One dictionary definition of IMAGO reads: 'final and perfect stage of insect after all metamorphosis'. Under the artistic direction of choreographer Yolande Snaith, IMAGOmoves assembles groups of artists and dancers based in San Diego, to create performance works on a project to project basis. Since its inception in 2005, IMAGOmoves has presented a range of work created for a variety of performanc
e spaces, from San Diego’s urban down town SUSHI Visual and Performing Arts, Bar Basic and Blurred Borders Festival, to art galleries including Space4art and more conventional dance contexts including the UCSD Department of Theatre & Dance’s Dance Series. The company has also performed in Los Angeles, Tijuana, and toured to Romania in 2007 with Garden Trilogy. IMAGOmoves is committed to creating collaborative performance works that cross disciplines, media and boundaries, to foster synthesis between the artistic languages of movement, visual imagery, text, music and sound. As the name suggests, the work embraces the process of metamorphoses, from the initial germ of an idea to the emergence of the developed work in the presence of an audience. The company’s creative process and performance vocabularies are informed by contemporary dance and theatre practices, often merging compositional scores with set choreography, crafting disparate elements into a seamless whole. The performance space serves as a container for visually striking and physically charged behavioral worlds with their own internal logic and movement language, inviting multiple readings, associations and resonant experience. Another definition of IMAGO reads: 'an idealized mental image of another person or the self'. IMAGOmoves seeks to connect with audiences across a diverse demographic, by embracing the potential that different sites and spaces suggest, in community locations, urban sites, city centers, gallery spaces as well as more conventional performance spaces. Artistic director Yolande Snaith has been a potent and consistently inventive force in the field of dance for 30 years. Her work has a delicious eccentricity; sumptuous moving paintings punctuated by unpredictable moments and visual surprises. The works resonate with a broad pallet of references, drawing on history, music, visual arts, and human experience. With IMAGOmoves, Snaith brings together an ensemble of performers, composers and designers in a highly collaborative dance theatre process, artfully shaping material to create work that is acutely observed, detailed, thought provoking and deeply engaging. Yolande Snaith Biography:
Yolande Snaith’s choreographic and performing career spans thirty years. Her range of artistic engagement is broad, from solo performance work to group choreography and dance theatre, choreographic commissions and improvisation ensemble practice. Her work has been presented internationally in more fifteen countries, and she has created several dance films in collaboration with renowned film directors. Yolande has been commissioned to choreograph works for dance, theatre and opera companies internationally. Yolande’s artistic roots lie in her native Britain, where she emerged in the mid 1980’s as one of the UK’s most innovative young choreographers, at a time when the European dance theatre scene was rapidly evolving. Between 1985 and 1990 Yolande created a number of full length solo and duet works which toured the British dance venues and European festival network, with support from the Arts Council of England, and the British Council. Yolande received a number of dance awards including; two Digital Dance Awards, a Barclays New Stages Award, the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award and two Time Out/Dance Umbrella Awards. She also received a commendation for the Prudential Award for dance. Yolande’s UK company, Yolande Snaith Theatredance was established in 1990 with funding support from the Arts Council of England. The company’s work was renowned for its innovative collaborations with composers, designers, writers, dancers and actors, creating striking visual and theatrical worlds with their own unique performance vocabulary and internal logic. The company created and toured eleven full length works between 1990 - 2004, visiting dance festivals and venues in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, Romania, Lithuania, Isreal, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, UK and Scotland. One of Yolande Snaith Theatredance’s most renowned works, Blind Faith won the Prix D’auteur du Conceil Generale de la Seine-Saint-Denise in 1998. Yolande has received commissions from dance, theatre, opera, film and television companies, including the English National Opera, Birmingham Dance Exchange, Transitions Dance Company, CNDC, Ricochet Dance Company, The Verve, Paines Plough Theatre Company, McCaleb Dance, Jean Isaac’s San Diego Dance Theater and Trolley Dances and the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj. Yolande has created eight dance films in collaboration with a range of directors, designers and composers, including director Ross MacGibbon, composers Graeme Miller, and David Coulter and designer Robert Innes-Hopkins. Should Accidentally Fall (1992), Sw***er (1996) and Tablecloth Garden (2000) were all screened on television stations internationally, including the BBC and Channel 4. In 1997 Stanley Kubrick commissioned Yolande to choreograph his final film Eyes Wide Shut, and in 1999 she was the choreographic adviser for David Hinton’s film Birds, which was the overall winner of the 2001 Monaco Dance Screen Awards. Yolande moved to the US in 2002 to join the faculty of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego, and since then her choreographic and performance work has diversified through a broad range of artistic collaborations, commissions, site specific works, improvisation ensembles, film and solo projects, with performances in Los Angeles, San Diego, Germany, France, Holland, Romania and Hungary. IMAGOmoves was established in 2006 as an artistic ‘umbrella’ for collaborative projects with other artists and performers. Since its inception IMAGOmoves has created six full length dance theatre works and several shorter pieces, including large group site-specific events in urban city locations, to intimate smaller group and solo work presented in a range of venues, from the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj, Romania, to San Diego’s alternative performance spaces such as SUSHI Visual and Performing Arts and Space4art. Recent projects include: Ruins True (2010 - 2011), a dance theatre collective creation between theatre director Gabor Tompa, co-performer/choreographers Yolande Snaith, Liam Clancy and Mary Reich, composer Shahrokh Yadegari, and scenic/projection designer Ian Wallace. Inspired by the work of Samuel Beckett, Ruins True was previewed at SUSHI Visual and Performing Arts, San Diego , and toured to international theatre festivals in Romania, Hungary and Avignon, France. In 2012 Yolande was commissioned to choreograph a re-creation of Ruins True with performers from the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj, Romania, and the piece (Ruins True Refuge) is now performed regularly as part of the company’s repertoire, touring to international theatre festivals. The Art of Fugue (2012) was an international music and dance collaboration with baroque music ensemble The Bach Collegium San Diego and Brazilian violinist Rodolfo Richter, presented at UC San Diego. The Art of Fugue sought to create a marriage between tightly scored dance improvisation, set choreography and the timeless, spacial geometry of Bach’s fugues. One Hundred Feet was a full length multimedia solo work choreographed and performed by Yolande, created in collaboration with video artist Natalia Valerdi, sound designer Nick Drashner and lighting designer Wen-Ling Liao, presented at UAG San Diego, Space4art San Diego and the UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance’s ‘Dance Series’. Between 2009 - 2012 Yolande was a member of LIVE, an improvisational ensemble based in San Diego, who have been presented in Mexico, Germany, Los Angeles and San Diego. Yolande created choreography for Eleanor Antin’s production of Before the Revolution, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in January 2012, directed by Robert Castro. Yolande’s most recent film project was a choreographic commission for Queens Dream in collaboration with director Mark Freeman, 2012, which is currently being presented in dance for the camera festivals internationally.
