Big Moves Press Archive

For the Big Moves backgrounder click here.

For Bodies in Motion IV: Sight Unseen Press Photos click here.

For Bodies in Motion 2003 Press Photos click here.

Press Releases (click on links to see release):
March 2004: Eat Something Already!
August 2003: Bodies in Motion 2003: Freedom to Move

August 2003: Video screening brings Big Moves modern to Boston area

June 2003: East Coast launch of Big Moves

For links to articles written about Big Moves click here.

Big Moves Key Players

Marina Wolf, Big Moves founder and director/Phat Fly Girl artistic director/instructor

Marina has taught introductory hip-hop classes at Women of Substance Health Spa and at fat-acceptance conferences, and currently teaches at Dance Mission in San Francisco, Body Central in Santa Rosa, and at other studios around the Bay Area. She is the artistic director of the Phat Fly Girls, the Bay Area's premier size-inclusive hip hop performing ensemble. She is a teacher's assistant in hip hop at Santa Rosa Junior College, and is working toward her dance certificate from SRJC. Marina has written about dance for Dance Teacher, Radiance Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and weekly newspapers around the Bay Area. In short, she's a delightful little diva who is obsessed with getting other people out on the dance floor. Marina can be reached at marina@bigmoves.org.

Jessica Erin Judd, Director, Big Moves Bay Area/Mass Movement general manager/web mistress

Jessica began her dance training at the age of five, but quit at the age of 11 to pursue competitive athletics; after a twelve-year hiatus she returned to dance at the age of 23. From 1998-2003 Jessica trained intensively at San Jose's Studio 10 Dance in jazz, lyrical, rhythm tap, hip hop, and body shaping. She currently dances with Big Moves' hip hop dance company the Phat Fly Girls and with Big Moves' contemporay dance company Mass Movement. Jessica also manages Mass Movement and is Big Moves' resident jazz dance instructor. When not dancing, Jessica swims with the Temescal Aquatic Masters in Oakland and works as a research analyst. Jessica can be reached at jessica@bigmoves.org.

Diane Barnes Russell, advisory board member

Diane did not begin dance training until she was in college where she studied modern dance and Checceti ballet. She performed with the East Bay modern-jazz dance company, Right-Angle-Left, in the early 1980s but stopped dancing to raise a family. Twenty years later, with plenty of hips and thighs (PHAT), her passion for dance burns brighter than ever. Diane currently performs hip hop with the Phat Fly Girls and modern dance with the Big Moves Dancers. When she is not dancing, Diane provides augmentative communication services to children who will never use speech as their primary means of communication.

Carol Squires, advisory board member

Bio coming soon!

Katrin Auch, instructor

Bio coming soon!

Allen Willner, technical director

Bio coming soon!

Eric Kupers, guest choreographer

Eric Kupers co-founded Dandelion Dancetheater in 1996 with long time artistic partner, Kimiko Guthrie, with whom he has collaborated since 1991. He is a dance/theater artist who has trained extensively in: Modern Dance with Charles Edmondson, Bella Lewitsky, Mel Wong, Silvia Martins, Tandy Beal, Joe Goode, Ellie Klopp, Jon Weaver and Kathleen Hermesdorf; Contact Improvisation with Ray Chung and Martin Keogh; Aikido with Tom Gambell Sensei; Meditation with Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, Jack Kornfield and Pema Chodron; Kalaripayattu with Sri Gopi; and Yoga, Folk Dance, Ballet, Improvisation and various other physical disciplines with a number of teachers.

Eric has danced professionally as a member of SIDESHOW Physical Theater (2002: onwards), Margaret Jenkins Dance Company (1997 - 02), Della Davidson Dance Company (1996-97), Stephen Pelton Dance Theater (1996 - 99), Nancy Karp + Dancers (1999 - 2001) and with a number of other choreographers including Joe Goode, Cheryl Chaddick, Brechin Flournoy, Miguel Gutierrez, Dawn Frank and Sue Roginski. He has choreographed and performed with Dandelion Dancetheater since its inception, creating numerous works that have been presented throughout the Bay Area and in Los Angeles, New York, Minnesota, Hawaii, Montana, Scotland and India. He has been an assistant choreographer to Joe Goode (California Shakespeare Festival) and Margaret Jenkins (Cal State University Hayward) and was the choreographer for the California Shakespeare Festival's 2002 production of The Winter's Tale, as well as Glen Walford's production of H.M.S. Pinafore at UC Davis' Mondavi Center.

