Shannon Alvis via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Shannon Alvis:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Shannon Alvis
- City: Chicago, Illinois
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Greenwood, Indiana
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Originally from Greenwood, Indiana, Shannon received her training at Butler University and the University of Utah.
She began her career with the second company of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, going on to dance and perform professionally with HSDC for nine years.
In 2009, Shannon went on to further her growth as a dancer at Nederlands Dans Theater under the direction of Jim Vincent and Paul Lightfoot. During her time in Chicago and Europe, Shannon toured internationally dancing works by many world renowned choreographers such as: Jiri Kylian, Nacho Duato, William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Jorma Elo, and Crystal Pite.
Having since returned to Chicago, and having given birth to a baby girl, Shannon is once again sharing her artistry with the community. She has appeared in six productions at the Lyric Opera including Rob Ashford's Carousel, Susan Stroman's The Merry Widow, and Les Troyens with Helen Pickett. She has been on faculty at the Joffrey Academy, Interlochen School for the Arts summer faculty, and Visceral Dance Center.
Shannon is very happy to now be exploring her creativity through works of her own. She has choreographed for Visceral Dance Chicago, Thodos Dance Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago, Chicago Repertory Ballet, and was a recipient of the Joffrey Ballet’s Winning Work’s Choreographic Competition.
Beginning to share her work outside of Chicago, a project with the University of Iowa premiered in their 2018 Dance Gala, and her most recent creation for Charlottesville Ballet will premiere in 2019.
She feels very fortunate for every one of these opportunities. Being able to find inspiration for her work in all of the things that she loves is a true gift.
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Website: http://www.shannonalvis.com
- ▶ Vimeo Channel: http://vimeo.com/shannonalvis
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
