Jennifer McQuiston Lott
dancer. director. choreographer. teacher. filmmaker.
thank you for joining us for
Happy Magic/Moves Hour
March 19, 2022 - 4pm & 6pm
Basile Stage @ The Phoenix Theatre Complex
This is a free event, but please consider a gift of support to the
International Rescue Committee, which provides support to refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria & Yemen.
Meet The Artists:
Jen Lott
Direction / Choreographer
Jen enjoys a varied career as a dancer, choreographer, director & teacher. She is drawn to multi-dimensional collaborative processes and often creates alongside musicians, visual artists, actors, dancers and filmmakers.
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Collab with filmmaker Nathan Johnson, composer Andrew Norman, chamber ensemble yMusic & BFA students from the USC Kaufman School of Dance
Jen directs the Traverse City Dance Project and is an Assistant Professor at the USC Kaufman School of Dance in Los Angeles, CA. She currently lives with her family, dog and 8 chickens in her hometown of Indianapolis, IN.
Rebekah Nolan
Set Design & Fabrication
Rebekah Nolan is an artist, designer, and muralist based in Indianapolis, IN.
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She is also one half of the creative studio, Flatland Kitchen, and a mother of two.
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Liz Wierzbicki
Projection Design
“I work in video, performance and printmaking to create digital and physical collages. My process begins as an attempt to visualize a fleeting emotional state. The body and the sky are reoccurring visual elements I use to consider the material and immaterial self’s relationships to perceptual experiences..."
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Liz lives and works in Indianapolis and serves on faculty at IUPUI's Herron School of Art & Design.
Rachel Harris
Dance Artist
Rachel was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she began training at Dance Productions and later attended the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance where she has received a BFA in 2020 and is currently pursuing a MA in Journalism for the Arts. She has attended summer intensives at Jacob’s Pillow, The Ailey School, Ballet X, and Abraham.In.Motion.She has performed as a soloist in works by Crystal Pite, William Forsythe, Barak Marshall, Dwight Rhoden, Paul Taylor, and many others as well as USC’s West Side Story. She is a founding member of Zeitgeist Dance Company and has danced with many noted artists including recording singer/actress Brandy. Rachel continues her passion of creating sustainable technology, designing architecture, and teaching locally at Dance Productions, JBP Entertainment, and other studios.
Trent Winslow McCain
Dance Artist
Win McCain is a recent graduate of USC in Los Angeles, where he earned his BA in Political Science alongside a BFA in Dance. Win served as president of the SC Choreographic Collective, where he led the organization to promote student choreographic work and fundraise for Black Art Futures Fund. He hopes to use his knowledge of political science to center dance as social activism and a powerful force for political change. He is interested in the potential dancers have to create lasting impact on how we engage in political participation. Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, Win graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts high school program with a concentration in ballet. In the Fall of 2022, Win will relocate to Regensburg, Germany to join the dance company of Theater Regensburg.
Justin David Sears-Watson
Dance Artist / Resident Artist @ Phoenix Theatre
Justin Sears-Watson grew up in Evansville, Indiana, competing as a classically trained vocalist and spent his younger years on the stage as a musical theater actor and singer.
Justin is a former member of Dance Kaleidoscope and is the Artistic Director of Phoenix Rising Dance Company in Indianapolis. He earned his BA in Musical Theater Performance from Northern Kentucky University and received additional training in Chicago under Alexi Kremnev, Anna Reznik and on scholarship at Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, and at the Cincinnati Ballet School. Justin has had the privilege of working with a myriad of the best choreographers and dancers around the globe. He is the founder & director of Phoenix Rising Dance Studio, which offers classes for all ages.
phoenixdanceindy.com/company
Rafiq Bhatia
Composer
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New York composer and guitarist Rafiq Bhatia seeks to shatter preconceptions about how much can be said without a word-and, for that matter, who can say it. His music has been described by the New York Times as “one of the most intriguing figures in music today.” In 2014, Bhatia became a member of the band Son Lux.
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Rafiq Bhatia’s latest release Standards Vol. 1 transforms cornerstone works by Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and more into immersive, otherworldly realms of sound that are uniquely his own. Working with a cast of traditional jazz’s most beloved musicians including the three-time GRAMMY-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, Bhatia implements dreamlike and sometimes volatile electronic techniques to recast classic repertoire as a window into the darkness underlying ordinary American life. Eschewing nostalgia or emulation, Standards Vol. 1 is a deeply personal and decidedly un-standard record that will have you thinking about the possibilities of jazz in an entirely new way.
rafiqbhatia.com
Ryan Lott
Composer / Music Production
Ryan Lott is a composer, producer, and performer. An avid collaborator in dance, Lott has worked with choreographers Stephen Petronio, Travis Wall, Gina Gibney, and Jodie Gates, along with companies Ballet de Lorraine, National Dance Company of Wales, and BalletX. His feature film scores include The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014), Paper Towns (2015), and Mean Dreams (2017), and arrangements for several others, most notably the iconic sci-fi film Looper (2012), for which Ryan was also pianist and instrument designer.
He is frequently commissioned by new music ensembles, including eighth blackbird (Lott contributed to their GRAMMY-winning 2015 release Filament), GRAMMY winners Third Coast Percussion, and yMusic, who enlisted Lott to compose their entire 2017 release First. Other recent commissions include an arrangement of "Peace Like A River" for Paul Simon, and a new orchestral work, "The Swift & the Storm," for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has several releases under his own name, including the learning structures cycle and the original Tell My Why game soundtrack, heralded as “the new gold standard for trans characters in games.”
In 2007, Ryan founded Son Lux, releasing music that “works at the nexus of several rarely-overlapping Venn Diagrams” (Pitchfork). In 2014, Son Lux became a trio, both live and on record, with the additions of guitarist-composer Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. Their latest studio release is an album trilogy called Tomorrows, released in full in 2021. As a band, Son Lux scored the new Daniels film for A24, Everything Everywhere All at Once (March 2022). The upcoming full score album features new collaborations with Mitski, David Byrne, André Benjamin (aka André 3000), Randy Newman, and Moses Sumney, among others.