MIRIAM BARBOSA
Artistic Director, Choreographer, Principal Dancer, SCCDC
Ms. Barbosa is the Founder and Artistic Director of South Carolina Contemporary Dance Company. She is a former member of the Martha Graham Dance Company and a former Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of South Carolina. She holds an MFA from the University of Fine Arts of San Paulo Brazil where she received her classical training. In 1991, she joined the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and was awarded a scholarship as Technique Demonstrator. Ms. Barbosa performed with the Martha Graham American Touring Ensemble from 1993 to 1996, guesting with Martha Graham Dance Company for their City Center Seasons in New York City and Spoleto Festival, Italy. After working as a guest artist in Spain and Brazil for nine months in 1997, she returned to New York as a full Graham Company member until 2001. Beginning in 1993, Ms. Barbosa taught the Graham technique and choreographed as a guest artist throughout Europe, South America and the United States. She has taught the Graham Technique as a faculty member at Fashion Institute of Technology, SC Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, Paul Taylor at the School of Performing Arts in NY City, Nevada Festival Ballet, Martha Graham School’s Teen Program, Institute of Theater of Barcelona, Spain, Lisbon Dance Co, National Conservatory of Dance of Portugal, the Ginasiano Ballet School, and the Olympic Auditorium in Rome, Italy. Also, from 1992 to 2002 she collaborated as artistic director and performed for Dzul Dance Company based at the NY Conservatory of Dance. In 2002 until 2008, Ms. Barbosa was an Assistant Professor with the USC Department of Theatre and Dance, where she developed some of her master choreographies.
Ms. Barbosa has been honored with the licenses to restage some of Martha Graham’s most famous ballets such as Diversion of Angels, Maple Leaf Rag, and Sketches from Chronicle. During 2007, she collaborated artistically with the Martha Graham Center, ETV, and USC Dance Company to produce Sketches from Chronicle Documentary. Ms. Barbosa also received grants from USCeRA, USC College of Arts and Sciences, SC Arts Commission, Arts Institute, and Knight Foundation for the ETV project. She has collaborated with several artists in the creation of her own masterpieces such as The Seven Deadly Sins and The Divine Comedy with set designer Nic Ularu and Mexican choreographer Brenda Nieto, as well as Catharsis with Marcelo Novo. Catharsis was awarded its first grant from the Sumter Arts Commission for its creation in 2005. Ms. Barbosa and Mr. Novo reconstructed the work in 2009 in collaboration with ETV for the arts education program, “Artopia,” produced and directed by Betsy Newman.
Ms. Barbosa founded South Carolina Contemporary Dance Company in 2007 and has performed at the Charlotte Dance Festival, the Brazilian Festival in North Carolina, and the South Carolina Contemporary Dance Festival. Inspired by Beth Melton’s “Story Lines,” Ms. Barbosa choreographed a new work to premiere at 701 Center for Contemporary Art. In January 2009, Marvin Chernoff and Chuck LaMark joined Ms. Barbosa as executive directors. Together they established the South Carolina School of Contemporary Dance and developed the SCCDC Board and Guild. This premiere performance includes a gala to celebrate the culmination of this wonderful project.
MARVIN CHERNOFF
President of SCCDC Board
Mr. Chernoff is the retired chairman of the advertising agency, Chernoff/Silver and Associates. Among many other accomplishments in the arts he was responsible for the Steel Palmetto Tree project and for the 2007 Columbia Festival of the Arts. He was producer of the Columbia City Ballet's "Off The Wall and On The Stage" ballet and is an honorary lifetime board member of that company. He has been on the boards of the Cultural Council, Sculpture in Public Places Committee, Town Theatre, Trustus Theatre, USC Bicentennial Commission and the SC Humanities Council. He won the annual SC Business in the Arts Award three times, was the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce Ambassador of the Year, recipient of the Mayor's Corporate Citizen of the Year award, the Order of the Palmetto for his contributions to education and is the proud recipient of the Elizabeth Verner Award for contribution to the arts in South Carolina.
