as Tituba in the The Crucible; Annie Gordon in Passin' Arts production of Deceptive Love, Tygres Hear's Richard II as the Duchess of York; Nurse Gordon in Profile Theater's A Ride Down Mt Morgan, Side Effects produced by Performance Wellness 2 written by local writers surviving cancer. Her Off Broadway credits include a revival of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Amen Corner.
LaVerne has built a solid career as an extras casting director. Her film and television credits include Spike Lee's Malcolm X, Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, and the CBS crime drama series Under Suspicion, and numerous made for television movies. LaVerne has directed and appeared in numerous productions of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and is the artistic director of Storytellerzz Readers Theatre.
Currently LaVerne teaches drama and public speaking at Self Enhancement Academy. She appears on
KATU's AM Northwest cooking segment as "Mz LaVerne," The Empress of Soul Food. LaVerne dedicates her performance to her "baby girl" Gabby and "chilluns", her late husband Donald, her grandbabies, her Self Enhancement Inc. family and her late "Daddy" Alex Eaden, who was the original storyteller. And most of all to God from whom all blessings flow.
LaVerne lives by Phil.4:13.
Jennifer Lanier , Actor
Jennifer Lanier received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts. She has conducted workshops for the School of Drama's Pre-Professional Program and performed at her alma mater as a guest artist and delivered the Convocation Keynote Speech.
Jennifer was a Founding Fellow of the A+ Schools Summer Institutes in North Carolina where she began working with colleague, Robert Moyer, head of the Pre-Professional Program at NCSA, in the United Stage, a theatre committed to providing high quality theatre for young audiences. They performed the children's version of her autobiographical show on dueling ethnicities, Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote, for the Smithsonian Institution's Discovery Theatre in Washington, D.C. She has conducted workshops in personal achievement, improvisation, and theatre games for Millersville University Summer Honors Program. Jennifer presented workshops for and directed a group of inmates from North Carolina Women's Correctional Center in an original show based on their writing called "Doing More Than Time."
Jennifer is a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece Honorary Society at the University of North Carolina where she did her liberal arts study. She is a member of Screen Actors Guild and Actors Equity Association. She was just awarded the Special Achievement Award from the National Association of Black and White Men Together for her solo show, None of the Above. Learn more at jenniferlanier.com
KB Mercer, Actor
KB Mercer has been seen in "Mauritius" (Mary) and "Willow Jade" (Sondra) at The Portland Playhouse, and has also performed at Artists Rep (Bianca in "Othello"), Clackamas Rep (Domina in "Forum"), and at Salem Rep in Portland. Before coming to PDX, KB lived in San Diego, where she performed regularly for 10 years. She was an Associate Artist at both the Lambs Players Theatre (Irene in "Susan and God", Grace in "Winslow Boy", Aunt Ada Doom in "Cold Comfort Farm", Witch in "Lion, Witch Wardrobe", Mary Pendarves Off Broadway in "A Joyful Noise", and others), and North Coast Rep (Sally in "Cabaret", Claire in "Fuddy Meers", Mrs. Kendal in "Elephant Man", and others). She won the Craig Noel San Diego Critics Circle Award for her performance of Gwen in "Fifth of July" at the Diversionary Theatre, and the KPBS Patte Award for her performance of Laura in "Glass Menagerie" at the North Coast Rep. In San Diego, she also performed at the Fritz Theatre (Charlene in "Hot 'N Throbbing", Bernadette in "Raised in Captivity") and at the Sledgehammer Theatre (Sue in "Peacock Screams..."), and produced "Tempest" on the beach in Coronado. She is currently the Managing Director and CEO of the "Traveling Lantern Theatre Company", which still brings shows to children at schools, libraries and National Parks across the country (despite this floundering economy!) She is married to actor and director Doren Elias.