Welcome

 
 
Faculty Groznjan, 2008

Jane McMahan, Director/voice
Jose Maria Garcia Leon, piano/vocal coach
Kasia Tercz & Robert Wojciechowski, acting/puppetry/stilt walking
Olinda Brasil, percussion/dance/capoeira/carnival
Eleanor Lipat-Chesler, voice/dance
Kamini Dandapani, Carnatic song/Bharatanatyam
Rok & Lea Zelenko, artists in residence

Administrative Team


 

Jane McMahan

 

Jane McMahan (USA)
Professor, Department of Music, Barnard College
director / voice

Jane McMahan has performed widely throughout New York and New England, focusing on early music, Baroque music, lieder and extensive French repertoire. Jane completed her B.Mus. in voice at Manhattan School of Music. She also hold an M.A. in Liberal Studies and an M.Phil. in Theater from the City University of New York.

Jane was director of Mandragora, a group that performed British Isles and Sephardic music. Her folk music and her "Seriously Satie" program were recorded and aired on WBAI, where she later worked as a producer. She was president of artSynergy, a nonprofit interdisciplinary arts organization.

Jane has been teaching voice at Barnard College, Columbia University, for 20 years, where she has directed major performances including a Liederabend, a "Luteiade," cabarets, and the Worldmuse Festival. Her recent CD, Mediterranean Crosscurrents, focuses on vocal and piano music of Manuel de Falla and Maurice Ravel and on Sephardic songs.

Jane is excited to return to Groznjan to lead the International Vocal Arts Workshop for its fourth season. She first went to Groznjan many years ago to study at Jeunesses Musicales with Andrea von Ramm. Jane designed the International Vocal Arts Workshop to emulate the spirit of Andrea's vibrant and unconventional approach — one that made creative ideas flow and encouraged artistic interchange.

 

 

Kamini Dandapani (India)
Singer
Carnatic song / Bharatanatyam (classical South Indian music / dance)

Kamini Dandapani has had extensive training in Carnatic (South Indian classical) vocal music, Western Classical music (piano) as well as in Bharatanatyam (South Indian classical dance). She studied Carnatic music for over 20 years with some of the leading teachers and performers in the field, including Vidwan Madurai N. Krishnan (who was a discipline of the eminent singer Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar), Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna, and Smt. T. Muktha (who was, until her death recently, one of the leading experts teachers of Carnatic padams, and javalis). At the same time, she studied classical piano, and holds a Licentiate from Trinity College of Music, London. Simultaneously learning and being immersed in these two different classical traditions has given her a not-often-encountered perspective on the similarities and differences between them across many dimensions including the theory, history, performance, performers and trends.

Closely related to and inseparable from Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, the classical dance form of South India, is also an art form in which Dandapani has trained and performed for many years. Her teacher was Adyar Sri. K. Lakshman, who trained her in the Kalakshetra style developed by Rukmini Devi Arundale. She has given several dozen Bharatanatyam performances in India and Europe, and has taught Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music and piano in India and the United States. She has performed Carnatic music for All India Radio's Yuva Vani program, and has been the lead singer for several Bharatanatyam recitals, in New York as well as in London.

 

 

 

Eleanor Lipat-Chesler (USA-Philippines)
Department of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles
voice / dance

Eleanor Lipat-Chesler received her B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University in voice and anthropology in 1998, her M.A. from UCLA in 2003, and is currently completing her Ph.D. in the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology. Her love of performance has carried her to all corners of the globe, as far as Siberia. More recent performances include the SuperDevoiche Women’s Choir tour across Bulgaria, Javanese gamelan, Balinese dance, Philippine kulintang (gong) music, and a Thai theater goodwill tour of tsunami-affected communities. She is currently completing her dissertation on the art and sociocultural significance of Thai likay, a contemporary folk theater form.

Eleanor first met Jane McMahan in 1997 at Barnard College, when Jane became her vocal coach and artistic mentor. Together they developed Eleanor’s senior thesis, an ambitious concert that included sections of Spanish, English, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Filipino, and Buryat-Mongolian music and dance in traditional and interpretive renderings with a cast of fourteen performers. Although Eleanor moved to Los Angeles, their continued relationship led to her participation in the 2005 International Vocal Arts Workshop in Groznjan. There, Eleanor found inspired contexts to weave her multicultural dance, vocal, and theater backgrounds into the group’s performances, as well as a formal concert setting wherein she reconnected with her European classical vocal foundations.

Eleanor returns to Groznjan in 2008 as a faculty member, and will teach Balkan and Philippine song styles as well as Philippine dance.

 

Jose Maria Garcia Leon (Spain)
Professor, Department of Visual and Performing Arts, University of New Haven
piano / vocal coach

Pianist Jose Garcia-Leon is a first prize winner of numerous national and international competitions, including the Artist International Competition of New York. He was born in Seville, Spain. After graduating with highest honors from the Conservatorio Superior de Sevilla, he moved to New York where he completed a Doctorate in Musical Arts at the Manhattan School of Music.

