Soundscapes

One of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” dancer, musician, and dance researcher Nic Gareiss (he/they) has been hailed by the New York Times for his “dexterous melding of Irish and Appalachian dance” and called “the most inventive and expressive step dancer on the scene” by the Boston Herald. They reimagine movement as a musical practice, recasting dance as a medium that appeals to both eyes and ears. Originally from what some people call Michigan, Gareiss engages many percussive dance traditions, weaving together a singular dance practice marked by his love of clog, flatfoot, and step dance footwork vocabulary, improvisation, and musical collaboration. In 2020, Gareiss received the Michigan Heritage Award, the state’s highest distinction bestowed on traditional artists. They have performed in 17 countries with many of the luminaries of traditional music and dance at London’s Barbican Centre, the Irish National Concert Hall, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Kennedy Center. 

To learn more about Nic Gareiss, please visit their website.

Caleb Teicher (he/they) is an acclaimed New York City-based performer, choreographer, and director specializing in musically-driven dance traditions and interdisciplinary collaboration. 

As a dance soloist, Teicher is known for their collaborations with diverse musical talents: world-champion beatboxer Chris Celiz; composer/pianist Conrad Tao; the National Symphony Orchestra; and indie rock legends Ben Folds and Regina Spektor. 

Caleb’s concert dance company, Caleb Teicher & Company (CT&Co), is their creative home for a range of new concert dance works. Previous engagements and commissions include Works & Process @ the Guggenheim, The Joyce Theater, New York City Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Fall For Dance North, Celebrity Series Boston, and countless other arts presenters across North America and abroad. Most recently, Teicher directed SW!NG OUT which will tour to a dozen cities in the United States this year. 

Teicher is also an in-demand choreographic collaborator in a variety of mediums. Credits include Regina Spektor on Broadway, Sister Aimee (now streaming on Hulu), AJR’s “Bang” music video, Ben Folds’ Declassified with the National Symphony Orchestra, and numerous other projects across film, TV, concert music, and theatrical genres. 

Teicher is the recipient of a 2019 New York City Center Choreographic Fellowship, a 2019 Harkness Promise Award, a 2019 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant, and two Bessie Awards. Their work has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, Forbes, Vogue, Interview Magazine, on the cover of Dance Magazine, and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert alongside Regina Spektor.   

To learn more about Calen Teicher, please visit their website.

With 34 years of personal, professional and community-based experience, Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero continues to make musical strides as a groundbreaking and highly adept Beatboxer, Vocal Percussionist, and Breath Artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of hip hop music and culture. As the first vocal percussionist to do so, he formally served as a dance technique musician and composer-in-residence for Towson University’s Department of Dance for 12 years. He is also the founding director of Embody, A Festival Series of the Vocal Arts, which strives for artistic and cultural convergence through a variety of vocal art traditions, such as opera and throat singing to the many forms of vocal percussion. The Embody festival has featured such vocal luminaries as Madison McFerrin, Alash Ensemble, Dan Deacon, Raul Midón, Navasha Daya, and Joyce J. Scott. 

Shodekeh now serves as Towson University’s very first Innovator-in-Residence anchored by the College of Fine Arts and Communication, allowing him to lecture, collaborate, experiment, and perform within many of the university’s arts and culture related departments. 

Dorit Chrysler is a Berlin-based composer and sound artist, as well as co-founder of the NY Theremin Society. Her work explores the application of the theremin instrument in various mediums.  She has been commissioned by the MoMA and the Venice Biennale, and her compositions are represented in permanent collections such as the Guggenheim Museum and Moderne Museet Stockholm. Collaborations and residencies include the San Francisco Symphony, Cern, Pioneerworks, and the Gaite Lyrique. Chrystler has written music for film and theater and produced a ten-piece orchestra performance for the Los Angeles Disney Hall. Her numerous recordings have been released on Bandcamp, InMyRoomRecords (DE), The Prurience Factory (US), Monika Enterprise (DE), PlagDichNicht (AU), PlasticTray Records (US), and Mute. She earned her Master’s Degree in Musicology in Vienna and has performed her compositions worldwide. 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active conductor, vocalist, composer, and instrumentalist. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller Center, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, WNYC, National Sawdust, and elsewhere. 

Klein conducts the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, among other projects. She has premiered works and operas by Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, and George Lewis, to name a few. She has recorded and performed with artists including Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, Cory Smythe, Sufjan Stevens, and the New York Philharmonic, among others.  

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Klein launched MUSIC on the REBOUND, an online festival designed to bring people together through world-wide singing events, in partnership with Claire Chase, Ione Oliveros, International Contemporary Ensemble, and American Composers Orchestra. The festival has since been inducted into the Library of Congress. As part of NY PopsUp, she curated the four-week festival entitled NYC FREE, to celebrate the opening of Little Island in 2021. Her performances and curations have caught the attention of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York. 

To learn more about Raquel Acevedo Klein, please visit her website.