With Dandelion Dancetheater Eric has taught classes and workshops for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism, The Northern California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Oakland's Museum of Children's Art, The Draavidia Gallery (in Kerala, India), Element Dance Company, Clausen House Program for Developmentally Disabled Adults (for which he founded a dance and performance program), The American College Dance Festival, Dance USA and as part of the faculty at Cal State University Hayward and UC Davis.

Eric currently is a Choreography MFA candidate at UC Davis. His multiyear Undressed Project is being developed in a series of residencies at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts leading up to a premiere of the culminating piece, Night Marsh in 2004. The project examines the multitude of issues and possibilities that emerge from dancing without clothes in a group diverse in body shape, size, color, ability and age.

In his choreography, performing, teaching and training Eric continually works to discover ways of harnessing the power of Modern Dance as a tool for personal and community growth and understanding, emotional catharsis and deep trust and respect for each person's unique path.

Lisa Townsend, guest choreographer

Lisa Townsend is a choreographer, performer, teacher of dance and Artistic Director of Lisa Townsend Company. Her works have been presented by festivals and presenting organizations in New York City, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and France. Highlights include Movement Research at the Judson Church, Joyce SoHo, St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery, & P.S. 122 (N.Y.C.), L.A.C.E. & LATC (L.A.) La Chalibaude Festival (Mayenne, France). She has produced several shared evenings of dance including “IF” at L.A.C.E. and “Tanz Poems” at the Downtown Playhouse in LA and in 1999 produced her evening work Seizure Story at Joyce SoHo, NYC, for which she and collaborator Dave Shaffer received a Meet the Composer grant. Over the last fifteen years, she has also choreographed several operas for Townsend Opera Players. Lisa has had the pleasure of dancing for Troika Ranch and Guta Hedewig, with Kate Weare, and as a company member for Keely Garfield’s Sinister Slapstick (1999-2002). Lisa has taught dance and body/mind practices for many institutions including, Hunter College, University of the Pacific, Modesto Junior College, California State Summer School for the Arts, Joffrey Ballet School, Dance Space in N.Y.C. & Shawl-Anderson. Currently she lives in Bolinas with her husband Piro Patton and their son Lucian where she maintains a private practice teaching Pilates and GYROTONIC™.

Press Releases

March 2004
PRESS RELEASE

Date: March 8th, 2004
Media contact: Marina Wolf National Director, Big Moves
phone: 415-756-5593
email: fullsun@sonic.net

***********Eat Something Already!***********

In a bold counterstroke against the dance world's obsession with size, weight, and food intake, Big Moves is hosting "Eat Something Already," an old-time spaghetti feed and dance showcase, on Sunday, April 25, from 6 to 9 p.m. at CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, San Francisco. Tickets are $5 to $20 sliding scale at the door.

The showcase during National Dance Week features performers from body-positive co-sponsors such as Dandelion Dancetheater, Reva Lucian's Fat-Bottom Revue, Maxine Moerman Dance Theater, and Big Moves' own Mass Movement, with additional support from Dance Brigade and Rhythm and Motion. The ticket price includes a vegetarian all-you-care-to-eat spaghetti dinner with the usual accompaniments (salad bar and garlic bread), and one non-alcoholic drink.

Big Moves, which is known nationally for its work around size diversity in dance, normally offers a video presentation and panel discussion during National Dance Week. This year Big Moves organizers opted to go for a truly decided--and delicious!--stand on the dance world's continued resistance to the possibility of skill, stamina, and artistry at any size.

"Of course there is no direct correlation between food consumption and size," says Big Moves national director Marina Wolf. "But that's the mistaken assumption that lies behind the existing diet culture, both in the dance community and in society in general. People fear growing fat, and so they restrict their diets. We want to replace that fear with a positive approach to the body, to food, and to dance."

Co-sponsors have all worked with Big Moves in the past, but other than that, the program offers no common thread.

Meanwhile, guests can enjoy their spaghetti feed with all the trimmings, prepared by volunteer professional chef Jacki Rosen, with ingredients donated by local purveyors, including ACME bread, Rainbow Grocery, and the Berkeley Bowl.

Recently covered in Bust magazine, Big Moves offers an award-winning array of performing and training opportunities for dancers of all sizes in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, and New York. To find out more about Big Moves, visit us online at http://www.bigmoves.org or call 415-756-5593.

