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.

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.

Lea Bernetic was born in 1955 in Koper, and spent her youth in Izola. She attended the School of Applied Arts in Ljubliana, and then graduated from the Teachers College in Ljubliana with the thesis Ornaments in Ceramics. She first encountered ceramics in high school, and perfected the skills in the studio of Sonja and Karel Zelenko. She has been living in Grožnjan since 1980, where she is the manager of Studio Porton. She is also an art teacher, first at a primary school in Piran, and currently at an Italian school in Buje. Lea has made about 700 ceramic works (including sculptures, plates, boards and cones), over 1,000 pieces of decorative ceramics, as well as architectural ceramics (building facades and interior decorations). The common themes in her artworks revolve around country life, sights (veduta), nature, nature, stylization of animals, and meditations in color.

Rok and Lea 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. They will once again welcome us and integrate us into the life of Groznjan.

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 (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. Every year ever since, he helps create the carnival formation for our street theatre procession as well as playing percussion and designing costumes and banners. Olinda will be 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.

Sam Lee (England)
Musician
folksong / folk art

Sam is a singer, promoter, teacher, researcher and confessed die-hard enthusiast of the folk arts. Swapping his many careers including visual artist, teacher of wilderness survival and performer on the burlesque cabaret circuit to work in folk music, he has become one of the current leading lights of the folk revival taking traditional song into a new direction and onto new platforms. Sam performs solo or with his band ‘The Gillie Boys’ Not just a singer, Sam is also the creative force behind ‘The Magpie’s Nest’ & ‘Folklahoma’ which under the banner of ‘New Folk, Old Folk, No Folk’ has been hailed as “the torch bearing folk club for the new generation”. 2009 saw the passing of Stanley Robertson, Scotland’s legendary Traveller and ballad singer, with whom Sam was not only apprenticed but the musical ‘next of kin’ to his vast repertoire of songs and the ancient Traveller singing craft. Along with this journey of learning Sam has spent much time recording and documenting the songs and culture of the English Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers and from these forays has been gleaned much of his material. He is a teacher at The Royal College of Music and a tutor on the Newcastle University Traditional Music Degree Programme.

Sam and his songs have journeyed to many countries and venues including a tour of the USA in 2009 and, in 2007, New Zealand with Tim van Eyken, Concerts in Turkey, Sweden, Ireland and across the UK. He has sung regularly in London’s National Gallery, at the National Theatre, The Queen Elizabeth Hall and in 2008 at The Victoria and Albert Museum, the ICA and the Roundhouse. In December 2009 he featured on the BBC4 Christmas Special dueting with Jon Boden and sang alongside Rufus & Martha Wainwright and the McGarrigle Sisters at the Royal Albert Hall.