Members

DELLA DAVIDSON (Artistic Director) Della Davidson joined the UCD Theatre and Dance faculty in fall 2001 as an associate professor. She is the MFA Program advisor and the director of the professional performance ensemble residing in the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance. She has been Artistic Director of the San Francisco-based Della Davidson Dance Company since 1986, and is the creator of some 30 choreographic and theatrical works. Her work includes Tongues (1988) and Angels and Clay (1988), for which she received an Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography, The Ten P.M. Dream (1992), for which she received a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation New Choreography Award, and FIERCE/PINK/HOUSE (1994), which the Company was invited to perform as part of the Springloaded Dance Festival at the Place Theatre in London, England. Her Night Stories was named best dance/theatre work of 1996 by The Salt Lake City Tribune and was filmed for presentation on public television. Davidson is the recipient of the 1990 North American Award for Choreography, a Meet the Composer Grant, and consistent support from the National Endowment of the Arts. In 1989 she participated in the Sundance Institute's Dance/Film Lab. The work begun at the lab, Nadine and the Pleasure Company (1989), was subsequently filmed. Her most recent work, The Eva Luna Project, was selected for development at the 1997 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab. Davidson's work has been commissioned by dance companies in the US and abroad, including the London-based Transitions Dance Company, Ririe/Woodbury Dance Company, Repertory Dance Theater of Salt Lake City, Danceworks Northwest in Seattle and Frank Shawl in San Francisco. Davidson is a graduate of the University of Utah's Dance program and holds a Master's degree in Dance and Theatre from the University of Arizona. She also studied at the Alvin Ailey School, Finis Jhung and the Graham School, and with the American Dance Festival performing in repertory with Twyla Tharp, Jose Limon and Rudy Perez.

JOHN FLAX (Co-Director and Creator on A Dream Inside Another) John Flax has been creating and performing original theater for over twenty years. He joined the French/American Theatre de la Jeune Lune in 1979, performing in Moliere!, a dramatic history of Moliere's company and A French Christmas, staged French folk tales. Along with the Jeune Lune ensemble he co-created and performed in Ubu for President and 1929: The American Dream. Both won Kudo Awards for Best Production in Minneapolis. In 1983, Flax founded Theater Grottesco with Frenchman Didier Maucort. Their first production, Crusoe, an economic unraveling of Defoe's novel, written by Maucort, won first prize at the Festival du Carreau de Temple in Paris and a Drama Critic's Award in San Diego in 1984. Theater Grottesco moved to the United States in 1985 and began work on The American Trilogy Project. In 1994, Grottesco premiered The Angels' Cradle, co-authored and directed by Flax. The Angels' Cradle, seen Off-Broadway in 1999, is the story of a group of deformed outcasts living beneath our city streets, and the homeless man who finds them.

Richard Marriott, Composer Mr. Marriott is the principal composer of The Clubfoot Orchestra, which he founded in 1983. Marriott’s compositions include new soundtracks for several classic silent films, including The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari and Nosferatu, and collaborative scores for Metropolis, Sherlock Jr., Pandora’s Box and Hands of Orlac. These scores have been performed live by the Clubfoot Orchestra at various theaters and venues throughout the country, including the Mill Valley Film Festival, the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and the Walter Read Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City, and are available on both CD and laserdisc. Marriott is also the composer of the Clubfoot Orchestra’s Wild Beasts, released by Ralph Records in 1986, and the principal composer of Kidnapped, released in 1987. He received an additional music credit on the 1993 film Rising Sun, directed by Phil Kaufman, and was the principal composer for the film Silver Into Gold, which was an Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary in 1986.

Sandra Woodall, Costume Design Working in collaboration with diverse figures in the performing arts world, Sandra Woodall has been designing costumes for numerous ballet, modern dance, theatre, music, and performance art groups since 1970. Among them are the San Francisco Ballet, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Della Davidson Dance Theater, ODC/San Francisco, Oakland Ballet, American Conservatory Theater, Eureka Theater, California Shakespeare Company, Magic Theater, and the Kronos Quartet. Nationally and internationally, Woodall has designed costumes for the Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Metropolitan, Hartford Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, Nashville Ballet, Washington D.C. Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet and Hong Kong Ballet. She has designed sets and costumes for the National Theater of Norway, Den Norske Opera’s 1996 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She has worked with designer Robert Israel in realizing the costumes for Philip Glass’s Akhenaten and for Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival’s presentation of Miracolo d’Amore by Martha Clark. Her designs have also been featured as part of PBS programming.

Ms. Woodall received DANCE/Bay Area Isadora Duncan Awards in 1997 for Costume Design for Michael Smuin Ballet’s Frankie and Johnny, in 1996 for San Francisco Ballet’s Lambarena, in 1991 for Visual Design for Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s Age of Unrest, and in 1989 for Sustained Achievement in Design. She received Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Costume Design in 1995 for the American Conservatory Theater production of Light Up the Sky and in 1989 for the ACT production of St. Joan.

Jane Schnorrenberg, Performer Jane has performed with Della Davidson for the past 15 years and is a main collaborator in the making of work. She has performed with HT Chen, Dance Art Company, Lily Cai, Nancy Karp and Randee Paufve and numerous other choreographers.

Eric Kupers, Performer Eric has performed with numerous companies in the Bay area including Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Nancy Karp and Dancers, amd Stephen Pelton. He founded Dandelion Dancetheater in 1997 with co-director Kimi Gurthrie for an outlet for his own choreographic visions.

Kerry Mehling, Performer Kerry graduated from The University of Utah with her BFA in 1993 and spent the next three years performing with the Ririe Woodbury Dance Company, working with such renown choreographers as Doug Varone, Ann Carlson and Creach and Koester. Kerry has been working with Della Davidson since 1997. She is also a member of Deborah Slater Dance Theater of San Francisco.

Kegan Marling, Performer Kegan is a graduate of the UC Davis undergraduate dance program and the winner of the Jere Curry Award for Achievement in Dance. Kegan danced with the Nexus Dance Collective and worked with Choreographers Bill T. Jones, Nigel Charnock, Lea Anderson and Ray Tadio.