Mark DeGarmo's current artistic focus includes:
- Real-time improvisational composition.
- Digitalized dance-theater performance.
- Connectivity with natural and constructed environments, architecture and space.
- Intercultural transdisciplinary performance.
NEW YORK PERFORMANCES
Mark DeGarmo & Dancers has performed in New York, including: BronxFest on the Bronx River at the invitation of legendary folk singer-activist Pete Seeger, Celebrate Brooklyn!, Dancespace at St. Mark's Church, Downtown Dance Festival, Joyce Soho, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and the 92nd Street YM-YWHA.
PARTNERSHIPS
Music
DeGarmo's artistic vision and research involves partnering with living composers, performing with live music whenever possible, and bringing musical traditions to audiences unfamiliar with them. An example of this intention includes DeGarmo's choreography to music of indigenous Mexican Huave and Huichol communities.
Commissions of composers and groups include: Americas Vocal Ensemble, Max Lifchitz (Mexico), Alice Parker; Rick Baitz; Craig Gordon; Grupo Musical Pachacamac (Peru); Grupo Musical Uk'Ux Pop Wuj (Guatemala); Jan Hagiwara; Valerie Naranjo and MANDARA; Judith Sainte Croix; Alejandro Velasco/Kavindu (Mexico); Ezequiel Viñao (Argentina) and Brentano String Quartet.
DesignCostume, set, and visual artists have supported DeGarmo's work. Conversations with Andor Weininger (Bauhaus visual artist, clown and dancer with Oskar Schlemmer) led to a dance "updating" Bauhaus themes. MDDF premiered Quadratic Ballet for 12 dancers as an homage to Weininger with costumes by Osamu Uehara.
New York painter Sara Abalon created a technologically groundbreaking backdrop for Excavations touring New York City and State, Mexico, and El Salvador. Igor Roussanoff, a Ukrainian designer known for his ballet and opera design, shares with DeGarmo an intercultural sensibility. He designed three of DeGarmo's works: Travelers, My Father Is A Tree, and Dear Children: Awake and Rise.
PhotographyPhotography provides perspectives on dance from another artistic vantage point. Brazilian photographer Beatriz Schiller has partnered since 1986 with MDDF and photographed other dance-theater artists, such as Pina Bausch, Trisha Brown, Douglas Dunn, Ralph Lemon, and Twyla Tharp. Her extensive collection of photographic images of DeGarmo's work has been exhibited in Pittsburg, PA (2006) and published by Dance Magazine, The New York Times, and The Village Voice.
Videography
Hollywood filmmaker David Shore produced DeGarmo's first promotional video. DeGarmo has maintained a long-term relationship with New York documentary videographer Penny Ward and video editor Kay Hines of Dekart Video.
Photographs on this page by Beatriz Schiller