CHUCK LAMARK
Vice President of SCCDC Board
Mr. LaMark is currently the Co-Chair and Co-Founder of Adwera Nsuo, a company in formation. He was most recently Deputy Director of the Renaissance Foundation and Director of Development for the Arts Council of Richland and Lexington Counties in Columbia, SC respectively. He was founder and president of Our Children’s Village International which supported children’s organizations in Latin American countries such as Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico as well as in the pan-handle of Florida. This company helps these organizations reach threshold efficiencies in operations and funding. Previously, he was Vice President of World Centers of Compassion for Children which was founded by the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from Northern Ireland for the purpose of creating safe havens for children in war zones and areas of conflict around the world. Mr. LaMark’s consulting firm, Phoenix Star, provided cultural and diversity training to Fortune 500 companies and NGOs in the U.S., Latin America and South Africa. He also co-founded Basic Industrial Development in Cameroon, West Africa which provided hair care products and training to beauty salons in the area. Mr. LaMark was New Products Operations Manager for the Fortune 40 telecommunications company U.S. West (now Qwest) in Denver, Colorado. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado with a degree in Psychology and has one year of graduate work toward an MBA from the University of Denver.
KINDRA BECKER
Company Manager, SCCDC
A native of Seattle, WA, Ms. Becker has lived in South Carolina since 2003. She is a recent graduate of the University of South Carolina with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Language. She also completed a minor in Dance under the instruction of Stacey Calvert, Brenda Nieto, Miriam Barbosa, and Cindy Flach. In 2008, Ms. Becker worked in collaboration with Ms. Calvert to produce the Ballet Stars of New York Gala for the USC Dance Company, in which principal and soloist dancers from New York City Ballet Company were invited to perform. Ms. Becker joined the South Carolina Contemporary Dance Company in 2009 as company manager.
MARCELO NOVO
Visual Artist, Catharsis
Mr. Novo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1963. Upon the recommendation of his teachers he started taking private art lessons at the age of seven (until 12). Later on, he graduated as a Profesor Nacional de Bellas Artes from Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Prilidiano Pueyrredon” (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and studied Painting under the direction of the Surrealist painter Roberto Aizemberg developing Automatism as a means of creation. In 1992, he moved to the United States where he received a Master’s degree from the University of South Carolina and taught art at Benedict College from 1995 to 1998. His art has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad, including the Centro Cultural Recoleta, in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the DeLand Museum of Art in DeLand, FL; the Cinque Gallery in New York; the Museum of Latin American Art, CA; nad the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, SC. In addition, his work is in public and corporate collections, including those of the South Carolina State Arts Collection, Computer Sciences Corporation, the Cultural Council of Richland & Lexington Counties in South Carolina and the White House Christmas Ornaments Collection. Mr. Novo is the recipient of numerous awards and honors; has received grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission; and was a scholar-in-residence in the Faculty Resource Network Summer Program at New York University. Recently, he was selected and participated in the Artists Retreat at Pritchards Island in Beaufort, SC and his work was part of the 7th Street Windows Project organized by the McColl Center for the Arts in Charlotte, NC. He is currently participating in ART at WAR/The Artist’s Voice at the Aldo Castillo Gallery in Chicago, IL. He lives and works as a full-time artist in Columbia, South Carolina.
ERIC ROUSE
Flying Effects Designer, Catharsis
Eric is currently an assistant professor of technical theatre and the Technical Director for the School of Theatre at Penn State University where he heads the BFA Technical Direction Program. Prior to this, Eric was the Technical Director at University of South Carolina for three great years. He worked for Flying by Foy, a company that specializes in flying effects for live entertainment, in Las Vegas from 1997-1999, and continues to freelance for them. Credits at Foy include The Backstreet Boys World Tour, Walt Disney’s World'’s Tarzan show in Orlando, The American Music Awards and The ESPY's. Eric worked at Cirque du Soleil’'s “O” at the Bellagio Hotel from 1999-2002 as an Automation Technician and Supervisor in the Rigging Department, where he maintained all of the rigging elements in the theatre, helped design new elements, and insured the safety of artists and technicians working overhead and under water. Member of USITT and IATSE.