August 2003
PRESS RELEASE

Date: August 29, 2003
Media contact: Marina Wolf National Director, Big Moves
phone: 415-756-5593
email: fullsun@sonic.net

***********BODIES IN MOTION 2003: FREEDOM TO MOVE***********

Choreographers often refer to the human body as an instrument. So what happens when an artist decides to use the entire orchestra, not just a few flutes? Find out at Bodies in Motion, the first dance concert series in the world to showcase performers who are significantly larger than the dance-world norm. Bodies in Motion returns for a triumphant third season on October 3 and 4 at the ODC Theater in San Francisco (3153 17th Street at Shotwell). Curtain time is 8 p.m., and a free post-performance reception follows each night. Tickets are $22 at the door and $20 in advance, available online at www.odctheater.org or through the ODC Box Office at 415-863-9834.

Guest artist this year is Lawrence Goldhuber, a New York dancer, choreographer, and performance artist who will be performing a 45-minute set, including his 2001 movement-monologue, "When the World Smells Like Bacon". The 6'2", 350-pound Goldhuber originally trained as an actor, but was invited to join the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1985, and danced with the company at venues around the world until 1995, when he left the company to work with Heidi Latsky in Goldhuber & Latsky. When the duo dissolved in 2001, Goldhuber continued his work in commissioned choreography and solo performances. Tobi Tobias of New York Magazine wrote of Goldhuber: "Commands respect and affection from his very first move... astonishingly agile and swift, as well as immensely perceptive and confident...". Goldhuber will make his Bay Area solo debut at Bodies in Motion 2003.

The Big Moves modern ensemble will perform world premieres of works by Bay Area choreogaphers Lisa Townsend (the Marin County?based artistic director of Lisa Townsend Company) and Eric Kupers (artistic co-director of Dandelion Dancetheater). Both pieces will be accompanied by original live music from composers who have worked with the choreographers throughout the creation of the works. The modern ensemble, composed entirely of plus-sized dancers, debuted at last year's Bodies in Motion concert. Their piece, "They'll Eat the Fat Ones First" by Joe Landini, has since been shown at four other San Francisco Bay Area mainstream venues, including Stanford University's Cantor Visual Arts Center

Also on the program is FatChanceBellyDance, San Francisco's favorite size-inclusive belly-dance troupe. Its classic lead-and-follow group dances stir audiences everywhere, making FCBD a fixture at Bodies in Motion since the concert series began in 2001.

Bodies in Motion is produced by Big Moves, the nation's only service organization dedicated to increasing size diversity in dance. Big Moves sponsors classes and workshops all over the country, arranges training and performance opportunities for dancers of all sizes, and offers sensitivity trainings to educators and choreographers around the issues of size and weight in the dance world. Big Moves was named "Best Place for Big Girls to Shake It" in the San Francisco Bay Guardian's 2002 Best of the Bay issue.

Directions to the ODC Theater may be found at www.odctheater.org. For details about Big Moves, visit our web site at www.bigmoves.org, or call 415-756-5593.

EDITORS: Preview photos are available online at http://www.bigmoves.org/pressphotos2003.html, and by request. Big Moves ensemble rehearsals on Tuesday and Thursday evenings (in Hayward) and Sunday afternoons (in Oakland) are open to members of the press. Please contact ensemble coordinator Jessica Judd at 408-489-9326 for more information.

August 2003
PRESS RELEASE

Date:      August 11, 2003
Contact: Marina Wolf, national director
Phone:    415-756-5593
Email:    fullsun@sonic.net

******TALENT IS NOT MEASURED BY THE SIZE OF YOUR LEOTARD******

Is it the size of the leotard or the scope of the talent that matters most in modern dance? Big Moves, the nation's first and only service organization dedicated to increasing size diversity in dance, invites Boston-area dance fans and others to decide for themselves at "Room to Move", an evening of video and discussion at the Center for New Words, 186 Hampshire St., Cambridge, on Wednesday, September 10. The program starts at 7 p.m., and admission is sliding scale ($5-$10 suggested donation).

"Room to Move" will feature footage from recent San Francisco-area performances by the Big Moves modern ensemble, as well as video excerpts from recent shows by Gabrie'l Atchison, a Boston artist and woman of size. Following the screening, Atchison and Big Moves founder Marina Wolf will facilitate a discussion about the roots of the dance community's intense focuson size, how it relates to fat-phobia in the Western world today, and how and why that focus may need to be changed.