Jose Garcia-Leon has had extensive experience coaching and accompanying singers at Manhattan School of Music and Barnard College, where he worked closely with Jane McMahan. He has performed widely as a solo recitalist, most notably at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York, the Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Saint Petersburg Music Festival, the Soulahti Summer Festival in Finland, and the Marienbad International Festival in the Czech Republic, as well as in Ireland, Thailand, Chile, France and throughout Spain. His recordings have been featured on national television and radio in Spain, the United States and Southeast Asia.

He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at the University of New Haven.

 

Kasia Tercz & Robert Wojciechowski

 

Kasia Tercz & Robert Wojciechowski (Poland)
Actors, Arlekin Teatr, Lodz
acting / puppetry / stilt walking

Kasia Tercz was born in 1979 in Poland. She is a stilts walker, musician, choreographer and educator. She holds a master’s degree in music (2003) from the G. and K. Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź (with a specialization in Dalcroze eurhythmics). Since 2001 she has been an actress in the Łódź Puppet Theatre. She also performs with Theatre W. (Wroclaw), Theatre KTO (Krakow), Robert Wojciechowski and the Kinder Circus Tasifan (Germany). For years she has performed and taught workshops throughout Europe in stilts, acting and dance. At present she teaches at the Staromiejskie Centrum Kultury Młodzieży (House of Culture) in Krakow, works with children and young people, and makes street performances using stilts, dance, jugglery, monocycle, and diabolo.

Robert Wojciechowski was born in 1970 in Poland. He is an actor, puppeteer, stage- and puppet-designer, stilts walker, and mime. He began his career twenty years ago in the Theatre of Pantomime in Szczecin. In Szczecin he also worked in the Pleciuga Puppet Theatre as a constructor of puppets and stage designer. For ten years he has been an actor in the Łódź Puppet Theatre. He is the creator of two street performances, “Inside” and “ Knightly Romance”, for which he was responsible for the scene, stage design and acting. He designed and constructed “Jacek i Placek”, a stage and puppet performance for children. He has participated in many international puppetry festivals in Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. He teaches workshops in stilts, pantomime, puppet – animation, stage design and puppet design, and performs with theatres and schools of puppetry in Poland. He has a master’s degree in the Marionette.

Kasia and Robert joined the Grožnjan ensemble in 2006, on the recommendation of Waldemar Wolanski, director of Arlekin Teatr in Łódź, Poland. Robert is a permanent member of the Arlekin Teatr company, and Kasia works in several theatres in Warsaw. They arrived in Grožnjan bearing costume materials and several sets of stilts, and worked tirelessly teaching the more adventurous members of the workshop participants how to walk on stilts.

 

Olinda Brasil

 

Olinda Brasil (Brazil)
Actor
percussion / dance / capoeira / carnival

Olinda Brasil comes from Pernambuco, a region in the northeast of Brazil with a vibrant popular culture of music, dance, and street carnival festivals. After studying traditional Brazilian music and dance formally, Olinda toured as a percussionist with many Brazilian music groups before settling in Sao Paulo to teach Brazilian dance (forro, samba, capoeira) and percussion.

Olinda first came to Groznjan in the summer of 2006 with five bags of instruments and an incredible generosity of spirit. He helped create the carnival formation for our street theatre procession as well as playing percussion and designing costumes and banners. Olinda returns to Groznjan in 2008, teaching dance, playing percussion, and helping to create our parade and street theatre performance. Olinda's performing and teaching experience is exceptional. His infectious enthusiasm draws in spectators and fellow performers and workshop participants to generate a memorable group experience.

 



 

 

Rok & Lea Zelenko (Croatia-Slovenia)
Artists in Residence

Rok Zelenko, painter, was born in 1951 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Upon finishing grammar school, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he studied painting with Janez Bernik. He has lived in Grožnjan, Croatia since 1977. He works as a painter as well as a ceramicist and illustrator. He has had over ninety solo shows as well as numerous group shows in Croatia and abroad. He curated the 1986 exhibit “A Historical Heritage of Grožnjan” at the Fonticus gallery. In 1999 he published his book, Chronicles of Grožnjan – Slovenians in the Town of Artists. Recently, he also has been working on a variety of projects with architect Boris Zuliajan’s studio.

Rok and his wife, Lea, who is also an artist and teacher of art, have welcomed the Workshop participants since its first year in Groznjan. They have shown us local landmarks, introduced us to other wonderful artists, and guided our work in mask making and scenery. In 2008 they will once again welcome us and integrate us into the life of Groznjan.

   
Administrative Team
 
2009 Retreat Administrator

Kate Smith
Art Design

Selena McMahan
Erich Bussing
Symposium Coordinator

Amy Frishkey
Media Archives

Ian McMahan
Kate Smith
Web Design

Kimmy Szeto
 
Finance and Accounting

Yvonne Maginley
Grant Consultant

Jessica Feldman
 

 

   
   
   
   
(c) 2007, Kimmy Szeto
International Vocal Arts Workshop, 835 Riverside Drive #4J, NY 10032 (212) 795-3513
 
(c) 2008-2009, Kimmy Szeto
International Vocal Arts Workshop, 835 Riverside Drive #4J, NY 10032 (212) 795-3513