2016 Co-Laboratory
The 2016 Co-Laboratory paired dynamic choreographer Nicole Klaymoon, Artistic Director of the Embodiment Project, with Chinese/Danish-American writer and director Jody Stillwater, and two award-winning artists, choreographer Deborah Slater and filmmaker and cinematographer Hervé Cohen. The teams had one week in September 2016 at the Djerassi Arts Residency Ranch in Woodside, California, to create two short dance films.
Funded in part by The Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the Fleishhacker Foundation, the three original interdisciplinary works for the screen were premiered on the closing night of the festival. The Co-Laboratory is an annual event to inspire and support local artists of different disciplines to collaboratively create dance films for local and global audiences.
Team 1
Jody Stillwater
Jody Stillwater is a Chinese/Danish-American writer & director. His films are based in both dream logic and tactile reality. Aesthetically, his work focuses on the control and articulation of rhythm and movement. While mimicking the movements of machines and wild animals, small gestures in his work become magnified and moments lock together to build the film as a kinetic vehicle for human emotion. Thematically, Stillwater is influenced by the space, spirit and colorful/stark montage of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, the children’s stories of Tomi Ungerer, the haunting control of Japanese Noh theater and the lost world of the unkept child. These frameworks draw attention to themes of chaos, diaspora, natural organisms, elegance, care and emotional restraint. He’s been selected to participate in various labs, such as the Tribeca Film Festival Hacks Lab (incorporating film + technology), and the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s Pitch Lab. In addition to his directing career, Stillwater also has a parallel life as a sound recordist, and films he has been involved with have screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival, SXSW, Chicago International, Tribeca and SFIFF. He holds a B.A. in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz.
Nicole Klaymoon
Nicole Klaymoon is the Founder/Artistic Director of the Embodiment Project, a dance company that interweaves street dance, live song, documentary theater, and spoken-word to create emotionally transparent narratives that serve as unifying political acts. Klaymoon is currently a resident choreographer at the ODC Theater and received a B.A. in Dance from UCLA and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Klaymoon is currently a resident choreographer at the ODC Theater.
“You can have a first encounter with an artist who pushes you right to the edge of your seat… such was the case with Nicole Klaymoon.” — SF Bay Guardian
Team 2
Hervé Cohen
Hervé Cohen is an award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer and has traveled the world to capture compelling stories for international productions: from the Amazon, filming a musical poetic piece about environment, to the countryside of China, following the work of three traveling projectionists; via Senegal, capturing the initiation ceremony of a young Diola; the entire United States, filming a family road movie during the Democratic Primaries; Benin Africa and India to document the evolution of 2 young girls from their 1st day of school; Italy and Portugal for a series of portraits of Europeans, and of course Paris (where he is originally from) filming a personal story about the exile of the Algerian Jews. Herve has also shot 2 feature narratives, in San Francisco and in Haiti. Hervé is currently working on “Life Underground”, a transmedia project about the connected lives of metro riders around the world. Website: www.hervecohen.com. & www.life-underground.com
Deborah Slater
Deborah Slater is Artistic Director of Deborah Slater Dance Theater, and Art of the Matter Performance Foundation. She is the recipient of nine NEA Fellowships, and received a 2007 Isadora Duncan Dance Award. She received a Gerbode Foundation Grant, and was chosen for five Djerassi Foundation Residencies. Slater has taught at Osher Lifelong Learning, the Fromm Institute, Cal Arts, and Stanford. She was on the Steering Committee for National Dance Week in SF, and served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Djerassi Resident Artist Foundation.
