about LYMI
BIOS | Noelle Chun | Adriana Durant | Annie Kloppenberg
Like You Mean It is an improvisational trio of dance artists. The performers construct a coherent piece in real time with movement, sound, and text, most often with a live DJ responding as a fourth collaborator. Much like improvisation in jazz music, these compositions can be viewed just like finished choreography. For Like You Mean It, improvisational performance is choreography, requiring the same seriousness of purpose and regular rehearsing that yields engaging dance works.
The Columbus, OH-based improvisational trio of dance artists performs and teaches workshops nationally. Audiences have heralded Like You Mean It’s simultaneous wit, humanity, oddity, and physical virtuosity. The dancers first began working together regularly as graduate students at The Ohio State University and found their individual and collective ideas about improvisational performances yielded a dynamic, distinctive approach to group improvisational performance and teaching.
BIOS
Noelle Chun's performance and choreography has been presented across the Mid-Atlantic through her own independent work, with the improvisational trio Like You Mean It, and through site-specific events with Foreground Dance. Past projects have been supported by grants and fellowships from the Greater Columbus Arts Council and Ohio Arts Council. Noelle considers collaboration and improvisation to be at the base of every creative process, where movers and thinkers actively contribute and make direct decisions inside of the process that engender spontaneous, subtle, and ruminative works. She has served on faculty at The Ohio State University and Ohio Wesleyan University, teaching improvisation and technique courses. Currently, she works as a community organizer and administrator with VSA Ohio and as a member of They Might Be Dancers. She holds a BA in Anthropology and Theatre Arts from Beloit College in Wisconsin, and an MFA in Dance from OSU.
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Adriana Durant is a choreographer, performer, and teacher. She has an MFA in Choreography from The Ohio State University and a BFA in Performance from Emerson College in Boston. Between degrees, Adriana taught, created, and produced dance in Chicago for nine years. She has performed professionally as an improvisational dance artist, dancer for many independent choreographers, and as a member of Mordine and Company Dance Theatre. Adriana has also performed in works by Bebe Miller, Amy Raymond, HiJack Dance Company, Peter Schmitz, Peter DiMuro, and Compagnie Felix Ruckert. Adriana’s choreography has been performed in Chicago, New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Columbus and Athens Ohio, where she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Ohio University, teaching ballet, modern, composition, and improvisation. Adriana continues to reinvest in improvisation as a performance form as a member of Like You Mean It. Her fascination with performance theory, improvisation, social dance, and the interactions between will steer her ensuing research in the dance field.
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Annie Kloppenberg’s current creative and theoretical research hinges on improvisation. She has presented papers examining spontaneity in the creative process or improvisational performance histories at conferences nationally. Look for her published article "Improvisation in Process: Post-Control Choreography" in The Dance Chronicle. Called "a choreographer of nuances" by the Boston Globe, most recently her work has been supported by commissions or residencies through Boston Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop Outer/Space (NYC), OhioDance/Dublin Arts Council, and the Taft School (CT). Annie has performed in works by Bebe Miller, Sara Pearson & Patrik Widrig, Shani Collins, Rebecca Rice, Prometheus Dance, Cathy Young, Heidi Henderson, Meghan Sprenger, and Ashley Thorndike among others and has been deeply influenced by many improvisation teachers including Bebe Miller, Kathleen Hermsdorf, Penny Campbell, Peter Schmitz, Nik Haffner, Chris Aiken, and The Architects (Michael Chorney, Lisa Gonzales, Katherine Ferrier, Jennifer Kayle, Pam Vail). Annie is Assistant Professor of Dance at Colby College. Please visit www.anniekloppenberg.com for more information.
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