Big Moves, for one, believes that size and weight will be the next new area of self-examination and change in the dance world. "The dance community in the United States has successfully integrated performers from many different backgrounds, from dancers of color to dancers with disabilities," says Wolf. "We are working to make that same shift happen around body size."

Big Moves has two "in-house" performing groups: the Phat Fly Girls (a hip hop troupe) and the modern dance ensemble, which most recently performed at Stanford University in July. Big Moves also boasts a thriving curriculum of dance classes and workshops. Ongoing classes in jazz, modern, and hip hop are at the core of the program, but the group also offers quarterly workshops and workshop series in such genres as burlesque, ballet, contact improv, and aerial dance. These workshops are beginning to come to the East Coast, too, with hip hop classes in both New York and Boston.

To find out more about "Room to Move" and other Big Moves activities on the East Coast, call 415-756-5593, or visit us online at http://www.bigmoves.org

Calendar Editors:

Room to Move. Is it the size of the leotard of the scope of the talent that counts in dance? This evening of video and dicussion will help viewers decide. Big Moves founder Marina Wolf and Boston artist Gabrie'l J. Atchison facilitate post-video discussion. Hosted by Big Moves, the nation's only service organization dedicated to increasing size diversity in dance. Wednesday, September 10, at 7 p.m. Center for New Words, 186 Hampshire St., Cambridge. $5-$10 sliding-scale donation. Web site: www.bigmoves.org. 617-983-8027.

June 2003
PRESS RELEASE

Date:      June 26, 2003
Contact: Marina Wolf, national director
Phone:    415-756-5593
Email:    fullsun@sonic.net

******TALENT IS NOT MEASURED BY THE SIZE OF YOUR LEOTARD******

Big Moves, the nation's only service organization dedicated to size diversity in dance, is coming to the East Coast. The award-winning non-profit has been producing dance concerts, training dancers, and hosting classes in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past two and a half years. Now, responding to requests from around the country, Big Moves is bringing its vision of dance at any size to New York City and Boston, kicking off with beginning hip hop workshops on July 6 and 13, respectively.

Founder and executive director Marina Wolf is teaching the two workshops with an eye toward introducing the two metropolitan areas to the Big Moves message: every body can dance. "For too long people larger than the ballet norm have been made to feel out of place in studios and on stage," says Wolf. "We want to open up those spaces for dancers of any size." Inspired by the possibilities, dancers and instructors on the East Coast and elsewhere are stepping forward to join Big Moves' training program and start new chapters of Big Moves around the country.

Big Moves has developed a thriving curriculum of dance classes and workshops since it was founded in 2000. Ongoing classes in jazz, modern, and hip hop are at the core of the program, but the group also offers quarterly workshops and workshop series in such genres as burlesque, contact improv, and aerial dance. On the performing and production side, Big Moves has two "in-house" performing groups: the Phat Fly Girls (a hip hop troupe) and a modern dance ensemble, whose next appearance is at Stanford University this summer. Big Moves is the San Francisco producer of the award-winning Ms. DeMeanor's Original Fat-Bottom Revue, the nation's only all-fat burlesque show. Big Moves also produces Bodies in Motion, an annual concert featuring larger dancers. This year, the third season of Bodies in Motion, Big Moves is presenting New York artist Larry Goldhuber in his Bay Area solo debut.

To find out more about Big Moves coming to the East Coast, call 415-756-5593, or visit Big Moves online at http://www.bigmoves.org

EDITORS: Calendar-friendly text about the workshops is attached. Please call for a photo appointment between July 5 and July 14.

Calendar Editors:

New York

Intro to Hip Hop. This class for dancers of all sizes goes back to the very beginning steps, to get you into the hip hop groove. A good primer for club dancing, too! Hosted by Big Moves, the nation's only service organization dedicated to increasing size diversity in dance. Sunday, July 6, 2 to 4 p.m. New Dance Group Arts Center, 254 W. 47th Street, New York. $15/advance, $20/drop-in. Preregister online at www.bigmoves.org by July 3. 415-756-5593.

Boston

Intro to Hip Hop. This class for dancers of all sizes goes back to the very beginning steps, to get you into the hip hop groove. A good primer for club dancing, too! Hosted by Big Moves, the nation's only service organization dedicated to increasing size diversity in dance. Sunday, July 13, 3 to 5 p.m. The Dance Complex, 536 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. $20/drop-in, $15/advance. Preregister online at www.bigmoves.org by July 10. 415-756-5593.