Dance and Body Arts Studio in Ledyard, CT
Gina Bonati was born in New Orleans, lived various places and finished high school at Mission High in San Francisco. In 1981 she moved to New York City to attend The Juilliard School. She studied with Hanya Holm, Anna Sokolow, Hector Zaraspe and Alfredo Corvino and was allowed by special permission of Harold Stone to be part of the drama department where she studied with John Stix and Timothy Monich. She studied music with Robert Dennis and Theater History with the philosopher, Maurice Vallency. She studied acting with Sharon Chatten for 6 years.
It was while attending Juilliard that she discovered the anathema wage earning world of go-go bars and danced scantily clad all over New Jersey, New York City, Queens and Brooklyn in The Baby Doll, The Pussycat Lounge, Gallagher’s, Billy’s Topless and The Wildfire.
She has been creating her own work since 1982 in dance, language and installation. Titles include Emergence Sea, Hunger & Visits (H&V received critical acclaim from Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times), The Miraculous Development of a Child, Bird #1 through 8. Collaborators include Kenneth King, Elizabeth Castagna, Paul Skiff, Ellen Harvey. Works have been presented in New York at The Kitchen, Dancespace at St Marks Church, DIA Foundation for the Arts and have traveled to Mexico, Denmark, Sweden and Italy. A modest selection of her work is in the dance collection at The Lincoln Center Library for The Performing Arts.
She writes poetry and poetry stage and screenplays, sings and; recites with music and musicians, paints and draws, studies voice, singing, speech, piano and music in a few ways including improvisation, composition, literature, history and theory.
She was a member of Kenneth King and Dancers, Sally Silvers and Dancers, Errol Grimes Group, Alan Good Dance, Jane Comfort Group, Wyoming and Otux.
Amongst her astonishingly fortunate opportunities, she has had the privilege to attend company class in both The Merce Cunningham Dance Company and American Ballet Theatre. She is a member of the Actors Studio. She is a teacher.
She holds a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School, an MFA in Dance from Mills College and is pursuing a second MFA in Music from The Mills Music Department and Center for Contemporary Music.
Elizabeth Schmuhl is a multidisciplinary artist who trained with Eileen Cropley –Martha Graham & Paul Taylor Companies – and went on to work with artists such as Lauri Stallings, Peter Sparling, Alonzo King, and many others. She has performed works by Paul Taylor including Esplanade, Promethean Fire, Scudorama, and The Rite of Spring, and creates movement video poems in collaboration with other artists. She has written grants for Gallim Dance, and will study at her second Batsheva Intensive this winter with Ohad Naharin. Her genre-bending text, Presto Agitato: A Dictionary of Modern Movement (Dancing Girl Press & Zoo Cake Press) seeks to communicate and embody the connections between language, music, and movement. She frequently writes about dance, movement, and performance for Michigan Quarterly Review.
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