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Susan Banyas

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 project, No Strangers Here Today, is on tour in 2008. Her current book-in-progress, The Hillsboro Story, is a non-fiction narrative that begins outside her third grade classroom window shortly after the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. Both projects

are centered in Highland County, Ohio, and dance between memory, American history, and on-going cultural detective work. She recently presented Everyday Dancing, A Dance Lecture at the International Society for the Study of Time conference in Monterey, CA and is developing the work into a photography installation and dance/theatre piece.

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. 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.